Next season's basketball products......

ndleo

I think next year maybe one of the worst years to buy basketball product. After watching the draft, I would rather buy a box of 2003-04 or 2004-05 boxes than the crap rookies in next year's product.

I hope the card companies have some good ideas because the rookies aren't going to drive any demand. When the best rookie plays on the Clippers, it is going to be long collecting year.

billwaltonsbeard

Who is making basketball cards next year anyway? I havent bought anything other than Topps and Topps Chrome since 2000.

csmtampa

Panini has the exclusive rights to produce basketball cards. So they will be using the Donruss/Playoff/Leaf brands since they bought Donruss.

And if you have seen some of the new football they put out, basketball will probably be worse.

EB22

Upper Deck and Topps lost their licence to make basketball cards for the 2010 season. Panini will take over with their 4 year contract, so basketball cards will probably be dead for the next 4 years. But who knows, maybe Panini will do the same things as UD and Topps or maybe even better?

thenavarro

I got to visit with Panini's marketing manager and the person responsible for bringing in signing talent for them last weekend in Dallas at the BGS/JSA day at Beckett. They were pretty stoked about having signed the Oklahoma kid (his name escapes me at the moment, the guy that went number 1 in the draft) to their products for signings. However, they fully realize that in the basketball market, it is still all about 3 guys, Lebron, Kobe and Michael Jordan (yep, still), and they don't and will not have any of them for direct signatures in their upcoming products. They seemed really responsive to collectors hatred of sticker autographs and poorly designed cut cards (but they say these are tough to weed eat because of the costs of custom designing individual cards as opposed to the mass templates). I hope they do well and I hope they are succesful at bringing young kids into the hobby or back to the hobby as that seems to be one of their core focus points.

TonyC

I actually think the swan song issues of Topps and Upper Deck basketball that are scheduled for this summer will be very good issues. I think the ad for regular Topps basketball said a jumbo box has four hits and every two regular boxes will have 3 hits, and my guess is that Topps and Upper Deck will want to liquidate their inventory of GU and autographs since they won't be able to use them for another 4 years. Bowman 48 basketball looked appealing as well.

mtcards

Cant miss the chance to post an anti-NBA post


It wont matter who makes NBA cards next year....they will still be just a "side" issue to the big boys. Unless they make a legends type of set of players that actually knew how to play basketball and not the "and1" type of carp they play now.

Lothar52

WOW i had no idea that topps wouldnt be producing any more basketball cards.....and I was just starting a topps chrome run for both Kobe and Lebron...looks like it stops for a while

billwaltonsbeard

<< <i>Cant miss the chance to post an anti-NBA post


It wont matter who makes NBA cards next year....they will still be just a "side" issue to the big boys. Unless they make a legends type of set of players that actually knew how to play basketball and not the "and1" type of carp they play now. >>



Hatter. I hope you dont slip into a coma during the next baseball game you watch