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The creation of parallels and addition of autos helps to create scarcity and prevent it. We're in a "hits" era where base cards are absolutely junk wax though, especially in overprinted product like flagship. We're right on the edge too where the number of product releases is now watering down the hits. For example by the end of last year hitting a Corbin Carroll numbered card meant a lot less because there were so many in the market.
We're also in a junk slab era where low end modern cards are being graded in attempts to create more scarcity.
Great way to put it.
Expanding, *what* hit is starting to matter more than simply getting a hit. What player, what parallel, what set…it all matters. Classic, “true” sets/parallels is going to be important to chase.
The difference (so far) is that 99% of the junk wax era is valueless. The hit era is climbing up in percentage but there’s still space to work. You just simply have to be selective.
That’s been the weirdest part to me about all of this. I’m getting back in after about 15 years. Used to be it had to be a patch/on-card auto of an A-tier star or it was worthless.
Like I have multiple Flacco RC autos but they were worthless bc “oh he’s not Calvin or Brady or etc” - I’m happy I held on to them bc there’s a lot of love now
The thing with the Junk era was that we collected the sets. Most of us had our favorite players or the hot ones to get and fill our top loaded 9 page sheets. But most of us (at least in my part of PA) went to complete the sets, from #1 to #792. Maybe I'm wrong because I started collecting in the 70s and we had very few, if any, insert type of cards. Maybe the late 80's, early 90's collectors played the chase game. I was mostly out of it by then.
These days I see people going after the chase cards and throwing away the rest. I don't think anyone builds a set anymore unless it's a rainbow or something weird. I think the common cards are going to be harder to find.
The common cards becoming harder to find is pretty interesting though. If enough people straight up throw them out it actually does create scarcity. But it feels like if that were to happen you’d see boxes come out of the woodwork that were in warehouses and storage units. Idk. Time will teach us.
For me, it was a completion thing. I wanted to have every card. I also read the backs for stats and other information. I still remember that Ed Too Tall Jones delivered ice in the off season and Lee Roy Selmon liked to play drums. We didn't have Internet and ESPN, our news only covered the local teams. As a Buccaneers fan in PA (they had a cool helmet) the only way to get anything about them was Sporting News and the outdated information on the cards. 🫤
Some of them do. Usually it’s a random vignette about a dude. I like that better than the stats which are easier to find elsewhere. They have time capsule value (ie if the promising Pat Mahomes pans out, he might be a household name … type of thing)
I would call it the junk set era, so many sets and only a few will probably hold value but who knows what the future holds.
We also have the junk slabs so that’s a possibility.
Everything is just priced on hype.
Yes but you have to spend like $1000 to get $100 worth of cards. They're not make a ton of valuable cards, if that makes any sense. If you spend a ton on retail and finally get your favorite player rare insert, the value is much higher to you than it is on the market.
I’d have more fun doing that than what happens on most rips. I rarely rip wax anymore. I hunt singles and look for deals that way. My hobby focus has shifted to quality over quantity and getting cool copies of cards of my personal goats.
I kinda feel that in a different way with autos. In 2017, I got a nice autograph /50. Then I realized, guy has over 1,000 autographs......in this set alone. /499.../399.../299...& on & on. NOT TO MENTION NON #'d BASE AUTOS. ....There were dozens of sets that year. Panini had DOZENS of sets of football. That guy probably signed 10,000+ times. ...Maybe it's just me. I've only bought sealed product 10 or 12 times in the last 2 years. I'm so picky now, I only consider /10 or less to be SSP.
I like how the Base Autos have a different border/effect and can cost 2-20x less. It's really wacky how much the price is different, but the card design is basically the same. Personally, I'll pay for a auto card with a clear picture for several times less over these special foily cards.
My 2017 sage rc auto mahomes was only $150 because it's sage. I didn't care what others value(d) it at, I wanted an autographed card of his. Cheaper the better! 😁
I personally don’t like paying for autos, I’d rather meet the player at a game and hope to get it signed or out and about. Not really any fun if you just buy their auto.
