Just the other day, great news came my way. News that by the way, I was a bit late on. Turns out, Panini America lost their online mascot, as Tracy Hackler has officially left the building after 11 years. Hackler is by all accounts a decent fella, unless you are a collector who spends his or her hard-earned money on Panini America trading cards. Panini, as you may know, is the #1 offender of letting years go by on redemptions and is actually in court arguing that they have no responsibility for fulfilling said redemptions.
Despite public knowledge of Panini’s court filings and years and years of collectors on Twitter tagging Hackler and his partner in card board crime, Scott Prusha, no one has ever elicited even as little as a response from the two. At best, you have a phone number for customer service and/or an email which 9/10 times leads to a dead end. Well, silence isn’t all you get from Hackler because if you have a podcast or YouTube channel where you can toss slow-picth softballs, Hack will come on and spew his garbage non-stop.
It’s simple, if you want to kiss Tracy’s ass on your popular platform (and instantly lose credibility), Tracy will be your best friend. That is why GO GTS Live has been able to book Tracy non-stop for the past 3-4 years. If instead you choose to stick up for collectors by questions Panini America, their redemption program failure, or Hack/Prusha, you are met with a deafening silence. Now, Panini America, with no major American sports licenses, will need someone else to do their dirty bidding.
For those mourning the death of Panini’s unlicensed baseball offerings, I feel your pain. I mean, where else in the world will you be able to pull the card below from a $3,000 box, featuring two dubious and tiny pieces of “game-used” bat relics alongside a chopped-up, 1991 Score Mickey Mantle autograph? This one pictured here appeared on eBay for $15,999 but as you can imagine, sold for much less. There’s enough actual Mantle autographs from major licensed manufacturers like Upper Deck & Score to ever consider this rubbish.
Unfortunately, Panini America will keep churning out cards, now to the ever-growing wrestling card market, as that remains their only worthwhile license. Wrestling collectors will soon come to learn what us baseball, basketball, and football collectors have a long time ago, that Panini America is a cash grab of a company run by executives who care nothing about their customers or the volatile sports card industry. For those mindless sheep praising Panini’s upcoming 2022 Panini Prism WWE, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Further reading: Paging Tracy Hackler
The Baseball Card Blog 
That cut Mantle signature is a crime!
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