I’m going to talk about this article, which affects one of my hobbies, trading cards, but most of you might not know what that is. Trading cards are collectibles usually made out of paperboard or thick paper, which contains an image of a sportsman and a short description of the player, along with statistics. The most traditional are baseball and also basketball cards. Some cards have a piece of jersey used by the player in an official game, and the most expensive ones come with the authentic autograph of the player featuring on the card.
Topps and Upper Deck have been producing NBA, as well as other sports, cards for decades but before the beginning of the 2009-10 season, The Panini Group reached an agreement with the NBA to be the sole trading card licensee for the next 4 years. The trading card market moves an enormous quantity of money, but lately sales have been declining, the league along with the two American card-makers agreed that an exclusive deal was the best solution, but Panini beat their best offers. The NBA's move to go with Panini would indicate the league's continued push toward becoming a more global enterprise. There is some speculation Panini will use this license as a stepping stone to pursue other American sports properties as they become available. Panini also wants to launch trading cards in the overseas market, although it only represents 5% of the overall NBA trading card sales.
Panini is an Italian company very well known in Europe and has its headquarters in Modena. The big problems are that Panini had no presence in the USA before this deal and that they weren’t used to produce products of this high quality. So Panini created a subsidiary known as Panini America to handle the trading card business in the USA, and also had a significant invest in advertisement.
After a year, what I can say is that Panini had some problems with its first collections launched last year, but it has been learning how to produce high quality cards and has gained lots of followers.
Carles Urpí
You can also check my Autograph trading card collection here: http://s956.photobucket.com/albums/ae44/7air/Autographs%20-%20PC%20-/
And my Tracy McGrady collection (475 different cards at the moment):
Hi Carles,
ResponEliminaDo you really have all those cards? Incredible! I always admire people who have a passion.
Very well written. Only a couple of errors:
they weren’t used to produce --> they weren’t used to producING