General Forum

Next month Topps Baseball will be releasing Series 1.  I would normally purchase a Jumbo case, but these prices are way to inflated.  The lowest I see is $1500 for a case, thats $250 a box.  As you know Topps also has Series 2 and Update, assuming the price is the same as Series 1, thats $4500.  For me this makes no sense. It seems like these prices have doubled in just a couple of years.  I collect only one team.  I would need to make some great pulls from these cases and then sell them.  Then you have all the regular cards to sell, good luck with that.  I would save loads of money just buying the cards on Ebay, COMC or whatever.  

Topps has to be rolling in the dough.  They now sell cards direct on their site, skipping the dealer.  Most of the time Topps prices are higher than most dealers and Topps still sells out.  They also sell product not availible to the dealers.  

Closing out on my rant....don't sit down and figure what you have spent on cards.  It is a lot for cardboard and plastic and the occasional tiny little bitty piece of wood, fabric and sometimes ink.

Trade On (If you already got them)

Just a reminder why I just buy complete sets now. I love building from the box, but the cost/benefit analysis just doesn't support it. For the cost of the one box I'm willing to bet I could buy yhr sets and the major insert sets also for the same price...or less. And I came to this conclusion before the pandemic pricing kicked in.

Hoops jumped from $80 a box to $250 from last season to this season. I will not be getting any, forced out of my main sport. 

I have purchased a box of each Topps series since the mid nineties.  I guess that would be around 25 years. Wow! Didn't realize I'd been doing it for that long.  I bought Hobby boxes originally and then switched to Jumbo boxes about 10 years ago.  My son asked me last year how long I was going to continue doing that.  I told him that I'd probably just buy a factory set each year after I retired, expecting that to be another 5-7 years in the future.  Unemployed since last March there's no way I can justify spending $220 on a Jumbo box like I normally buy or even $140 on a hobby box of Series 1.  (And who knows how much a box of Series 2 will be.)  It is what it is, but I'll miss opening packs, pulling the insert cards and seeing if THIS is the year that I finally get a really good autograph card.  
Life and card collecting is good, just different. 

The card companies, group breakers and grading companies have gradually changed the hobby into a form of gambling.  Everyone is now buying lottery tickets(hobby boxes) in hopes of hitting a jackpot (Extreme short-printed Auto or RC) and somebody convinced a bunch of fools that they should invest in graded trading cards because they will be able to make fortunes later on.  It feels a lot like a pyramid scheme where the initial investors created a frenzy and got the new investors to buy there stuff at a premium and eventually someone is going to left with a bunch of slabs they paid way too much for and cant move.  

Yeah, like you Godzilla I only collect one team, so spending all that money seems like a fool's errand. I traded for the 2020 Update cards I wanted on here and that worked out great. Gonna try and do the same for 2021 for sure!

I noticed a recent sell sheet that gave the date that breakers would have their new product for sale. Not stores. Breakers.

Meanwhile I lost an ebay auction on a Topps Transcendent card this week.  Some dude beat me out with a last second bid of $2.30.  That's Topps Transcendent.  Which came in a box that cost more than my car.  I'm sure that's not what the "investor" anticipated the SN65 or whatever number for base cards would go for.

Agreed for the most part.  They changed buying packs/boxes and dealing in new cards a form of gambling.

You can still keep buying raw vintage without it being like gambling.  It's not necessarily cheap, but it doesn't feel like gambling.

$250 for a Jumbo of Series 1??!?!? That's maddness. I might buy a hobby box from my LCS if they have any left over.  My LCS is a really small shop so they don't get allocated much product.  He gives first dibs to his higher spending customers (he has a couple) and if there is anything left he lets me know.  He is very reasonable with his prices so I'd probably be able to get a hobby box for around $60.  Last year when 2020 Topps Chrome boxes were going for $200 everywhere, he sold me one for $100.  If I'm not able to get any series 1 I'll be OK.  The factory set will contain all 350 cards from series 1 so no need to chase the dragon. 

This is the exact reason I don't buy boxes. I enjoy opening packs as much as the next guy but there is no way in hell I am paying those kind of prices. I'll stick to buying mixed boxes and smaller collections when I can and building my own collection that way. Ifind I get more value that way as I get exactly what I want/need.