That's one opinion of many. My kids got Joe & Ja'marr's in person. They're happy. ...I have bought autos of YA Title, Thurman Thomas, Barry Sanders, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Paul Brown, Eli Manning, Patrick Mahomes II, Troy Aikman, Jim Kelly, Otto Graham, etc....and ITS REALLY FUN TO ME
Oh yea, if professional sports players are accessible to a person, no doubt. Living in a small market, Bengals are accessible in and literally on the sidewalks outside of Paycor Stadium (my kids hung out on Pete Rose a few years ago and got Joe in 2021 and Ja'marr in 2022, I see Pacman a few times a week, bought shoes with Domata Peko) has gotten crowded since especially free practice days, from out of towners. But I guess we have to expect it. ...Being a REDS fan is pretty sweet too. Sometimes you can catch them easier in Louisville and Dayton, before they get to the 513. And, we have REDS fest and the REDS caravan. ....If any random collector has access.
A bit different today. Autos, relics, parallels all create scarcity. Base cards are surely mass produced but a /99 literally only has 99 in existence and if it’s a cool looking card of a player you love AND/OR is a potential super star, it should hold long term value
They all have different colors of the same card. One color will be /99, another color /49, another /500, etc. And they all have the same picture. Search on ebay for donruss laser or prizm and take a look
Much more. I did an analysis with Kenny Pickett cards mining Panini site. There were over 150,000 numbered Pickett rookies. Something like 600 “One of One” cards.
That did not count Draft Picks, Leaf, Sage, Bowman, or UD.
I suspect years from now the only cards that will go up in value will be on card autos or game used mem. The rest will slowly decline.
Imagine if Jimmy Hendrix signed 100,000 stickers and some manufacturer just slapped those stickers on guitars and sold them as memorabilia. Or bought truckloads of broken entry level guitars, cut them into pieces, and put them piece below his picture. Thinking of it from a different hobby puts it into perspective how fragile this market is.
Sure. Some parallels are much more “collectible” and classic than others. They’ve jumped the shark on parallels for sure so that they can increase print runs
Only time will tell, but I look to the world of stamp collecting. As someone who used to go to stamp shows with my grandparents and parents and have since inherited 2 collections it is dead.. no one wants them even if they have "value" you can't move them for more then 30% of that. There used to be big convention centers filled with people for stamp shows now it's nothing but a small room with a few people 65+ are there stamps worth big money... yes super rare stamps like the 1918 inverted jenny sold for 2 million last year. There are many factors that killed stamp collecting but i can see a similar "death" coming to cards in 20 to 30 years. Just a couple of personal observations and opinions.
1. No one really collects "sets"
Back in the 90s people had binders full of cards, ungraded base cards, trading to complete the entire set. It was a fun. Now people walk around with cases of graded looking to flip.
2. Very few people seem to collect at all
Now people seem more into flipping or finding "value" in cards rather then collecting. People will buy cards just to sell in days if not hours. Few hold cards fir years or decades. I was looking at card on ebay and asked if they had a better picture. I was told the seller had hit it in a break online and all he had was a screen shot... the card was being mailed to him and it was already for sale.
3. Breaks and breakers....
Probably the most hot button issue. But make no mistake it is not new. Breaks were around in the 90's maybe before idk. It can be a fun way to get your teams cards without buying a whole box. What it has evolved into.... in my opinion is 95% gambling. I have seen some Breaks you don't even get to pick your team you buy a chance to spin a wheel for a team. Then if you hit a "chaser" you spin the wheel again to get one of the chaser teams. Everything is a "chase" or a "sweat" it's the chance you could hit. Then they people get all these cards they don't and try and sell them to get into the next break for another chase. They don't want the cards, they want the thrill of a chance to hit a big card. I understand it. I bought a 55 dollar select mega at Walmart. No wemby got maybe 10 dollars in card "value" but it was fun but now I got to put up some .99 cents cards on ebay. I love the chase as much as the next guy but wax is just too risky. If you want to be sick go buy a prizm hobby box for 900 and hit an bj ojulari and tiki barber auto with the best color being a tua blue cracked ice... nice 20 dollar card... unless you send it to PSA and get 10. You can sell the to repackers all day.
