2011 Panini Threads football has been out for a bit now and once again has divided the football card collecting community. Some people love it, some people hate it, and there really isn’t anything in between. But don’t worry, I am here to bring you that voice of the collector who is the one person out there who doesn’t love it, but doesn’t hate it either.

After opening and going through the product, it looks to me to just be an average mid-range product. There are some highlights though that you won’t find in other Panini products like autographed manufactured letterman patches, a wider crop of rookie autographs with some that may not have made prior releases, and some really nice insert sets that I haven’t seen before. So let’s see what we got…

Base:

Inserts:

Autographs/Memorabilia:

Design:

Okay, I’ll start with the things I like. I love the use of team colors across this product. It seems like every card incorporates the team colors of the team that player plays on. From the regular base set to the inserts, the team colors proudly wave across the cards. I also really enjoy the action shots and the horizontal design of the cards. The inserts are also done very well, I especially enjoy the Gridiron Kings and Star Factor sets. Now, the bad. I still don’t like manufactured patches but in a product called “Threads” I can live with it. I also don’t like the random stripes going down the side of some cards that have the set names and the team logo. For example, I already love the Gridiron Kings set but would love it even more without the stripe. I know you use it for placement of game used material, but couldn’t there be a less intrusive way? Maybe it’s just me.

Checklist:

I really like a nice base set like this. A ton of different players from your favorite teams can be pulled. I’m still not a huge fan of the rookie per pack thing, I’d like to see Panini do something like Upper Deck does with hockey and Young Guns. Limit the rookies in the product to keep them at a higher value. It seems like product after product is one rookie per pack. Other than that, they feature quite a few players from today and years gone by, which is always nice in moderation. This is definitely my type of product with the small insertion of former players. As always, Panini does a great job of inserting case hits being stars of the NFL including the newly added Troy Polamalu autographs can be found in this product. I was lucky enough to pull a nice patch card of his.

Value:

At $85 a box, I think it may be a little high. I mean, I only received one autograph in the box and we all know autographs are really what collectors are looking for nowadays. Some boxes have 2 autographs in them, but I’d like to see 2 autographs and 2 memorabilia in each box. Even if it was another rookie of some sort, at least that has more potential to rise in value while game used memorabilia cards are going down in value what seems like every day. The Polamalu should hold decent value as he doesn’t have many out there, but the Tebow and the Packers rookies might not. Then again, fans of both are pretty rabid. I’d just like to see a little more ink.

Overall:

Part of me really thinks that with some tweaking, this product has the potential to be a really great product. The designs have improved and have some really great things to see. I love the use of team colors and the action shots showing everything is really nice. Even the inserts look nice, but I would still find a way to get rid of that line down the side. The checklist is pretty good, but I’d still like to limit the rookies. I say this through a lot of products, but it’s just something I see over and over again. It was nice to pull a Julius Thomas rookie finally for my PC though. Finally, I would find somewhere to add a little more value or lower the price $10 or so. Make it two autographs and two memorabilia or even add in an extra memorabilia card and I think it would hold up pretty well. But I think with a few minor tweaks, this product has the potential to be so much better.

Again, thanks to Panini for providing this box for me to review. I will be giving away some cards from it in the future because I have the Panini NFL POD contests going on until November so make sure to check those out.

I’ll have the video up shortly, it is kind of a long one.