[Baseball Nut]

2011 Panini Gold Standard Football is the follow up releaseto the explosive debut of 2010-11 Gold Standard Basketball. There are some small, but significantchanges. While the Basketballversion seemed to yield golden nuggets with every box, for Footballyou will have to do a little more prospecting to uncover gold.


Gold Standard fits into our premium cards category. Each golden bar box contains 12 cardswith 3 Autographs and 2 Memorabilia Cards.


Here are the cards we pulled from the box.

Matt Schaub and Dallas Clark veteran base #/299


Greg McElroy and Patrick Peterson rookie base #/299


Y.A. Tittle legend base #/299



Darren McFadden Gold Rush #/299, Charles Woodson Golden Anniversary #/299


Delone Carter Gold Leaf Rookies Memorabilia #/299



Philips Rivers Gridiron Gold Memorabilia #/299


Cecil Shorts III and Lance Kendricks rookie auto #/499


Clyde Gates RPS Gold Rookies auto #/525


Overall Look

The gold bar box is still impressive, even the second timearound. Every card is still tied into agolden theme. The cards for the most part still look great, but there is asignificant change that comes with the design of the sticker auto cards. For Basketball the stickers whereimbedded into the card, giving them a regal, crafted look that blended wellwith the golden background. ForFootball, the stickers are simply placed on top of the card making them appearsomewhat ordinary. The RPS GoldRookies, like our Clyde Gates, look fantastic when the paint pen signaturecomes out clean but as with any paint pen signature there are examples out there of splatters, smudges and streaking. In addition, we’ve seen examples wherecertain autographs have been done in black or blue sharpie over the blackbackground rendering the signature barely visable.

Quality and Variety of Players

There are some amazing players to collect but the checklistfeels very rookie heavy making this more of a prospecting product.

Do the Hits satisfy?

Pull one of the super rare cards with legends autos, veteranstar players, maybe even gold or diamond embedded cards and you’re golden, but there are a few glitches in thesystem otherwise. While the base cards are numbered to 299 most, 30 out ofthe 36, of the RPS Gold Rookies are numbered to 525 and regular rookie autosare numbered to 499. Needless tosay, having hits that are higher numbered than the base cards is awkward. On the plus side, it increases youchances of pulling a card from the upper echelon of Rookies, even though thenumbers for Newton, Green, Locker, Gabbert, Ponder, and Ingram drop down to325.

Will you keep coming back for more?

For those who are looking for a well-rounded chance ofhitting established player autographs, this is worth a shot or two, but thiswill appeal more to rookie prospectors who will want to spread the high riskover a case of Gold Standard to increase their chances of a high reward.

Rating

4 out of 5

2011 Panini Gold Standard Football, when taken as arookie-prospecting product, provides a fun break with the chance of hittinggold.



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