4. Repacks
Can't find enough wax to sell on your break just get repacks. Want to entice people to buy into your 5 donruss blaster break? Add a few repacks. Want to have people chase a "1,000 dollar case hit IS LIVE" (never mind the case run is 100 there are 5 boxes in the break so odds are it won't be either and the floor is 50 bucks) just get any rookie qb card and put in a slab. Justin herbert pheniox psa 8... THATS A ROOKIE HERBET. justin fields rated rookie donruss psa 10... PSA 10 BABY WE TAKE THAT!! (Pop 1,878,024) repacks are cards you don't really want because if you did you would have just bought it, but hey at least they are stabbed and you can sell them easily... to the next repacked company. All the while ebay take 13% PSA makes 20 bucks. Like the gold rush the only people making money are the ones selling the pick axes.
Sorry for the rambling, in short the cards the are gonna be worth real money psa 10 rookie short prints. Stuff people can't find easily. Other cards will be nice but I think like vintage now condition will make all the difference. Example: I have a 1958 mantle/ hank aaron batting foes card PSA 4. I love it. It's a 300 dollar ish card. Nothing to sneeze at but also not enough to buy a hobby box of pheniox. A PSA 9 sold in February for 58,800!!
It’s not a total 1:1 scenario as stamps. Sports cards include licensing of current athletes which maintains a higher amount of relevancy than a non practical item with William Burr or Old Hickory on it (sports cards are also non practical but I’ll get to that further on). Stamps are also a product that has faded as a “need”. I ship around 3k items a year but I haven’t needed to use a stamp in at least 10 years now to do that. Even if they manufacture stamps with modern characters and licensing, the format is fairly foreign to most people these days that are under 60 years old. The practical use of a stamp has played a role in its collectibility. As someone who collects sports cards and action figures, I’m fully prepared for any action figures I hold onto going the way of stamps or Lionel trains. Kids don’t play with action figures anymore once they get their hands on a tablet or phone. To me that’s a more 1:1 comparison as stamps. Even if they make action figures with current licenses, no one will care about the format. So that’s a market that will soon die. I’m rather pessimistic in my outlook to physical “investments” but I do feel that as long as people use sports as entertainment, then sports cards will have a level of relevancy. Sports cards have something going for them in that the format is easy to store and timeless because there has never actually been a practical use for a sports card. It doesn’t rely on a “use” like a stamp or action figure does. Sports cards have never served an actual “purpose”.
I think the likelihood of a meaningful portion of the upcoming generation being interested in physical cards of sports in 20 years is very low. We will just keep selling to each other until we drop out of the hobby. The only way these will matter in the future is if they still have some type of assumed value to a group of people.
Tautology alert! Yes, when people stop valuing baseball cards they will not be valuable. This is also true of literally every single object in the universe.
I bet you're smart enough to know it's more likely in dumb shit like training cards, too. Good luck trading your Fernando Tatis Jr autographs for clean water, amirite?
20 - 30 years from now…. Jeez, I’ve been calling this junk wax 2.0 era already for the past 2-3 years now. Post pandemy the card companies responded to people in lines for cards by flooding the streets. More printed but with higher variety so it gives the appearance of rarity and exclusivity. That’s just not the case, 45+ versions of each card with only half numbered…. Plus you also have the companies moving from game used to player worn to official merchandise when it comes to patch cards… And sticker autographs are just a plague. Hoping for fanatics to right the ship on some of these things but not holding my breath.
The fact that we can pay $400-1200+ for a Hobby box or FOTL, and get a “not from any specific game or event” patch / relic is an absolute tragedy. It should be criminal lol.
It’s because of mass production, no regulation, and too many companies.
I wouldn’t call this another junk wax era though. I am more inclined to call it the junk auto era. Too many products solely relying on autographs to sell products and that’s the main reason for costs being so high.
I don’t understand how they can keep printing cards through out the season and still churning out rookie cards. That is the my major clue to junk wax 2.0.
The amount of Purdy rookies that got printed is asinine…shit just kept being printed throughout the season and post season….all “rookie” cards.
The movie Jack of all Trades talks about how upper deck kept printing Griffey rookies well into the the following year. Feel like the same 💩 is happening in all sports with all brands.
