A Little Effort Goes A Long Way

While of course, I LOVE this hobby I have spent so much time and money on, there are a few things that bug me. One of those things is when companies don't seem to make an effort, especially with their hits. Maybe it's a time thing, maybe it's a cost thing, but when I get a relic card that has the swatch off-centered, or a pin stripe just barely peeking from the side, I think that such a potentially great looking card just simply looks mediocre. Here are a few examples from my own collection.

Horizontal pinstripe. Boo.

Diagonal pinstripe. Cringe.

The worst offender. A JUST BARELY there pinstripe. If you look closely, you can see a slight amount of blue peeking out of the left hand side.

At least with Luxury Suite, Panini, it seems, has really made a conscious effort to put a good swatch in every card. Even with a slightly skewed Artem Ansimov swatch, when your track record shows an effort, I can let a little bit slide. Here's a few more.

The Cool thing with the seam cards is that the material is actually bulging out of the card and they seemed to really center the thickness of the swatch right in the middle. Not only does it look better, but it prevents it from tearing the corner of the die-cut portion. Again, not perfect, but when the majority of your cards look as pretty as these do, I can forgive the Evander Kane being slightly skewed and off-center.

I'm not asking that you be perfect, I'm just asking that you make an effort.

Oh, and here's some more, for no other reason than for me to brag about the cool Luxury Suite cards that I have.

You know, I didn't realize it until I scanned it, but the Mike Smith stick swatch has a few puck marks on it, which is REALLY cool, and how could you not love that damage on the Malkin. AWESOME cards.