Leaf Products

[RedskinsFan]

Just a lil personal opinion and wanted to see what you guys thought. I'm a Panini man at heart (of coarse they own the rights) but I think Leaf as right there aside from the rights. They can be a lil more pricy but with products like Best Of Footbal and 2013 trinty they are setting a standard. Their card design (more talking Trinty as Best of Football is buy backs) are remarkable and you can tell a lot of thought goes into design. Just wondering which card maker you like aside from Panini and also what you think of Leaf. Cheers!

 

[AusRam]

Leaf used to have an NFL licence back in the 90's and 00's and made some real nice stuff, they were the first to make Certified etc Then Panini either bought them out, or picked up their licence, I'm not sure, and then they've returned now without a NFL licence. They do a lot of non sport auto's and stuff, so maybe that's where they went for a while? Haven't seen a lot of their recent stuff as I don't collect college uniform stuff, but what I have seen looks good.

I would love Press Pass to get an NFL licence, they do great NASCAR stuff and their customer service leaves every other card manufacturer for dead. My only concern would be if that service would drop away if they grew a lot more, which they'd likely do with a NFL licence.

Maybe we should get Pro Set back ? Or Proline ? Or Wildcard ? Aaah, those were the days, so many choices...

 

[RedskinsFan]

Iv never really looked at press pass but now you mention it I wouldn't mind having a go with some of their products. I'm definitely more an NFL collector over college stuff but with Panini owning the licence you sorta have no choice if you wanna check other products. If you collect a couple of players over teams it can be good though.

 

[RedskinsFan]

Panini also took Limited off Leaf aswell I believe like you mentioned with Certified

 

[Wattsup]

Maybe we should get Pro Set back ? Or Proline ? Or Wildcard ? Aaah, those were the days, so many choices...

I have several hundred, maybe thousand pro set and proline cards in my shed if you're really feeling nostalgic Ausram! haha. I used to goto the localish shopping centre at Knox, and for some reason an American clothing store had packs of Score 90 and Proset 90 (this was in 1990 to clarify), scary how much money i spent on those packs!

 

[edygriff21]

All the leaf, leaf certified, limited were Donruss brands. Panini brought out Donruss. I personally hate panini, because of the amount of redemptions and everything is sticker autos. I haven't brought anything for two years, mainly because of the junk they put out, with ridiculous numbers of late round draft pick autos (put Topps in this category as well). Most of the autos in national treasures are all stickers now. Pretty ordinary for such a premium product.

I'd kill for ud to get their nfl licence back. Great designs and on card autos. Hard to beat the simple clean designs of sp authentic rookie auto patches from over the years.

I do agree with Trevor though. Press pass cards are awesome, and generally all on card autos.

Ed

 

[RedskinsFan]

The on card autos and redemptions are a big downside to panini and when UD did have the licence their products were excellent. Like I was saying if Leaf had the rights I would be a very happy man haha. All still have some good stuff in my opinion just would be betteris the rights could be shared as I'm more a fan of NFL gear over college

 

[ekalb]

Each company seems to have their positives and negatives. Right now, I would say Topps has got to have the worst customer service out of all of the companies I have had to deal with. Panini has not been too bad and at least update weekly or so on their blog what is happening with their redemptions. I would love to see Upper Deck get their NFL licence back and another company like Press Pass or Leaf. I don't follow College FB much so college uniforms don't do much for me.


One of the most frustrating parts for me is the guys they keep including in sets that are not on the team. I will use the Raiders as an example, as I know their team a lot better than the other teams. Conner Vernon and Tyler Wilson have been featured as a rookie in I think every set so far this year. Vernon never made it on the team past pre-season... may have even been cut before pre-season games finished. Wilson has been active for one game this year (two games ago against Texans when Matt McGloin got his first start and Pryor was injured). Before that he was on the PS all season and last week was a healthy inactive again. Yet McGloin has been on the teams active roster since the start of the season, and as the #2 QB his Flynn got out a month or so into the season. He has now going to start his third game this year against the Cowboys this week. Yet somehow, McGloin has no licenced cards all year (he was in the Upper Deck set but his auto was only be a redemption for a complete auto set and SP/15).

It took Panini and Topps a few releases into the year to get DJ Hayden in a release who was a first round pick and even now they pretty much just use the same picture for every release which sucks. Second round OT pick Watson has not been in a release yet and third round LB Sio Moore has only been in Score.

 

[AusRam]

It's interesting as I feel that Panini are actually improving their service a bit, but Topps is going backwards fast - and they used to be the better of the two. And it just seems there's no course of action with Topps, they don't answer emails and I don't think you can request updates or anything. There's a fair few complaints on Twitter about Topps too

I'd really like to know how often they actually follow up the players for redemption autos... or don't they at all ??

 

[ekalb]

It's interesting as I feel that Panini are actually improving their service a bit, but Topps is going backwards fast - and they used to be the better of the two. And it just seems there's no course of action with Topps, they don't answer emails and I don't think you can request updates or anything. There's a fair few complaints on Twitter about Topps too

I'd really like to know how often they actually follow up the players for redemption autos... or don't they at all ??

I agree. This year they have had a lot fewer redemptions. I guess the flipside to this has been more sticker autos though, but I would prefer more stick autos with less redemptions than a lot more redemptions because of waiting for on-card autos. To me the sticker autos are the lesser of the evil!

Panini posted on their blog today about getting Brady to sign a bunch before the Broncos game...
http://paniniamerica.wordpress.com/...up-with-tom-terrific-for-significant-signing/

My guess is getting these players to sign these autos is a lot of work. During the season, signing these autos is probably the least of their worries with game film to study etc. And during the off-season I imagine the players want to relax and enjoy their time off! I saw a post on BO last week I think it was from a guy that works at a car sales yard that just recently sold a car to Bills second year WR TJ Graham I think it was. And Graham was telling him how much the players generally have to sign over 50,000 stickers (that was stickers only, no mention of on-cards included) and he was getting paid $3.50 per auto I think it was (which is more than I thought they would have been paid!). While I'm sure most of us would love to sign our name for $3.50 each time, I can see why some players don't even bother especially when they are earning millions already and if they really wanted to sign autos could probably arrange a signing session elsewhere and get paid a lot more!

 

[taffster74]

I was under this impression ...
1990's - Fleer, Pro Set/Classic, Donruss, playoff Skybox, Leaf, Pinnacle, Topps, Upper Deck.
2000-05 - Fleer, Donruss/Pinnacle, Playoff, leaf, Topps, Upper Deck
2006-09 - DonrussPlayoffLP (Leaf/pinnacle), topps, upper deck
2009 onwards - Topps Panini (donrussplayoff), Leaf

Basically with the panini purchasing the licensing from donruss playoff LP, Leaf was allowed to operate as a separate company. At least that's the impression I had.

As to UD returning, given their financial difficulties over the last few years (Konami, MLB Properties, MLB Players association, Kareem Adbul-Jabbar, Internal courtcase, MLB Properties round 2) and the fact that Fleer retro for basketball was delays for almost 18 months, I think they're lucky to be even have a contract with the NCAA/CLC. I honestly don't see them being allowed to even enter the negotiation room now that all of their dirty laundry has been aired.