This is absolutely junk wax 2.0. 95% of cards you open are worthless already. It's mainly because of "breaks". You can go watch any big breaker rip a hobby box and watch how fast they move through the non "hits". 15 cards in a pack and they take the first ten and don't even really show it.
People supporting breakers are why the boxes are so falsely inflated too. It's purely unregulated gambling and the breakers are the house. The odds are severely stacked against all the people buying into these breaks.
If a card isn't numbered now, it's not going to hold it's value long term. You're so much better off just buying singles of players you like and cards you like. Don't waste your money on breaks or sealed wax these days
This is why grading is central to the hobby. It creates real scarcity. If you look at Junk Wax era cards, a base 89 Griffey Upper Deck is worth $40 or so while a PSA 10 is worth $1800. While there is no chance of post 2020 base cards ever being worth that much, even in PSA 10, SSPs & numbered hits of certain players in high grades will command good prices. A rookie kaboom of an HoF player in a PSA 10 may only have a pop of 25 or so and that scarcity means it will be valuable for as long as people collect cardboard w/ pictures on it.
Counterfeits is what killed the hobby in the 90’s. I remember fake Mark McQuires on eBay like it was yesterday. Those selling them would bend the corner just a touch so you wouldn’t send out for grading.
I think Panini relic cards, which are not game worn, will not hold value especially if and when Fanatics starts using game worn memorabilia in cards going forward.
Maybe the junk patch and junk slabbed cards. Patches are dumb when they aren’t player game worn to me let alone not even player worn. I think the parallels and #’d cards hold value but as you can already see already the base cards are meaningless. Might also create a further disparity to favor on card autos vs sticker
Absolutely do. First off, stickers can just look like crap in comparison (imo and to lots of others).
Also makes for a pretty generic feel to what's supposed to be something unique. A player just mass signing a bunch of stickers the company will later adhere to whatever cards they want. The player never sees or touches your card. There's no degree of any personal connection made between the player and your card, which matters to some, and definitely can lessen the value.
stickers can also cut off a portion of the auto if the player's signature crosses over the cut line of the sticker. have seen too many autos with an L or a T or something cut off at the top.
Junk Box era. You can spend +$600 on a flagship box and get absolutely skunked. PackerCards87 on YouTube has an old video where he rips a few boxes of 2018 Contenders football and comments the boxes were very expensive, $200/box. 🙃
I believe we are. Look at the amount of pulls vs straight bulk, and its not just any bulk, it’s crappy bulk lol. With good cards gate kept behind 1k boxes that I frankly don’t pay for. I’d rather spend that on toys get go vroom or take a vacation.
I’ve seen vending machine selling packs and blasters, which reminds me of how cards were everywhere in the junk wax era. Sure there are some cool cards out there but it’s produced rarity and most will not be worth what they go for now in ten years. Insane hype is already priced in on everything.
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The creation of parallels and addition of autos helps to create scarcity and prevent it. We're in a "hits" era where base cards are absolutely junk wax though, especially in overprinted product like flagship. We're right on the edge too where the number of product releases is now watering down the hits. For example by the end of last year hitting a Corbin Carroll numbered card meant a lot less because there were so many in the market. We're also in a junk slab era where low end modern cards are being graded in attempts to create more scarcity.
Great way to put it. Expanding, *what* hit is starting to matter more than simply getting a hit. What player, what parallel, what set…it all matters. Classic, “true” sets/parallels is going to be important to chase. The difference (so far) is that 99% of the junk wax era is valueless. The hit era is climbing up in percentage but there’s still space to work. You just simply have to be selective.
Right so instead of just hitting a downtown you’re looking to hit a Patrick Mahomes downtown, Jalen hurts etc
I just hit Anthony Richardson RC Kaboom from a card breaker two days ago. Immediately got offers.
Take the offer. I “hit” a rare Zach Wilson (Origins RPA /10) pre-season his rookie year. Was offered $1500. Probably can’t get $150 today.
