Thought I would give this a bump since more products have been released since Feb.
For me gold standard is the worst value since gold standard started in 10/11.
This years Spectra is far and away the worst for design and value. (already dropped to 230 a box from 350)
Same for Noir which has just come out, weakest design for a product that was pretty classy.
Grand reserve is complete rubbish, most boxes have 3 scrub autos, considering it was a 240 box product you expect better.
So now the majority or products have dropped for 16/17 , do you guy's agree that 2017 is the worst year for basketball cards in some time?
Couldn't agree more.
I've also notice Panini seem to be slowly creeping up the number of boxes per case with high end products, for example:
2014/15:
Immaculate = 5 box / case
National Treasures = 3 box / case
Spectra = 5 box / case
Noir = 3 box / case
2016/17:
Immaculate = 5 box / case
National treasures = 4 box / case
Spectra = 6 box / case
Noir = 4 box / case
With the exception of Immaculate, it seems the high end ones all have more boxes per case then they used to. The reason why this frustrates me is that if you forked out the (incredibly high) asking price for a box of NT or Noir back in 2014/15, from a fresh case, you had a 1/3 chance of getting the box that holds the case hit. If you are watching live breaks and one dude has just broken a terrible box, you are now down to a 50/50 chance of a case hit for from the next box. To me this relatively high chance of getting a beautiful case hit was what helped justify paying that extremely high price for a single box. Increasing that to 4 boxes per case doesn't seem like much (25% in stead of 33% chance of case hit) what that means is that you can now bum out on two straight boxes, and if you take the plunge on box #3 you STILL only have a 50% chance of a case hit.
This means that if you want a solid chance at a case hit you really need to buy a case, which brings me to the next reason why this sucks - because the boxes still cost around the same, but the number of boxes has increased, the cost of a case has now ALSO increased.
The end result is that buying individual boxes seems to now be riskier then it's ever been - especially for a semi-high-end product like Spectra, where you can potentially go through 4 boxes (at like $500 AU apiece) and not get a single decent hit.
But getting back to the topic of product design - I agree completely.
I feel the best Spectra release so far was last year (2015/16) because the card designs were nice (the gold in particular looked awesome IMHO), a lot of the cases were loaded with hits (wasn't that uncommon to get 2 golds, a green and a black in 3 boxes). Because of that I was actually pretty excited for the product this year - and then when I saw the breaks, I was thoroughly disappointed. Ugliest design yet for Spectra with far too much going on (too many circles and zig-zags and all the rest).
So from there I decided to wait on Noir, which has been my favourite product from Panini the last few years - been a huge fan of the gold-on-black looks every since the UD Black days, and I love acetate finishes on many of the Noir / Immaculate cards. So Noir releases and what the hell!
1. The set now includes jersey cards - previously it was patches only
2. The colour base cards are no longer acetate (I felt this made them the nicest base cards of any product)
3. The colour patch cards are no longer acetate
4. The dark theme that was the defining character of Noir is gone from everything bar the Spotlight Signatures (which still look amazing)
That is four of the biggest reasons why I loved Noir, gone.
Unlike most, I actually don't mind the metal framed cards - I always thought they gave Luxe a nice unique selling point, and since Luxe got axed I'm ok with them moving them to Noir. At least the do maintain the "metal on black" look that Noir is known for, so I actually feel they fit the set nicely.
In fact I wish they had used autographed versions of the framed cards INSTEAD of the Black/white acetate design they did choose to go with. If they instead used They could have used a silver ink pen for the normal "Metal" set and a gold pen for the Vintage Art set, and I think that would have looked stunning and actually fit the product well. The Acetate autos look nice enough, they just don't look 'Noir'.
