General Forum

Topps already does this with the Opening Day and Big League products for baseball.  Those are intentially lower quality and less inserts and a much lower price than other sets.

The ironic thing about the boom is that wholesale prices have only gone up a few dollars a box.  It is the second hand market that is making a killing right now.  If you can somehow get a box of Bowman wholesale, you can turn around and sell it on eBay and make $150 even after fees and shipping.  That is just plain crazy right now.

They must be missing the over production point though since you can't find them on the shelves either. It has to be produced to a level where the investor isn't interested in it.

This thread is actually amusing to me. It's funny how so many people claim to have been collecting for so long and yet are so far off on their replies. Over-production NEVER stopped! It just got less obvious. I was collecting the 1990 baseball cards too. They were new and I was 12 or 13, depending on release date. I only bought by the packs back then, not boxes. The card companies started making more brands throughout the 90's but they were still producing the same amounts for the "flagship sets" (ie. Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score, UD, Pacific, etc.). In the mid-90's, they started making all kinds of other products from each brand (ie. each company had a dozen or more products that seemed like they had less copies made of any individual card). That was only true for some of the serially numbered cards. MLB got frustrated with the practice in the late 90's and put some plans in place. They were vague though and only took the MLB license away from Donruss for a couple of years. They gave Donruss the license again in 2001 as other companies started to crap out or merge together. By 2010 when they gave Topps the exclusive MLB license, several companies had shut down or sold out to other companies. Pacific, Pinnacle/Score and Fleer were long gone and Donruss/Leaf sold everything to Panini. UD was shut out of MLB due to their "scandal" of unknown MEM items in cards. Topps was the only thing left in baseball cards and they had no competition! They could do whatever they wanted and that's when I bailed on buying new MLB products. Topps has produced more and more baseball cards every single year since then. The sets got bigger and then they also added SP's and SSP's and VAR's and the insert set list gets bigger with every single product they release. They also added all these extra product releases since then. Look back in time to the mid-2000's and you'll see Topps 206 and Turkey Red and Archives. Jump to today and you have Heritage, Gypsy Queen and A&G to go along with those. I'm not counting Bowman, Opening Day or various Chrome products because those have been continuous since the late-90's. But you get the premise here. Don't forget Platinum in various brands and all the stupid Draft and multiple versions of that. Topps has been over-producing baseball cards ever since Fleer and Donruss got a license in 1981. I haven't bought a Topps product on a regular basis since 2010. I did buy a 2012 Topps baseball blaster and also a 2019 Topps Chrome Update baseball blaster. Both of those were bought with Target gift cards when those releases were new. That is everything I've bought of sealed Topps products since 2010 when I finished my Topps Platinum football set. Panini is just as bad at overproducing everything today too, but they haven't been doing it for as long as Topps has been doing it.

I'm just glad to be at a point where I don't need to buy new products to keep my hobby moving forward. I have tons of cards available for sell or trade. Those cards get me the newer cards for my team PC's without having to buy new products myself.

You think my landlord/mortgage will understand me shkipping a payment   or the bank honoring my check?

@Joshua825     you have 1 Phille I need from 2002 Bowman   if you want to trade?  I have a few hundred you need 

Looks like the price has dropped 25% since you first posted this (1200$ now $900)

Some very interesting times and prices ahead, 

Ohhhh so close.... and another $700 drop will bring it in range with reality, or at least what I've been able to do under for the last 4 years. Should make an offer to see if he a) ignores or b) sends back a laughing emoji...