Panini is the industry leader in licenses for most major sports, carrying the likes of the NBA and the NFL. They've been the conductors of the recent sports card boom that started in early 2020. Given their monopoly controlling the market, we listed down the 3 biggest problems that Panini needs to do to further improve the sports card industry.
Quality Control
Recently, issues have been arising regarding Panini's quality control, due to the increasing complaints of damaged products they send out. Usually with dinged corners, whitening around the edges, factory lines, and awful centering. All of which are very important factors in the grading process (if the consumer does decide to send out his cards to get graded).
This has been alarming to collectors alike, as they expect their cards to be in top shape since it is coming directly from the manufacturer itself. Where it is also been seen in a product like Encased, with panini partnering with BGS as their grading service.
Being the ones who will be doing the slabbing for the guaranteed graded cards in their product, which has caused some controversy because of the low grades being slipped in the boxes such as 8's and 8.5's.
That could have easily been avoidable if Panini took the right steps necessary earlier on, such as making the cards thinner to avoid common soft edging that thick cards cause.
Also to a lesser extent, other errors such as miscuts, wrong labeling of players, and RC label confusions have been reported too in some cases.
Overproduction
The reasoning for a current dip in the price of modern cards can be attributed to the overproduction of some of these print runs and products. With thousands of variations of cards of different players, the market has now been struggling to pace itself.
Having redundancy, and destroying the exclusivity aspect on some of these low numbered or SSP cards, is not a viable method in balancing the current supply and demand for their products.
Wherein you could have a super rare card that just stagnates in value as more and more new products start to release over time.
Price Increases
With the huge growth of sports cards recently, and a huge resale market on its products, Panini also increased their standard retail prices comparable to those you see on the eBay aftermarket.
Huge jumps from top sets like NBA Prizm hobby rapidly escalated. Going for a $150 retail price in the 2019-20 season all the way to the $2,500 expected price tag in the 2020-21 NBA season.
This has caused some investors and collectors to fray away from cards altogether due to the huge financial restraints and the high-risk factor. Instead, putting their attention into other opportunities such as the stock market, which has higher profit margins.
At the end of the day, it is all up to Panini and their strategy on managing this in the long run. The only thing we are certain about right now, regarding us serious collectors, is that we will still be suckers for them no matter what.
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