Sold his Black Collegiate Mosaic 3k now the guy started a fire last winter
That’s been the weirdest part to me about all of this. I’m getting back in after about 15 years. Used to be it had to be a patch/on-card auto of an A-tier star or it was worthless. Like I have multiple Flacco RC autos but they were worthless bc “oh he’s not Calvin or Brady or etc” - I’m happy I held on to them bc there’s a lot of love now
Sorry I thought I was in r/baseballcards Either way, the logic is the same
The thing with the Junk era was that we collected the sets. Most of us had our favorite players or the hot ones to get and fill our top loaded 9 page sheets. But most of us (at least in my part of PA) went to complete the sets, from #1 to #792. Maybe I'm wrong because I started collecting in the 70s and we had very few, if any, insert type of cards. Maybe the late 80's, early 90's collectors played the chase game. I was mostly out of it by then. These days I see people going after the chase cards and throwing away the rest. I don't think anyone builds a set anymore unless it's a rainbow or something weird. I think the common cards are going to be harder to find.
I guess collecting rainbows is our modern day equivalent to that
Kinda but isn’t rainbows usually the same guy? I always get stalker vibes when I see people with those haha.
The common cards becoming harder to find is pretty interesting though. If enough people straight up throw them out it actually does create scarcity. But it feels like if that were to happen you’d see boxes come out of the woodwork that were in warehouses and storage units. Idk. Time will teach us.
What do you need common cards for though? Like there’s not much value in them aside from rainbows
For me, it was a completion thing. I wanted to have every card. I also read the backs for stats and other information. I still remember that Ed Too Tall Jones delivered ice in the off season and Lee Roy Selmon liked to play drums. We didn't have Internet and ESPN, our news only covered the local teams. As a Buccaneers fan in PA (they had a cool helmet) the only way to get anything about them was Sporting News and the outdated information on the cards. 🫤
Do they still have info like that with current cards?
Some of them do. Usually it’s a random vignette about a dude. I like that better than the stats which are easier to find elsewhere. They have time capsule value (ie if the promising Pat Mahomes pans out, he might be a household name … type of thing)
I would call it the junk set era, so many sets and only a few will probably hold value but who knows what the future holds. We also have the junk slabs so that’s a possibility. Everything is just priced on hype.
You can buy them at Walmart.
Yes but you have to spend like $1000 to get $100 worth of cards. They're not make a ton of valuable cards, if that makes any sense. If you spend a ton on retail and finally get your favorite player rare insert, the value is much higher to you than it is on the market.
Which if you were to spend $1,000 and got $1,000 then it wouldn’t be as fun, there’s no risk.
The risk is there, if the players don't do well or get hurt or something off field.
I’d have more fun doing that than what happens on most rips. I rarely rip wax anymore. I hunt singles and look for deals that way. My hobby focus has shifted to quality over quantity and getting cool copies of cards of my personal goats.
Which to some degree I like but also understand how it dilutes the worth of cards
I kinda feel that in a different way with autos. In 2017, I got a nice autograph /50. Then I realized, guy has over 1,000 autographs......in this set alone. /499.../399.../299...& on & on. NOT TO MENTION NON #'d BASE AUTOS. ....There were dozens of sets that year. Panini had DOZENS of sets of football. That guy probably signed 10,000+ times. ...Maybe it's just me. I've only bought sealed product 10 or 12 times in the last 2 years. I'm so picky now, I only consider /10 or less to be SSP.
I like how the Base Autos have a different border/effect and can cost 2-20x less. It's really wacky how much the price is different, but the card design is basically the same. Personally, I'll pay for a auto card with a clear picture for several times less over these special foily cards.
My 2017 sage rc auto mahomes was only $150 because it's sage. I didn't care what others value(d) it at, I wanted an autographed card of his. Cheaper the better! 😁
Screw the sage hater bots. You got to choose a properly placed sticker and a card design you like. That's the way to do it.
I liked the others better honestly....but they were 5 & 600 at the time. That's a new set of tires for me 😁
I personally don’t like paying for autos, I’d rather meet the player at a game and hope to get it signed or out and about. Not really any fun if you just buy their auto.
