Panini has been beyond unpredictable this year with delays and sales issues during this football card season. Once again, they have run into another snag, 2024 Donruss Optic Football has been pushed back from March 5 to an estimated timeframe of May 8 to June 6.
Delays & Cancellations
Going back to the early summer of 2024, Prizm Draft Picks was set to release on June 21st, but was pushed back to September 19th because Panini oversold to MJ Holdings (Walmart /Target Distribution). They are contractually obligated to fulfill their orders first.
When Score was set to be released, Panini reached out to many vendors and advised them that 50% of their orders would be delayed 30 days or they could cancel. This would happen again with Prestige, and later with Prizm Mega Boxes and Donruss Optic as a whole. Again, this is because Panini has oversold to MJ Holdings.
Why Is The Overselling To MJ Holdings Happening & Why It's Important
Selling bots, plain and simple.
After the Pandemic hit in 2020, selling cards became a huge side hustle for thousands of people. Many people are either grabbing stock from Walmart or Target shelves or just ordering boxes online. Some are using sources like Dick's Sporting Goods as a "distributor" and running a pre-order business on eBay.
2025 is seeing a massive change in the hobby due to people investing in shopping bots like KSR Automation. Buyers can simply put in the item, price range, and quantity and the automation scrapes the internet for that information and buys up the inventory within seconds of it being released. Even if you have a tracking app like Trackalacker, you can't compete with the speed of automation.
The week of February 17th, Walmart dropped pre-orders of Donruss Optic Mega Boxes. They dropped 10,400 boxes on 8 occasions during the week. Each time, the entire stock sold out in 12 seconds. The drops were gone so quickly, that apps like Trackalacker didn't even get a chance to respond. Using a Facebook group for restocking information is like using a typewriter in an age of computers.
Again, as a vendor, we are forced to apologize for something beyond our control. Prizm Basketball was set to release in May, but came out 7 weeks early. Let's hope Panini gets it together and Optic releases sooner more than later.