Maybe its not the flooding of the market killing the hobby?

[oz-antoine]

There seems to be alot of talk about the flooding of the market with Game Used, Autos and endles parallels and it got me thinking. Is it really that there is to much or is it the fact it is now to "easy" to get and that there are to many "sellers".

Take a look at the inserts of the early 90s, most tough inserts including the SE Diecuts were placed around 1 per box. These same inserts (Shaq and Penny) for example reached values of up to $300. The reason, without the internet not every single person was a seller nor did they have the power to advertise to millions of people what they had to offer. You either pulled one from a pack, traded away half your collection for one or forked out the money to the local card shop. These cards were produced in the thousands but they still held value. Even up until 1998 I remember if a card was numbered out of 100 you would be lucky to see 2 or 3 come up on eBay.

eBay has made every one of us a seller in our own rights. I know that I sell off just about anything that I know I can get some coin for thats not needed in my collection and so does every other Joe Blogg around the world. The fact now that there may be a card numbered out of 100 but only 20-30 people seriously collect that player then what happens to the other 70-80 out there when it seems like more than 50% of every low numbered card gets chucked up on eBay? They end up selling for pennies and used as trade bait. It doesn't bother me if I miss out on a card numbered out of 25 as I know another will probably pop up next week and theres only a handful of guys trying to get it. Lets face it without the internet how many cards of your player would you have numbered out of 10, 25, 50 and of course 1/1s when they could be anywhere in the world!

Maybe the problem isn't the flooding of the market but the technology allowing us to hunt down every single card with relative ease and the fact that everyone is now a dealer....

 

[jordan23]

Well you have to look at the positive side of things. Back 10 years ago it was rare to pickup a Jordan auto, now we can all afford one which is the bright side to collecting.

At least you can pickup yesterday's top cards for dirt cheap on ebay now. I still collect all those auto sets, inserts and jersey sets from the 90's so it's not all bad.

 

[Dr. Curlytek]

Good points there, but what to do about it? There is no turning back the technology, we aren't going to stop people from selling things. If the market wasn't flooded with stuff to sell, then it would cut supply. Prices of goods are always going to be controlled by supply and demand. Supply is currently high for most cards...sure there are low numbered cards, but most of the time they are paralleled so that you can get pretty much the same card not numbered so low.

The onus has to be on the card companies to produce new ideas, fresh designs, things to keep up demand; and perhaps to limit the overall number of cards available, i.e. cut supply. We have seen this year some indication that this will work in everybody's favour with products like UD Black hitting both targets dead center.

Maybe hobbies such as card collecting are always going to have slumps, maybe it is simply not viable to have continuous periods where the hobby is "alive". Who seriously thought the hobby would pick up strongly again after it crawled away under a rock in the mid 90's?

 

[ace e]

There seems to be alot of talk about the flooding of the market with Game Used, Autos and endles parallels and it got me thinking. Is it really that there is to much or is it the fact it is now to "easy" to get and that there are to many "sellers".

Take a look at the inserts of the early 90s, most tough inserts including the SE Diecuts were placed around 1 per box. These same inserts (Shaq and Penny) for example reached values of up to $300. The reason, without the internet not every single person was a seller nor did they have the power to advertise to millions of people what they had to offer. You either pulled one from a pack, traded away half your collection for one or forked out the money to the local card shop. These cards were produced in the thousands but they still held value. Even up until 1998 I remember if a card was numbered out of 100 you would be lucky to see 2 or 3 come up on eBay.

eBay has made every one of us a seller in our own rights. I know that I sell off just about anything that I know I can get some coin for thats not needed in my collection and so does every other Joe Blogg around the world. The fact now that there may be a card numbered out of 100 but only 20-30 people seriously collect that player then what happens to the other 70-80 out there when it seems like more than 50% of every low numbered card gets chucked up on eBay? They end up selling for pennies and used as trade bait. It doesn't bother me if I miss out on a card numbered out of 25 as I know another will probably pop up next week and theres only a handful of guys trying to get it. Lets face it without the internet how many cards of your player would you have numbered out of 10, 25, 50 and of course 1/1s when they could be anywhere in the world!

Maybe the problem isn't the flooding of the market but the technology allowing us to hunt down every single card with relative ease and the fact that everyone is now a dealer....

Very interesting perspective, makes a lot of sense .

 

[oz-antoine]

But was there a slump in the mid 90s or was it just a loss of Australian interest. I loved it when standing in a card shop guys would come in and say "Wow, they still make cards!?" Well yes just because people in Australia stopped buying doesn't mean the US stopped producing cards!

 

[oz-antoine]

Another way to look of it is without the internet how many auto/GU cards of your favourite players would you have and how much would you be prepared to fork out for one at your local shop. My guess is alot more!

 

[Dr. Curlytek]

But was there a slump in the mid 90s or was it just a loss of Australian interest. I loved it when standing in a card shop guys would come in and say "Wow, they still make cards!?" Well yes just because people in Australia stopped buying doesn't mean the US stopped producing cards!

