2018 Fleer Ultra X-Men Non-Sport Forum

Couldn’t agree more. I think the expansion of inserts and packs with 5 cards are what turned me off of the hobby back in the mid-90’s. Now I’m content with collect the Topps base set and what ever inserts I get and filling out my old sets. I’m primarily baseball and can’t get into Panini since they’re not licensed. Just looks like a cheap knockoff no matter how fancy the card is. 

@sizzzler, Good advice. My choice would probably be to collect the base + inserts and just skip the parallels. I’d rather get different images.

@lugnut80, I’m glad we didn’t lose you forever. Welcome back to the hunt.

I'm anti-parallel also for the most part. For whatever reason I'll get the Chrome parallels for some Bowman products, but will not "chase the rainbow" for that, or any other, release. Parallels I get, except for a few rare instances like my PCs I use as trade material to get the items I do need to finish a base/insert set.

As a completionist it is very frustrating.  I jumped back into collecting in 2015 after taking off around 1996 and when my next shipment from COMC comes in July,  I will have completed my first master set of all inserts along with the base cards from 2015 Topps and Topps Update.  I like the parallels but have no interest in completing them or any of the SP's, relic and memorabilia cards.  I was able to collect all 3 versions of the 1st Home Run card, so that is sort of a parallel set, but will probably never try that again.  Will probably stick to the base and keep working back from 1973 to 1961 and trying to put as much of those sets together as possible.

REALLY.....back in the day, I used to collect every set possible [some master sets as well], by the early '90s the writing was on the wall, and the way this hobby was headed. Todays' sets have so many inserts, related sets, parallels, SPs etc. that it's unimaginable task to collect just 1 set. Just looked at an interesting set the other day, and I scrolled forever with all the extras. Bring back the "good ole days".

I am a set collector as well.  For the older sets, I am attempting to complete the master set in hockey up until the early 90's.  Things didn't seem to get too crazy with short prints in the 90's although it is more difficult to collect an entire set, but I abandoned collecting inserts.  For the sets around late 90's / early 00's, short prints and inserts exploded leading to where we are today.  I still like to collect sets, but seem to have a fixation on consecutive numbering.  for me that means collecting the short prints and update sets. an expensive proposition for sure.  hopefully, when/if I'm ripping packs, I hit an insert that I can sell to fund the rest of my collection.  Agree Bob, definitely missing the good ol'days.

I have never really been a set collector, although I have several from various sports and comic sets. I've always been a team and person collector. But that has also become impossible to complete for anyone these days. The vast amounts of various cards produced by the companies now is completely ridiculous! This is now WAY worse than the "junk-wax" years!!! At least you could easily complete sets back then. Now it would take thousands of dollars for a full BASE SET of one release. You can't even collect everything of retired and/or deceased athletes now b/c the companies are cranking out hundreds or thousands of new cards of many of them every year. MLB HOF'er Ozzie Smith now has way more cards released since 2001 than he did during his entire career from 1979-1997. He barely has any cards from 1998-2000. Even though there are now less companies & releases than there were in the late-90's to early-2000's, there are so many more parallels and inserts in every single release now. It's just insane!

As for parallels, I do like trying to get a "rainbow" of my favorite people, but not when it's 10, 20, 30 different cards. And I'm not chasing a minimum of five 1/1 cards for each set or insert either. Even base card team sets from a single release are getting impossible to collect b/c of all of the SP's.

I haven't bought packs or boxes of any MLB product since 2010, no Topps NFL packs/boxes since 2012 and have basically stuck to NASCAR products since then. But since Panini started making NASCAR cards, I've only bought 2 hobby boxes each year and all were of different products. 2016 Prizm, 2017 Absolute and 2018 Victory Lane. I didn't buy any hobby boxes of anything else and some of their releases I didn't even buy blasters at Target. Boxes just aren't worth the money anymore (even blasters). I'd rather buy singles and re-packs than the packaged crap that Topps and Panini are trying to force us to buy. I can't speak for Upper Deck b/c they don't make products of what I would buy. I was really hoping they would be the one to replace Press Pass in NASCAR cards. But that didn't happen.

Now I just go after cards of my favorite teams and athletes (mostly through trades) and occassionally buy some re-packs/boxes/blasters just to add traders. New stuff trades out fast, but it's b/c there are so many fewer cards in todays packs than there were in previous decades. I think I've traded at least 4x as many 1980's cards this year than I have of years 2000+. I know I've added more pre-2000 cards to my PC this year than I've acquired AND I've bought 5 hobby boxes and multiple blasters of cards released since 2009.

@spazmatastic, You brought up a good point about there being too many releases by each company every year. I think if they put out smaller sets I'd be more inclined to purchase more sets each. If they keep putting out these massive sets I basically have to decide each year which set I'm going to go after and just leavethe others. Usually I'm going to go for the set that is least complicated.

It's not necessarily the amount of releases that bugs me. It's more about the monstrous amount of stuff in each release. A product with 40 cards per hobby box shouldn't have 10 parallels of the base set, at least a dozen normal insert sets and then a bunch of parallels of those too. And that's before I even think about the AU and MEM sets and their parallels. It's just getting ridiculous.

And all manufacturers need to stop with the products that cost more than $250/box for only a few cards. Due to the over-saturation they've caused in the market with all the other products, those specific products just aren't worth the money. Panini National Treasures is a complete waste of time, money and perfectly good memorabilia. Buying 10 cards for $500 when they won't sell for an AVERAGE of $50 each is a complete bust. Most people who buy that would be lucky to break even. I've bought 3 singles from that product in the past year or so and I know the sellers were not happy with the price I won them for. I got a 2016 NT Quad-MEM, SN25 card of Jimmie Johnson about a year ago for around $20, a 2017 NT Dual-MEM SN25 card of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Kasey Kahne two weeks ago for $2 + shipping and a 2017 NT 1/1 Printing Plate AU/MEM Jimmie Johnson last week for less than $80 shipped. Those are great for me, but not good returns on such an expensive product to open.

Topps Triple Threads and Panini Black Gold are also products that were highly over-priced. I'm not even going to get into the products put out that were starting for thousands of dollars. STUPID!