General Forum

I was at my brother's house yesterday, and he was showing me some of the new cards he got recently.  He told me he got a box of Panini Prizm Basketball.  I asked him if he got a hobby box and he told me no, it was a retail box.  I asked him where he found it because I haven't seen Prizm retail anywhere at all since 2017-18.  He told me it was a 18-19 retail box that he got at a local card shop.  He also told me that had more of that release and this years at the card shop too.

He also told me that the card shop was selling them for much higher than the retail price they would normally be at Target.  

I then realized, maybe this is why I can't seem to find releases like this when I go to the store.  Is it a common occurrence for hobby shop oweners to clean out Target and Walmart so they can turn around and sell them in their store for a premium?

I feel like this is kind of a low thing to do. 

In this day and age that would not surprise me in the least.

Its a business ..... Take the risk and measure the market ...... buy low - sell high if you can.

While it can and does happen, the hobby shops can order the retail product directly as well. So it's not a guarantee that they did that. 

It happens.  In fact, I have seen a card shop owner in Walmart putting whatever he could find into a cart and going to check out.  Needless to say, I stay clear of any place I know that does that.

I was working at Thrifty's years ago (long since bought out by Rite Aid) when we got some 1990 Upper Deck in.  The store manager didn't know what he had and priced it the same as the Donruss packs we were already selling.  Before I even knew we had them, a card store owner came and bought us out.....

This has been happening for a very very long time. I used to work at a hobby shop in the early 1990's. While we did a lot of our ordering directly from distributors, I was told that if I found any quantities of highly prized cards from other sources (usually looking for MTG) I was authorized to purchase them and get any amount reimbursed and then tag for a markup. Usually the mark up was no more than 7% and what I generally did was realign the new product to the same price as our hobby product.

If you want card stores to stay in business, they have to do this.   Again you don't have to buy from them.  I have seen collectors clean out shelves in Target to sell on EBay.

A lot of it is people selling them to the stores. I was at my LCS last week and some guy came in with 6 retail boxes of Prizm b-ball. 
 

I live in a pretty hot b-ball market and the owner of the store was very happy to buy them from the guy for resale. 

I wish all the product was left for purchase by the true collector but if the card shops aren't doing the mass buying somebody else will just do the same thing and go buy the stuff up and then try to sell it for profit so if someone is I would prefer it to be a shop over the other.