General Forum

https://twitter.com/CardsFromAttic/status/1027313625525039105

I couldn't open the attachment at work but I have an opinion on what is wrong with the hobby. What is wrong is that it just isn't a hobby for everyone. There is too much money flowing into the hobby by speculators looking for a quick profit and lottery players looking for those 1 of 1 or gem mint 10 older cards. They drive up the prices for everything to ridiculous amounts. 

I guess I shouldn't even say that is what is wrong with the hobby. I think the hobby is fine if you can adjust your collecting to fit in. A couple ways this works for me. 1. I don't buy very much new product. I'll wait for it to be on clearance in a year or two. 2. I started collecting in the late 70s and very early 80s. In my collection I don't need to have a gem mint 10 card. I'm prefectly happy with a NM card that is ungraded of the player I want.

It's not that there is so much wrong with the hobby but collecting isn't done just by hobbyists. We all need to figure out where we fall on the scale of collectors, investors and lottery players.

whether the story is true or not, i've seen similar instances of it where people go in and "feel" the pack for the thick card as opposed to the blank cardboard they put in. My local card shop won't sell new single packs- he cant see someone coming in and pulling the dream card in the first two packs and knowingly leaving the remaing there for others to buy with no hits in them. 

another reason i won't buy single packs or half boxes online. these sellers go through a case and once they get the one or two big hits, everything else goes up for sale with the headline "big player name ???" -- that's just another way of saying- the hit just got pulled. 

Reminds me of the picture of the guy sitting on the floor at Target surrounded by packs he was searching. Years ago I was on the clock at my Wal-Mart and walked by our card section. This guy had a device that he was using that he put packs in and measured the thickness. I stopped and looked at him. His wife saw me and stared at me. So I made sure to keep walking by and stop a few times to stare. Finally after several minutes he got pissed at me and gave up. Both of them walked out and glared at me the whole time. People like him have damaged thousands of cards doing that. I've bought too many packs and opened them to find my cards bent. I stick with hangers and boxes now.

The hobby evolves over years.  There are some many types of collectors.  Investors,  lottery,  sets,  team,  player,  fad or what is hot now,  rookies,   HOF,  stars,  vintage,   graded,  Autographs,  jersey,  1/1ers,    numbered (like 7/xx).    Then these collectors may change what they collect several time over the years.  No problem with any of these.   

I think most of us have the issues with SOME of the people who are trying to supply us with what we want.     Companies  over producing cards.   Guys in the stories we all heard or seen.   Then all the bad guys that come in and rip people off and make every one else like bad.  E-bay,  COMC,  and other site charging more so they can keep going so the cost to the collectors keeps going up.  The guys that break tons of boxes and throw the ones they do not want in the closet.

Like you I have have collected a long time and my collecting as gone from set building to one team.  Nebraska      I do not buy boxes or packs any more as the odds of getting a card I need is very low. (almost impossible).    What I have seen is almost every one takes price a card is worth and not about the card itself.  Every the young people it is all about the money.  

I miss opening packs and still overpay and do a few but mostly I let someone else open packs and try to get their big hit and I buy their junk when the price aligns with my collecting desires. I guess it's true that one man's trash is another's treasure.

Terrible. Oh man I should have enlarged/zoomed my screen image while reading that thing teeny weeny print. People like that are part of the reason some of the card companies are using slightly thicker blank "decoy" cards now.

There are times when I try to avoid the getting packs because of the horrible pack distribution and being less and less interested in the insert cards that are being produced.

I never buy loose packs or rack packs from any source anymore because of pack searchers. I suppose someone could use a scale and try to search hanger boxes as well though, but eliminating those would leave me no other affordable options for buying packs (sealed boxes are way too expensive for me).

I hadn't thought of the hobby shop scenario mentioned earlier though. Most shops I've been to keep the packs behind the counter and let you pick which pack you want when you make your purchase. They watch to make sure you don't search in any way, which is good, but unfortunately I think many shops wouldn't have any issue selling the rest of the box even though they know the "hits" have already been pulled. 

Pack searching has been complained about for two decades now. At first it was people thumbing the packs trying to feel a difference in surface or thickness, then it was people flexing (bending) the packs to find a thick card, then came the scales. I could do all of that crap too, but I'm not going to do it. I feel it is dishonest, but mostly I don't do it b/c of the kids. I'd be happier for some kid to pull a hit from a single pack than pulling it myself.

I stick to blasters, hanger boxes and re-packs. Let the kids get the single packs b/c they can't afford the bigger purchases when using their own money. We need the children to get interested to help keep the hobby going. They won't stay interested if they never pull anything really good. The only time I buy loose single packs is when they are discounted like 50%. But my Target hasn't done that in a few years now. I think the companies stocking the card sections now just sell the unsold single packs to companies like Fairfield for re-packaging.

I've never seen pack searching in-person, but have heard/read many stories about it. I would certainly call out someone if I saw them doing it. I'd also alert staff to it so they know it's happening. The card companies have made some progress in thwarting pack searching over the years, but it hasn't stopped it. The dummy cards in every pack is what led to the bending technique. A thick dummy card doesn't bend, it breaks. Now they "randomly" insert dummy cards and of different thicknesses to help thwart the pack searchers. I've been fooled multiple times in recent years while opening boxes or blasters when I thought THIS pack has a MEM card, but it really didn't. Sometimes it was just a blank card and sometimes it was a blank card AND an AU card in the pack. I just don't see where a scale helps anymore. But people keep trying it anyway.