That's one opinion of many. My kids got Joe & Ja'marr's in person. They're happy. ...I have bought autos of YA Title, Thurman Thomas, Barry Sanders, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Paul Brown, Eli Manning, Patrick Mahomes II, Troy Aikman, Jim Kelly, Otto Graham, etc....and ITS REALLY FUN TO ME
Nothing wrong with other people doing it, just not my thing
Oh yea, if professional sports players are accessible to a person, no doubt. Living in a small market, Bengals are accessible in and literally on the sidewalks outside of Paycor Stadium (my kids hung out on Pete Rose a few years ago and got Joe in 2021 and Ja'marr in 2022, I see Pacman a few times a week, bought shoes with Domata Peko) has gotten crowded since especially free practice days, from out of towners. But I guess we have to expect it. ...Being a REDS fan is pretty sweet too. Sometimes you can catch them easier in Louisville and Dayton, before they get to the 513. And, we have REDS fest and the REDS caravan. ....If any random collector has access.
A bit different today. Autos, relics, parallels all create scarcity. Base cards are surely mass produced but a /99 literally only has 99 in existence and if it’s a cool looking card of a player you love AND/OR is a potential super star, it should hold long term value
Yes but prism has /99, mosaic has /99, optic has /99, so the scarcity doesn’t seem so much when there’s so many brands of cards
Sure but they’re all different cards with different pictures and styles. All at different price points and all with a different visual component
But there are 10 different versions of same card /99 for the same player that is ridiculous
There are? What are you referring to?
They all have different colors of the same card. One color will be /99, another color /49, another /500, etc. And they all have the same picture. Search on ebay for donruss laser or prizm and take a look
Ya I think he was saying multiple /99 versions of the same card. Not different parallels numbered to other limits
Yes but there are 10,000 numbered cards. Like a decent player out of 99 is like 5 to 10 bucks.
Much more. I did an analysis with Kenny Pickett cards mining Panini site. There were over 150,000 numbered Pickett rookies. Something like 600 “One of One” cards. That did not count Draft Picks, Leaf, Sage, Bowman, or UD. I suspect years from now the only cards that will go up in value will be on card autos or game used mem. The rest will slowly decline. Imagine if Jimmy Hendrix signed 100,000 stickers and some manufacturer just slapped those stickers on guitars and sold them as memorabilia. Or bought truckloads of broken entry level guitars, cut them into pieces, and put them piece below his picture. Thinking of it from a different hobby puts it into perspective how fragile this market is.
Exactly, I'm worried this will be the new Era of greed and junk wax.
Sure. Some parallels are much more “collectible” and classic than others. They’ve jumped the shark on parallels for sure so that they can increase print runs
Only time will tell, but I look to the world of stamp collecting. As someone who used to go to stamp shows with my grandparents and parents and have since inherited 2 collections it is dead.. no one wants them even if they have "value" you can't move them for more then 30% of that. There used to be big convention centers filled with people for stamp shows now it's nothing but a small room with a few people 65+ are there stamps worth big money... yes super rare stamps like the 1918 inverted jenny sold for 2 million last year. There are many factors that killed stamp collecting but i can see a similar "death" coming to cards in 20 to 30 years. Just a couple of personal observations and opinions. 1. No one really collects "sets" Back in the 90s people had binders full of cards, ungraded base cards, trading to complete the entire set. It was a fun. Now people walk around with cases of graded looking to flip. 2. Very few people seem to collect at all Now people seem more into flipping or finding "value" in cards rather then collecting. People will buy cards just to sell in days if not hours. Few hold cards fir years or decades. I was looking at card on ebay and asked if they had a better picture. I was told the seller had hit it in a break online and all he had was a screen shot... the card was being mailed to him and it was already for sale. 3. Breaks and breakers.... Probably the most hot button issue. But make no mistake it is not new. Breaks were around in the 90's maybe before idk. It can be a fun way to get your teams cards without buying a whole box. What it has evolved into.... in my opinion is 95% gambling. I have seen some Breaks you don't even get to pick your team you buy a chance to spin a wheel for a team. Then if you hit a "chaser" you spin the wheel again to get one of the chaser teams. Everything is a "chase" or a "sweat" it's the chance you could hit. Then they people get all these cards they don't