You make it sound like that's something special. However, with the provision system, it would only make sense that a bronze which costs (a lot) more would be better.
It's a matter of taste but personally I prefer the thicker card borders from before with the decorations and stuff. The card art is much bigger on the board now, so I don't see why the borders had to become so thin.
I feel like they tried to make all the cards look like oil paintings and then put a minuscule amount of gold foil around the edges for the golds and brown (?) foil for the bronzes.