Well, no doubt there was a lack of Australian interest (so a slump in the Aussie market), I don't know first hand if there was a lack of interest in the US, maybe we can get an American perspective. They didn't stop making cards then, but they certainly aren't going to stop making them now either...so how do you gauge if the hobby is "dying"? If it is only measured by production, then let me assure you it will not die in our lifetimes. I think a collecting market dies/slumps when the supply outstrips demand by a long way. This happened in the Comics industry in the mid 90's as well, they just had so much overproduction and rushed out so many books that (overall) product quality suffered, demand dwindled and there was a real risk of the whole industry imploding on itself.

 

[jordan23]

Another way to look of it is without the internet how many auto/GU cards of your favourite players would you have and how much would you be prepared to fork out for one at your local shop. My guess is alot more!

Well my 1st gu of MJ came in a pack of sp floor edition 00-01 which cost $70 per pack at card shaq. So yeah as long a's it's mj,i'm willing to fork out as much as i can if there was no ebay around.

 

[oz-antoine]

Well, no doubt there was a lack of Australian interest (so a slump in the Aussie market), I don't know first hand if there was a lack of interest in the US, maybe we can get an American perspective. They didn't stop making cards then, but they certainly aren't going to stop making them now either...so how do you gauge if the hobby is "dying"? If it is only measured by production, then let me assure you it will not die in our lifetimes. I think a collecting market dies/slumps when the supply outstrips demand by a long way. This happened in the Comics industry in the mid 90's as well, they just had so much overproduction and rushed out so many books that (overall) product quality suffered, demand dwindled and there was a real risk of the whole industry imploding on itself.

I think its different with cards for the fact that there are boxes with random goodies to be had. Theres always going to be buyers busting them looking for a jackpot card. Its almost like gambling.

As for the quality side, although the technology for producing is getting better I think the quality control may be dwindling. Wrong jerseys on cards, wrong sticker autos on cards and if your going to be spending $1000+ on 5 cards in a box of exquisite surely you can make them come out perfectly mint condition without chipping!

 

[exzibit3]

Internet auctions have definitely played a part in allowing collectors more accessibility to get cards they need, but this is a good thing. If I'm a Kobe collector, looking for a 1/1 a few years ago would be near impossible but now message boards and auction sites allows me to find very rare cards with greater ease. One could argue that going up against a few thousand Kobe collectors, as opposed to a handful in my neighbourhood with enough disposable income to match mine, would make the true market value of cards more accurate via online auction sites. In any event, I'm of the opinion that its still a matter of overproduction of junk at stupidly crazy retail prices. G.I.G.O = garbage in, garbage out. Focus on some quality designs, discard ALL jersey cards from now on and stick to a handful of patches, limit autos to only on-card autos with a decently hard ratio to pull, and put in some inserts with a great design so that the box is still fun to break even if you don't pull huge card.

 

[jordan23]

Well, no doubt there was a lack of Australian interest (so a slump in the Aussie market), I don't know first hand if there was a lack of interest in the US, maybe we can get an American perspective. They didn't stop making cards then, but they certainly aren't going to stop making them now either...so how do you gauge if the hobby is "dying"? If it is only measured by production, then let me assure you it will not die in our lifetimes. I think a collecting market dies/slumps when the supply outstrips demand by a long way. This happened in the Comics industry in the mid 90's as well, they just had so much overproduction and rushed out so many books that (overall) product quality suffered, demand dwindled and there was a real risk of the whole industry imploding on itself.

didn't UD or Skybox have a printing factory here in the 90's.

 

[Dr. Curlytek]

I think its different with cards for the fact that there are boxes with random goodies to be had. Theres always going to be buyers busting them looking for a jackpot card. Its almost like gambling.

As for the quality side, although the technology for producing is getting better I think the quality control may be dwindling. Wrong jerseys on cards, wrong sticker autos on cards and if your going to be spending $1000+ on 5 cards in a box of exquisite surely you can make them come out perfectly mint condition without chipping!

Agreed, busting boxes isn't almost like gambling, it is most definitely gambling. So what is the point there? Oversupply will still be a problem and hurt the hobby. Would people buy boxes that usually contained nothing...just air and filler cards, no base/semistars/inserts, nada, except for some boxes that contained MJ/LBJ/Kobe autos? Probably, people love to gamble...

Comics also have "chase's", alternate covers, some extremely rare, where you had to be in early on the first day of release to pick them up. But as these became mass produced (some issues coming out with 5, 10, 13 different covers) the novelty wore off, demand dwindles and supply outstrips demand.

Agree also on card quality, there is no doubt that we should expect better designs, better quality coatings/centering/effects, better quality control...but these don't seem to be of great concern to the companies. But then if every card comes out of packs mint, with the ease of supply these days, then the grading companies go out of business; or alternatively, graded cards all come out as 10's, oversupply of high grades, demand for 10's dwindles, demand for grading of cards dwindles, grading companies go out of business...oh wait....

 

[Dr. Curlytek]

didn't UD or Skybox have a printing factory here in the 90's.

Maybe...did that make the hobby any more appealing to you?

 

[wonga_5]

I tell my friends all the time that breaking boxes and packs is the same as gambling, except that u get something back. Instead of a screen saying no credits, you get a hand full of cards with either players u like or players some1 else collects that u can trade or sell.

When it comes to a price id pay, if i really want it then the price isnt an option.