In the hobby world of jersey and patch memorabilia cards, it's always fun to pull or find a low serially numbered patch card. According to some of the manufacturers these patch cards are supposed to have a piece of a jersey number or piece of the name plate or even a piece of the team emblem on them. Some examples of this would be something like this:
or a beauty like this
another fine looking specimen
As beautiful as some of these cards may turn out to be it just so happens every now and then you do get some blunders and stinkers when it comes to pulling these low serially numbered "supposed patch" cards like this 2011 Topps Finest football Bilal Powell card that I pulled that says, "player worn patch" right on the card and it's serially numbered 19/25
What I did get was a plain old jersey swatch. The exposed white on the side of the "patch" window is due to the crooked piece of jersey exposing the sliver of a jersey number or letter. Somebody in quality control made an oops there. Let's look at another example of a card missing some quality patch materials.
This was a card that I pulled from out of 2011 Topps Supreme. Adrian Peterson and Maurice Jones-Drew autographed and serially numbered 3/5 game used relic card. Now can you picture this for a minute and visualize with me that would it not be more appropriate for these low numbered cards (especially the Peterson) to specifically have patch pieces instead of just a plain old jersey swatch? However when something is this low numbered I feel it would look ten times better with a piece of patch emblem. Now the yellow swatch could be from the neck line as that is about the only visible yellow that I know of on the vikings jersey and that's cool in its own way in terms of collectible pieces.
If we look at this 2011 Topps Supreme 4 player jersey card serially numbered 9/25 it also another victim of the plain old jersey swatch.
Then we have something like this card:
A 2011 Topps Finest Stevan Ridley rookie autograph player worn patch card serially numbered 354/599. It's just a blue solid patch and I'm not 100% sure but I don't think it's jersey material as it's too heavy of a fabric from the feel of it.
Here's a good example of rather well used patch piece.
While it may be only limited to 49 copies there is some quality patch material that was used in the making of this card. Notice how the patch piece is also more than a "inch cube" of material and almost goes the length of the card and seems to be of multiple colors as well.
Here's another example of a color patch limited to 99 copies:
Sometimes with these patch cards you get the elastic bands from the sleeves or necklines like these cards:
and my hats off to PANINI for pulling off these cards
You're getting the whole top of the jersey tie!
The manufacturers sometimes need to take a step back and look at how they're producing these cards. No company is exempt from having blunders and mistakes happening in the production/application process. What it all really comes down to is what you want for your own personal collection and for your own personal amusement.
