What Year is it?

Panini Prizm baseball is one of the hot new products on the hobby landscape.  It came out last Wednesday, April 17th, following in the footsteps of Prizm basketball and football products.

As I've seen some of the cards pulled from group breaks, one of the things that stuck out in my mind was cards being labeled "Rookie" when they were clearly of last year's rookie card crop (Bryce Harper, Yu Darvish, Matt Harvey, etc).

But last night I realized that this set is being called 2012 Panini Prizm.  2012???  It came out in April 2013.  4 months into the year, 2 months after 2013 Topps, 2 weeks after the 2013 MLB season began and days after Panini released it's own 2013 Triple Play product.

If you thought calling National Treasures a 2012 product was a stretch, what do you call this?  If you're like me, you call it a money grab.

Panini has found a successful mid-range priced product in Prizm and by releasing their 2012 version now, can capitalize on those 2012 rookies AND release a 2013 version this year as well.  Twice as much Prizm money for Panini in fiscal 2013, right?

I believe that Beckett and even the leagues had guidelines about release years at one point; but being a non-licensed product, I guess Panini can do what they want.  So it looks like it will fall upon the hobby to determine whether this truly is a 2012 product or not.  

So I ask... do you consider this a 2012 product or a 2013 product?
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