General Forum

As others said, I agree on the fact they make way too many varieties of the same cards / pictures. On the other hand, as long they will get buyers, they will continue to (over)produce them. They need a justification to increase sale prices and to cover the license costs they got from the leagues. Manufacturers also seem to develop these varieties to stretch revenues from the younger crowd who would often collect one player or one team instead of building the whole set. I am not even sure that they expect collectors to complete most of these subsets.

Card companies do this because they know idiots like me will by the same picture 50 times. Why do idiots like me do that? I enjoy collecting. As a player collector that has most 80% or more of all the cards that were produced while my player was playing the game, I like the good old fashioned chase of something I don't have. 

That being said I am so burnt out on going after 2019 cards I can see myself not giving too much of a crap about 2020. 

So yes...we idiot player collectors with little left to collect from our players still have an addiction to feed and the card companies are our pushers.

Both card companies and collectors have their fair share of blame at the current state of the hobby. It's the chicken and egg situation.

I know I haven't bought anything new since a Series 2 box in 2018. The box was marked up when I bought it, because of the Ohtani rookie card. Two weeks later he was injured and the boxes started to nose-dive. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

I could blame Topps, but the market dictates. Stayed away from the market since.

I still contribute to this site though, because I like the hobby, like doing it and have done it for past sites like IMDb and TV Tome/TV.com.

Some of us like parallels. I wish there were more of them. Not a wider variety, just more of them in packs. I find most inserts to be relatively useless, and I have since roughly 1998. These days the only times I enjoy pulling an insert is if it's an autograph or relic. The others are just another excuse to show the same 20 superstars or rookies over and over. Boring. 

I am always thrilled to pull a parallel. Always.

The real problem is small sets. The NBA is a 525 man league but Panini refuses to produce a set with more than 280 of them. 

Agree with original poster. It truly is ridiculous and the manufacturers simply do not care (at all) that they are basically ruining the hobby by mega mass production. They're even doing it to autograph issues too. Soon the base auto issues will be trading for a dollar. They're always pushing the latest stuff in order to maximize profits. I get it, businesses have to make money in order to remain in operation. But it has gone way WAY beyond any legitimacy in terms of production value. I like collecting my favorite players too, but at some point it becomes madness - and if this continues, the only real value will be purely sentimental. 

I can understand your frustration, but what’s wrong with “and if this continues, the only real value will be purely sentimental”? Most things you can buy in life depreciate. And there are a lot of hobbies where your monetary value goes to zero. Cooking and gardening come to mind. People buy plants and flowers (annuals) that die after one season. For a lot of people, sentimental is all that maters. Just my morning thoughts.

bump

Didn't Fleer do the same in the late 90's?  The card number also referenced the set.

I can definitely understand if you collect a specific player that parallels can be annoying. But I'll admit, when I'm ripping packs open, I still get excited about parallels, especially when they're seriel numbered.