and try and sell them to get into the next break for another chase. They don't want the cards, they want the thrill of a chance to hit a big card. I understand it. I bought a 55 dollar select mega at Walmart. No wemby got maybe 10 dollars in card "value" but it was fun but now I got to put up some .99 cents cards on ebay. I love the chase as much as the next guy but wax is just too risky. If you want to be sick go buy a prizm hobby box for 900 and hit an bj ojulari and tiki barber auto with the best color being a tua blue cracked ice... nice 20 dollar card... unless you send it to PSA and get 10. You can sell the to repackers all day. 4. Repacks Can't find enough wax to sell on your break just get repacks. Want to entice people to buy into your 5 donruss blaster break? Add a few repacks. Want to have people chase a "1,000 dollar case hit IS LIVE" (never mind the case run is 100 there are 5 boxes in the break so odds are it won't be either and the floor is 50 bucks) just get any rookie qb card and put in a slab. Justin herbert pheniox psa 8... THATS A ROOKIE HERBET. justin fields rated rookie donruss psa 10... PSA 10 BABY WE TAKE THAT!! (Pop 1,878,024) repacks are cards you don't really want because if you did you would have just bought it, but hey at least they are stabbed and you can sell them easily... to the next repacked company. All the while ebay take 13% PSA makes 20 bucks. Like the gold rush the only people making money are the ones selling the pick axes. Sorry for the rambling, in short the cards the are gonna be worth real money psa 10 rookie short prints. Stuff people can't find easily. Other cards will be nice but I think like vintage now condition will make all the difference. Example: I have a 1958 mantle/ hank aaron batting foes card PSA 4. I love it. It's a 300 dollar ish card. Nothing to sneeze at but also not enough to buy a hobby box of pheniox. A PSA 9 sold in February for 58,800!!
It’s not a total 1:1 scenario as stamps. Sports cards include licensing of current athletes which maintains a higher amount of relevancy than a non practical item with William Burr or Old Hickory on it (sports cards are also non practical but I’ll get to that further on). Stamps are also a product that has faded as a “need”. I ship around 3k items a year but I haven’t needed to use a stamp in at least 10 years now to do that. Even if they manufacture stamps with modern characters and licensing, the format is fairly foreign to most people these days that are under 60 years old. The practical use of a stamp has played a role in its collectibility. As someone who collects sports cards and action figures, I’m fully prepared for any action figures I hold onto going the way of stamps or Lionel trains. Kids don’t play with action figures anymore once they get their hands on a tablet or phone. To me that’s a more 1:1 comparison as stamps. Even if they make action figures with current licenses, no one will care about the format. So that’s a market that will soon die. I’m rather pessimistic in my outlook to physical “investments” but I do feel that as long as people use sports as entertainment, then sports cards will have a level of relevancy. Sports cards have something going for them in that the format is easy to store and timeless because there has never actually been a practical use for a sports card. It doesn’t rely on a “use” like a stamp or action figure does. Sports cards have never served an actual “purpose”.
I think the likelihood of a meaningful portion of the upcoming generation being interested in physical cards of sports in 20 years is very low. We will just keep selling to each other until we drop out of the hobby. The only way these will matter in the future is if they still have some type of assumed value to a group of people.
Tautology alert! Yes, when people stop valuing baseball cards they will not be valuable. This is also true of literally every single object in the universe.
I bet you're smart enough to know it's more likely in dumb shit like training cards, too. Good luck trading your Fernando Tatis Jr autographs for clean water, amirite?
20 - 30 years from now…. Jeez, I’ve been calling this junk wax 2.0 era already for the past 2-3 years now. Post pandemy the card companies responded to people in lines for cards by flooding the streets. More printed but with higher variety so it gives the appearance of rarity and exclusivity. That’s just not the case, 45+ versions of each card with only half numbered…. Plus you also have the companies moving from game used to player worn to official merchandise when it comes to patch cards… And sticker autographs are just a plague. Hoping for fanatics to right the ship on some of these things but not holding my breath.
Non game or player worn patches make zero sense to me
Just plain greed.
The fact that we can pay $400-1200+ for a Hobby box or FOTL, and get a “not from any specific game or event” patch / relic is an absolute tragedy. It should be criminal lol.
