General Forum

I can answer some of those questions for you. Yes, the retailers/wholesalers get a discounted price. I used to buy in with several other collectors on a case break. Not the kind where you buy people or teams, but the kind where you are buying a box or boxes and opening it yourself. As a group, we were getting a full case (or more) from a wholesaler through one person. He would bring the case home and divvy out the boxes to each person who bought some and then ship them. In the situation of a case of blasters, we were paying about $11.75 ea. plus shipping from the individual who bought the case. When it came to hobby boxes, they were about 20-30% cheaper than MSRP. The wholesaler was selling the cases AT COST b/c he wouldn't be buying them if not for this one individual.

Panini sets the minimum MSRP and the rule for dealers is that they cannot drop the price below that for 3-6 months after release. That helps to entice dealers to buy them and try to sell quickly (hence being able to pre-order from most of them). Dealers use the pre-order info to know how much they can buy and make a profit from before the price starts dropping. And NO, they can not get a refund from Panini for unsold product. They just have to eat the loss when the price drops.

I think I answered all your questions there. If not, LMK what I missed. And BTW, I LOVE acetate and die-cut cards too!

That's exactly what I've been thinking for the past few years myself! MLB took the license away from everyone but Topps in order to cut down how much junk was being produced, but now they're putting out as much, or more, sets than the Junk Era frenzy gave us. And it's not just limited to sports cards, the non-sports franchises are plagued with the same thing, and a CERTAIN company's love of pushing dozens and dozens of online sets a month.

I actually went and clicked on every single person listed here to see if they qualified. I couldn't just use the list of names because it had to be NBA or NASCAR, it couldn't be college cards, drag racing, etc. It also could not be a shared card or a multi-sport card either. It took me about a week to do, and I will occasionally find someone I missed. I have not done it for NHL yet, still too new, still too many people not yet present in my collection. 

I actually don't like buying single cards. I would much rather pull it from a pack. Since I can't really do that now, it almost makes buying single cards palatable.

I too feel like collectors are being pushed out of the hobby by case breakers and "investors".  Most of these people if you watch their YouTube channels can't even pronounce players names and don't really know why the players cards are in demand.

My frustration has come to a boiling point with 2020 Bowman.  $20 for a hobby pack??  Empty shelves at Walmart and Target because "investors" are camping out and filling a shopping cart as soon as it hits the shelf?  I live in San  Antonio, the 6th or 7th largest city in the U.S. so we have many of these stores.  I spent the entire weekend hitting them all and it was the same thing, empty shelves where 2020 Bowman was just stocked.

And don't get me started on how many times iv'e come accross people weighing packs and blaster boxes.

D

So in 2040 they'll cash in on their investment for boxes of vintage 1990s cards.

Here's the thing with Bowman, Topps announced a slow roll out of the product because of the virus. They can't do mass printing runs so they are releasing in waves. Unfortunately people are taking advantage of that to gouge prices. Someone selling a case for twice the normal amount and the same for the hobby and jumbo boxes. Patience for Bowman may be best. I'll say this much, I just won a master set on eBay (base, paper and chrome prospects) last night and paid less than I did for last year's set. And what I won it for was about 50% less than the lowest BIN price available and almost 60%+ less than what others have it for. Patience. 

For baseball, you can get player names from here:

http://www.seanlahman.com/baseball-archive/statistics/

The first paragraph is so true.

I have tried to watch box breaks occasionally and have been put off it when the guy doing the break knows nothing about the product, the players or even the sport he is opening!

Now that's dedication- to go through that list! Haha. That's cool, hadn't thought about that. For my Mariners, Seahawks and Trail Blazers A-to-Z project, I used the all-time roster on each website. I too, try to be specific on the requirements for my projects (always in that team's uniform, if possible; no shared-cards, also if possible). Wishing you the best of luck in your project!

SeaKing - My "main" collection is a card (or other memorabilia) from every player in MLB from 1960 to current. I'm assuming your're talking about something like that.

I used Baseball Reference to build the player database. Start with the first year you want to collect, copy and paste the season stats to a spreadsheet. Then go to each season past that year and copy and paste the debuts. Be aware there are players that have similar names seasons played.

Getting the cards is a different challenge. Several have no cards and even more have only minor league cards that can be difficult to find at a reasonable price. Surprisingly, there are a lot of current players that do not have readily available cards.

Ping me if this is actually what you're trying to do and we can maybe work out a way to ship you my list.