I find the key is to concentrate on a PC. As long as you aren’t chasing a flavour of the moment setplayer (Herro, cough, cough) or one of the top current stars I find there are thousands of bargains out there.
All the best for your return to the hobby and don’t let the current state turn you off - just look for the opportunities rather than being a sheep and buying what everyone else is!
Panini is just churning out different versions of the same crap and charging an absolute mint for it whereas Select just release the same, cheap, unimaginative garbage every year, almost solely aimed and kids and seem to have no interest in doing anything else to attract new customers.
Very rarely do I defend Select, but I feel like your take on them is horribly wrong.
Their customer base has increased at least 25% in the last two years. Supremacy was a massive hit and changed the entire market and how releases are conducted.
You really think sets like Dominance and Supremacy are cheap and aimed at kids?
If you think they are garbage what would you like to see since you consider the NBA style also terrible?
They're all just very basic in terms of quality and the technologies used. Especially the base cards. They just look like different variations of the same thing.
I'd like to see something that is similar to what we see with US sports. Better looking cards and more variety. Also, lower print runs on some sub sets as well. I like having the /10's and /25's etc even 1/1's would be exciting.
I want to see more auto's and more memorabilia cards.
Surely with the popularity and exitement we see with Dominance that i am not alone.
I want something where i can pay more for less because i'm paying for quality. I don't need draws and draws full of worthless base cards.
I want something where there are 10 cards or so in a box that contains a mix of auto's, memorabilia, short print inserts and a few base @ somewhere around $200 - $300.
Actually agree with you with the low end base cards, can do with a lot of improvement in a general sense.
I hope will never happen and I think Select have said the same to a degree, the customer market is basically on each end of the spectrum here. US markets as far as I know is mainly made up of individual player PCs where AFL is made up vastly of team and master set collectors. Doing /10s and 1/1s would only alienate the vast majority of the market. Take me for a example, I am a WCE set collector and more then likely if they ever released a /10 or 1/1 it would push me out of collecting as the odds are I would never be in a position to finish my set.
Even /25 from Supremacy was starting to edge out some people in their ability to finish a set especially with the growth in collectors in the last year or so.
I think autos are at that perfect point at the moment, I also think it's at it's limit given Select do not want go down the route of signed stickers and I fully agree with them in not doing so. Memorabilia cards are very hard and costly to produce for Select given how smaller their operation is compared to other markets.
They also have to acquire the memorabilia through the same channels as the general public making it a lot more expensive to obtain. They also mentioned previously they want to keep patch cards a more rarity item.
On most of your opinions, I think you are in the vast minority and that's because I think you are applying US sports card market markers to a market that while sells the same thing (Sports cards) the customer base is completely different in both size and selling points.
Yeah don't see that happening with the way our market is, maybe 20-30 years down the track.
Not trying to be critical @TAB1980 but it sounds like you have taken a lot of the ideas that have lead NBA collecting to a place you don’t like and suggest they should be applied to AFL.
The only thing i don't like right now with NBA collecting is the massively inflated prices. Given AFL has a much smaller audience, although passionate, i doubt the same would happen.
yeah I definitely snuck a couple of cheapies which was niceIt was carnage on Goldin today, modern stuff seems to be struggling and quite a few auctions without any bids.
Having said that, still got beat on all the stuff I was bidding on![]()
I had stuff sit in my COMC account for months not moving, no matter what discount I put on it. 50, 60, 70% - nothing moved until I did a port sale and got rid of everything at a decent loss. Just wanted to move them and put any funds into something else.I can't give away cards atm. Just not selling anything.
I have stopped buying breaks and am focusing on just opening baseball boxes and buying baseball cards