General Forum

Back when all the madness began, this forum was pretty much flooded with grievances about the awful state of the hobby right now.  I for one participated in much of this.  But it seems that we all have kind of accepted the outcome of the scalpers and empty shelves.  I don't think we have really talked about it in a while.  Any light at the end of the tunnel that anyone sees?

I for one, have stopped buying any boxed retail or hobby product (including box breaks) over the past year or so. Just not worth the money and to be honest I can't afford some of the product these days. Since Covid prices have gone up on just about eveything. Fuel, building materials, electronics etc. I am content with just selling or trading what I already have in order to add to my hockey PC. I don't see it changing much until this outbreak has pretty much gone away. So don't see much light at the end of the tunnel, right now at least.

I have always looked at the changes to the hobby as an opportunity.

Due to the rising prices it made me focus my collection more — why pay $600 NZD for a box of current season Hoops and probably get $20 NZD "worth" of cards when I could get so many PC cards for the same $ — which was definitely a good thing.

I do have to be careful even buying PC cards given the current pricing as I certainly do not want to overpay. I think I have been fairly good at waiting to get deals on cards I want at below market prices but have also probably overpaid on a few too!

I do miss buying and opening boxes. I have bought 2 blasters of Donruss basketball in the last 20 months. One was a birthday present for a nephew and the other I bought when I went down to visit the nephews so we had something to open together. The plan was they were my cards and we could work out some trades for any they wanted (Warriors players mainly). However, there was not a single card that interested me in the box — not even one decent RC, the "best" card was probably a Zion Wiliamson base — so I just let them claim them all.

It was a good reminder that the thousands of dollars I have spent over the years on boxes cold probably have been better spent if I had focused my collection earlier. Which, as mentioned at the start, has really been what I have taken out of the new state of the hobby.    

I've transitioned almost exclusively back to my diecast collection and scale modeling. 

I miss cards, but I won't play the scalper game, so I mostly just do without. 

Buying single cards is not fun for me so I won't generally do it. 

Good to see you posting Billy. I hope your doing well.

I have noticed some A&G in Targets lately and picked up a couple of rack packs of Prestige today at $5. Normal price. But I also saw the Donruss complete set for football today at a LCS for $120. Seeing how last years was $40 that is a bit much to me.

To me it is like a dark tunnel with a light at the end that blinks on for a brief moment evry now and then.

I am glad I am organizing my collection and adding it here after the last year. However, if I see something on the shelf that is reasonably priced then I pick it up. But as of right now sorting it is.

Hobby is 120 and includes 5 Optic preview cards. Retail is 50 (no bonus cards). However, Target online sold out right away and they are selling in eBay for 70+. Sigh, another sign of the stupidity. Guess I'll wait until they reflood the market again.

I collected baseball cards frantically with my father as a child of the 80's. Those cards were going to pave my future damnit. lol. This continued until the mid 90's when I descovered girls and kind of lost interest. I occasonally picked up cards here and there through my 20's. It wasn't until the late 2000's when I realised my collection wasn't going to be worth much, so I sold them all. Now, ten plus years later I am collecting again. I think the only difference is I'm doing it now for the love of collecting my favorite players and teams, as opposed to doing it when I was younger because I believed they were going to be worth something. Not that I blame my old man for this or anything, the cards he grew up with are worth something but the difference was that I don't think everyone understood that it was because the cards were viewed as a childs thing and thrown away. Making them valuable because of their rarity. Time's have changed, and so has collecting. I not only collect cards but I also collected comics and retro video games. The internet as done great things for the community but has also ruined parts of it as well. Across all forms of collecting. Grown ass men rushing to stores trampling kids and each other to buy sports cards and collectible card games. So they can resell them at higher prices to make a profit. Kind of a bummer.... I think at the very least with my personal outlook into collecting, where it's not an investment for me anymore. Just doing it because I like to and im only picking up stuff I can afford, grading doesn't matter to me (doesn't mean I collect trash, I want my cards as sharp as anyone else, I'm just not going to breake the bank doing so). I'll wait on a decent deal for a decent card or pack of cards. I don't have to deal with FOMO anymore, if I miss that cool chase card from whatever new set, I don't really care. I guess it really all depends on the type of collector you are. When it comes to video games for instance, I'm far more serious, then again I'm looking for the best deals because you never know when a market is going to tank. We've seen it happen time and again. 

It's been months since I bought any cards. Seeing grown men push each other to get cards reminded me of the scene at a Wal-Mart black Friday sale. Over a dozen women pushing and shoving each other for $5 towels. Same scenario except that one woman who jumped over the women to dive head first into the towels.....smh. I'm just trading right now, trying to complete sets to sell. Besides, all I've seen is Pokemon lately lol