I so hate one company having all the marbles and creating rubbish over priced cards.
I have an idea... Lease out part of your licence to other card companies to make product, this will help create competition and hopefully better prices and product for our money. Also if then we have 30 different products a year, we can see how the odds below that I have written about becomes more interesting and there can be some honest saturation of wanted cards. Plus who wants cards without the uniform of the player on him? Not me, I wont even look at Upper Deck.
Also if it was up to me, blaster boxes, wax boxes, jumbos and rack packs would be the only product with numbered parallel cards. If they wanted to then make 30 different variations, then so be it, its retail. However make the cards so they look a bit different and state what bloody parallel it is on the back. I would also limit the boxes/packs to 1:50 has a numbered card so the general public wont load up on buying 100 blaster boxes at once, or at least that is what I imagine. this would hopefully keep it a bit more kid friendly.
Hobby boxes would be limited to 1000 cases and have only product you cant find in retail. This way it helps keep the value of base cards up a bit and gives you two different levels of collecting one specific set.
To give value to hobby boxes, all autos and low numbered patch cards should come encased. IF someone wants to break it open and have it graded, its on them. However, I've seen most cards that are worth something get knicked up during the pack ripping process and if I am going to spend good coin on hobby product it should be as close to perfect as possible during the packing process and not someone with goofy fingers like me creating havoc with a great card.
I would also have buybacks encased in the hobby boxes of older cards. Have them hit at 1 per 50 boxes. That way they can have Jordan product and make everyone happy.
Limit all RPA to on card and /49. Make them worth some value for the hobbyists. If you are going to make 12 or 30 different sets a year, that is more than enough RPA's. As for rookie autos without patches, then I would limit them to /199 at most. This is what the hobby is driven on, ROOKIES and Rookie Autos, make them harder to get.
Zero Redemptions...... If you need to have them, have a parallel set like the old UD Black that you had to send back for. However they need to make sure they already have these cards in hand and ready to send before they add them to any specific set. Get 1,500 different players (old and new) sign no more than 25 cards for this set. No BS rookie patch cards when they still have not even worn a uniform during a game. The other thought on this is have redemptions for signed items like jerseys, balls and sneakers. That would be a great hit from a product if there is going to be a redemption. OR, I like the point systems that Panini have, each pack gets a random point total and you then go online and collect them in your account. You then can sell your points if you wish or just redeem them for a series of different items like signed balls, jerseys, team signed balls and jerseys or whatever floats your boat. Points are carried for as long a you want until you find something you like or sell or trade them via your account to others.. Keep ALL cards in the boxes, however create a market for the stuff we really would enjoy.
Last but not least, do not create serial numbers that are too consistent so people can cherry pick seen trends. it's horrible when you buy a box that the case has already been cherry picked for the better cards because of the serial numbering of the sticker on the box. Panini, I am looking at you! That would include the weight of a box, make heavy boxes normal and lighter boxes normal. I'm SO over dealers getting the better cards and we cant afford to buy a case with the taxes we pay on import.
It was great back in the late 2000's when we could get that case of SPGU and share and not have to worry about paying $150.00 tax on it. There were some great pulls from product back then when everyone had a great chance at getting a box from a case break and the odds were very even.
OK, that was my brain dump, hope it make sense. Now I am going back into my rabbit hole.
Mike
