So, what does it take?

We are approaching the "most wonderful time of the year" from a product perspective. Many releases, much wax to rip, singles to buy, new players to chase, cards to send in for grading and so on. That being said, early response to Bowman Chrome Draft and Bowman Sterling, has been mediocre at best. In the basketball word Panini is now cranking out new products, Prestige is the first. Additionally, new football products continue to roll off the shelves, those Crabtree cards have value now!

Do you have excitement about any of these products, in any of these sports? I can't say I really do. As a result, I caught myself wondering, do I expect too much? It seems like it should be fairly easy to create decent products but time and time again collectors voice the same concerns and time and time again, the same crummy products come out. All that being said, what does it take to make a successful product? Lets think about some of the most successful products from all sports and find the common threads.

Here are a few of the products that come to mind: Topps Chrome Basketball, Topps Chrome Football, Exquisite Basketball, Exquisite Football, SPA Football, Bowman Chrome Baseball and Bowman Chrome Draft Baseball, Elite Extra Edition Baseball and Allen & Ginter Baseball.  So what is common to all these products?  I see six common traits

1. Keep it simple stupid - collectors need to be able to understand the product easily, an endless array of parallels, inserts, insert paralells and different card pictures is simply confusing. Ex: there are so many James Harden varieties in Panini Prestige I don't know where to begin. With Bowman Chrome Draft I know exactly what is the rarest and what is the most common, it takes a matter of seconds to figure it out.

2. Consistency - keep the product generally the same from year to year, if changes need to be made don't make them dramatic. Collectors may be angered when the card they bought in 2007, now looks outdated because of a dramatic design change. All designs vary from year to year but the template ought to remain the same.

3. Simplicity - occassionally a product that has a very "busy" design will take off but for the most part; simple, elegant designs work really well. Allen and Ginter and Bowman Chrome, probably the most popular products of the past few years for Topps are simple, yet nice designs. The player is the central focus, not something that looks like an anime graphic.

4. Quality - in today's collecting world, people like grading cards. If you produce a product, that is coming out of packs with white edges and dinged corners, well, thats just another hurdle the product must leap, on its way to success. Exquisite is generally more dinged up but it has lept over the hurdle due to a great design and great content. On the other hand, Bowman Chrome is consistently in good shape coming out packs and graders love it for that reason.

5. Value - there has to be a reasonable chance that a collector opening the product will break even, or, get some good value out of the pack/box/case. Take 2006 Bowman Chrome, I opened 3 packs of this, at a shop, on a whim. I received no parallels or autographs. I made all my money back, because I pulled base chromes of Jose Tabata, Cameron Maybin and Elvis Andrus. Collectors eventually do wise up and realize there is no reason to bust Topps Cosigners anymore, because all they are going to get is a crummy sticker autos and in less than 10% of boxes will they actually make their money back.

6. Content - all of the points above are irrelevant if the content isn't good, i.e., you can't polish a turd. I love Superfractors but when I pulled the Jesus Delgado Super from my cases of 2008 Bowman Chrome I was not pleased.  I would have been more pleased with the Kershaw below

. This is the same feeling that the people who pull WBC supers from 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft are going to have. Even worse, how about a cheerleader Superfractor from 2009 Topps Chrome Football.

I believe that if card companies kept these six simple ideas in their mind when producing product, they would make more money and we the collectors would have more to buy!