General Forum

Yeah, like 90/91 OPC Premier being consistently ~20 for years and is now 200+? So much for finishing that upgrade right now. 

I do wonder about the 2021 production numbers. Last year at this time Bowman and Heritage were easy to find, even after the pandemic kicked in (printed beforehand I'm sure), on eBay and such. This year, not so much, and those that are on there are WAY more than the consistent years' past.

I feel like Topps overproduction will actually get worse as they are going public soon and will have stockholders. It is always about the money.

I was about the same age and bought about the same number of wax boxes of 90 Donruss at Smart &  Final for $10 a box.  Unfortunately I still have most of them.

I tried to buy new product at Target yesterday because they actually had some Topps and Topps Heritage but now they have a rule where you can only buy one item from the card section per visit so I walked out. I feel bad for someone that has multiple children and wants to buy them each a pack of sports or gaming cards.

It is just 1 item now? I was in Target two weeks ago and it was 3 items. What is next? Provide a DNA sample to be able to buy 1 pack? cant even fathom this these days.

This probably sounds crazy for all of us that collected through the junk era but I would welcome a rebirth (of one set, not everything) where we got an overproduced product amde cheap with a cheap pricetag so coulds could collect it. No chase sets or if anything go back to a glossy all star set but with also a high enough production run where the money isn't going to chase it.

A set for the collectors, the investors could continue to chace the high end stuff.

They should just do what they do for Sudafed and scan your ID to track if you are abusing the system. Would be better than limiting to one item.

I rarely buy new stuff. I get most of my cards through trades and box breaks. Cant find nothing on shelf anyway.

I think there is some interesting stuff that could hold value from new product over time, despite what feels like overstaturation in a general sense. I tend to look for "unique" cards (not parallels) with low print runs or just SP/SSPs. A lot of the inserts from Topps Opening Day (which has been released for quite a few years now, so it has some history) are quite obscure. Rare stuff from cheap product is a fun chase these days for me. 

Yes history and the hobby is pretty much rrepeting itself. First off Yes 1990 was Pre-Ebay and PRE-Internet. Well technically the "internet" has been around since around the mid 1960s but it was only available to the government (for mostly military purposes) and bigger universities. The "internet" was made public around 1992? I first climbed aboard around April/May of 1994. But back on topic.

The 1990s (technically starting mid 1980s) "super overproduction" years had dozens upon dozens of card makers making dozens and dozens of card sets per year of every sport and many non-sport subjects in the 100s of Thousands with millions upon millions of copies of each card. Now we have a hand ful of card makers making dozens and dozens of sets with thousands upon thousands of inserts and short prints. There might not be as many card sets and the cards might not be made in the millions, but there are thousands of inserts and specialty cards some made in very small quantities and counts but also each insert seems to have hundreds of variants and parallels.

I still hang into the hobby, but it is difficult to even think about being a set collector now days since sometimes it is difficult to even know what the "BASE" set is.