2020 Panini Prizm WNBA Basketball Forum

Do people realize that Zion Williamson & LeBron James won't be appearing in a WNBA release?  The superstar rookie for this year, Sabrina Ionescu, sprained her ankle & only played in three games.  Several stars, like reigning MVP Elena Delle Donne opted out of this bubble season.

Last year's "Donruss" product was only about $80/box, with a couple sellers discounting it to $40, at times.  Even with that kind of mark-down, it still would be $300/box.  I won't pay that much for the Panini Prizm Parallel Parade.  Not too long ago, in the years under Rittenhouse's production, you could get a complete set with autographs for that price.

Well, it looks like the Seattle Storm are favored to contend for another title - inflating the prices of Breanna Stewart & Sue Bird even more... sigh.  Guess I'll have to wait until 2021 to pick up all my Storm cards, once the box-breakers & hit-chasers are left with piles of "worthless" (in their opinion) cards.

Yeah I feel there will be a bust in the hobby when people have to get a job again.  I'm looking forward to it myself.  All these new "investors" will find out that most trading cards are not a good "investment" and sell them off cheap.

Talk about jumping the shark... there's an Allen & Ginter Chrome release this year.

The hobby is steadily building the house of cards higher and higher. 

Silly question, so to speak. Most of us expect some sort of crash in the market. Question is, whom do you forsee as being immune to having their valuations (oops, investor word, sorry!) crash? In other words, Trout's prices have spiked immensely. Being one of the all-time greats, will they really drop down significantly in the future? Maybe stay stable/drop slightly instead of completely crashing.

And no, I'm not paying that much for a box. Patience and due diligence. I just got a 2020 Stadium Club set with all the inserts, minus In the Wings, for A LOT less than a single box. Paid no more than I did the last 2 years. Patience.... 

That's a price I would expect from NBA prizm not WNBA prizm. Neither should be $600 anyway.

Yikes! That's why I'm such a cheapskate when it comes to collecting. I don't follow hobby trends, I rarely buy new product aside from a few packs now and then, and I typically do my buying at flea markets, the odd comic shop that has old stock, and sometimes here. I spend what I'm comfortable with, and what I see local shops advertising, I know I'm not comfortable with. I see 1990-91 Hoops boxes selling for almost $100 CAD. Couldn't give that stuff away in forever. Crazy!

As much as I like the thrill of opening a box and given the current prices I won't be able to experience it in a long time, I do like that my main PC goals are still so cheap and have been largely immune to this "boom".

For the price of that box I could get thousands of PC cards so that at least makes me feel good!

In switzer's post the key word is "most" - All these new "investors" will find out that most trading cards are not a good "investment" and sell them off cheap.

There will be the odd card, probably a few of Trout's, that will hold a high value but so many of those that we are seeing prices being driven up as new "investors" join the hobby will crash.  When they do, their availability in the market will be in the high numbers.  This same situation happened in the late 80s and early to mid-90s.  I remember seeing the 1989 Upper Deck #1 card selling individually at very high prices and seemed to go up in value every month in Beckett's (it was the RC to own in 1989 / 1990).  Though I did buy a factory set at a flea market (at today's prices, I over paid), I did not buy the single card because spending that much on one modern day card was not realistic to me.  Then in 2008 or 2009, while I was posted in Toronto, I hooked up with a guy who was selling baseball to me including some 1989 Upper Deckk #1 cards at $6 Canadian each.  And he was making a profit from where he had got them, buying larger collections.  As he said when I asked him why so cheap, if you went into a LCS back in the early 1990s and the owner had a stack of these cards, as did every other LCS, the supply was not the issue.  The high price was based on the greed of the "investors" and not the collectors.

And this will happen again.  The Trout, Judge, Guerrero Jr., Ohtani etc. cards will all come back down to realistic prices.  When? I would say within the next 5 years.  Then scour the Craigs list and the yard sales.  You will find boxes of cards for a very good price. Very few cards will stay outside a collector's price range.

It will come back to reality, and for many of us not a moment too soon.

The "hilarity" of insane prices will subside much like the early 90's the fly by nighters will be gone.

Check out some of the prices of mid 80's wax omg lmao. Why pay 500$ and then some for a box,

when you can get most of those cards for a dime or so or cheaper when you buy a set?

Just because someone shrink wraps a box and puts 4 letters on it doesn't guarantee you the cards will be any more mint condition

than the way they came out of the packs when initially released. Grading is all the rage and pushing prices of a lot of stuff through the roof in many a persons' quest for that 10.

It has been fun, weird and wacky, but remain positive and patient just the same way you can still get cards from the 50's 60's and 70's you will still be able to get 2020 sooner or later.

AND those "crackers" will get their big pulls and "dump" the rest which makes up for most of the inventory i have obtained super cheap over the years. They take the top 10 cards deal those and off the rest.

How many of you have been to a show and seen guys standing by a trash can as they open packs and throw the commons away just to get a Bure RC or "insert your card here"

Hmmm, Panini pushes back the release of its WNBA Prizm product ...yet again.

It looks like the Seattle Storm could wrap up the franchise's 4th WNBA Championship tonight (both good news & bad news for me, as previously mentioned).  However, with the women's finals running concurrently with the NBA finals & a full slate of NFL action, by the time this product hits the market no one will be interested.

I watched Sunday's WNBA Finals Game 2 & ESPN's SportsCenter gave it all of 5 sceonds of air time, by showing *one* highlight - at #9 - of the "Top 10 Plays".  In contrast, they spent nearly the first half-hour of the show regurgitating stats, highlights & interviews of Game 3 of the men's finals.  This is more representative of the level of interest in WNBA vs. NBA & ought to drive the expected price/value of WNBA card products down, not up.

According to a long-time distributor, the original MSRP for the 2020 WNBA Prizm was about $140 a box.  Then, Panini retracted sales & inflated the price, when they delayed the relase the first time.  Sorry Mr. Gekko, but greed is not good.