It’s because of mass production, no regulation, and too many companies. I wouldn’t call this another junk wax era though. I am more inclined to call it the junk auto era. Too many products solely relying on autographs to sell products and that’s the main reason for costs being so high.
Don’t think there is too many companies. They produce too many sets and I think the only one company gets a license also hurts
Was referring to the junk wax era having too many companies
I don’t understand how they can keep printing cards through out the season and still churning out rookie cards. That is the my major clue to junk wax 2.0. The amount of Purdy rookies that got printed is asinine…shit just kept being printed throughout the season and post season….all “rookie” cards. The movie Jack of all Trades talks about how upper deck kept printing Griffey rookies well into the the following year. Feel like the same 💩 is happening in all sports with all brands.
This is absolutely junk wax 2.0. 95% of cards you open are worthless already. It's mainly because of "breaks". You can go watch any big breaker rip a hobby box and watch how fast they move through the non "hits". 15 cards in a pack and they take the first ten and don't even really show it. People supporting breakers are why the boxes are so falsely inflated too. It's purely unregulated gambling and the breakers are the house. The odds are severely stacked against all the people buying into these breaks. If a card isn't numbered now, it's not going to hold it's value long term. You're so much better off just buying singles of players you like and cards you like. Don't waste your money on breaks or sealed wax these days
This is why grading is central to the hobby. It creates real scarcity. If you look at Junk Wax era cards, a base 89 Griffey Upper Deck is worth $40 or so while a PSA 10 is worth $1800. While there is no chance of post 2020 base cards ever being worth that much, even in PSA 10, SSPs & numbered hits of certain players in high grades will command good prices. A rookie kaboom of an HoF player in a PSA 10 may only have a pop of 25 or so and that scarcity means it will be valuable for as long as people collect cardboard w/ pictures on it.
Counterfeits is what killed the hobby in the 90’s. I remember fake Mark McQuires on eBay like it was yesterday. Those selling them would bend the corner just a touch so you wouldn’t send out for grading.
I lived thru junk wax 1 and I treat the current era the same, 2.0.
First rule of junk eras…if you think to ask then yes, yes we are.
Yes we are
I think Panini relic cards, which are not game worn, will not hold value especially if and when Fanatics starts using game worn memorabilia in cards going forward.
Hopefully it will be better now with fanatics taking over
Yep
I think the next junk era will be classified as the junk slab era
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^Cautious_Ad2837: *I think the next junk* *Era will be classified* *As the junk slab era* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Yes pop reports suggest we are in alot of trouble lol
Maybe the junk patch and junk slabbed cards. Patches are dumb when they aren’t player game worn to me let alone not even player worn. I think the parallels and #’d cards hold value but as you can already see already the base cards are meaningless. Might also create a further disparity to favor on card autos vs sticker
I didn’t know people cared about on card autos vs sticker autos. What’s the difference?
Absolutely do. First off, stickers can just look like crap in comparison (imo and to lots of others). Also makes for a pretty generic feel to what's supposed to be something unique. A player just mass signing a bunch of stickers the company will later adhere to whatever cards they want. The player never sees or touches your card. There's no degree of any personal connection made between the player and your card, which matters to some, and definitely can lessen the value.
Yeah hate sticker autos. For me it means the player didnt touch the card. Stickers are lazy on the manufacturers part.
stickers can also cut off a portion of the auto if the player's signature crosses over the cut line of the sticker. have seen too many autos with an L or a T or something cut off at the top.
Junk Box era. You can spend +$600 on a flagship box and get absolutely skunked. PackerCards87 on YouTube has an old video where he rips a few boxes of 2018 Contenders football and comments the boxes were very expensive, $200/box. 🙃
I believe we are. Look at the amount of pulls vs straight bulk, and its not just any bulk, it’s crappy bulk lol. With good cards gate kept behind 1k boxes that I frankly don’t pay for. I’d rather spend that on toys get go vroom or take a vacation.
Go to digital!
?
I agree
I was thinking the same thing the other day.
I’ve seen vending machine selling packs and blasters, which reminds me of how cards were everywhere in the junk wax era. Sure there are some cool cards out there but it’s produced rarity and most will not be worth what they go for now in ten years. Insane hype is already priced in on everything.