frozenheroes

Well I figured without any real exciting news or updates I would take this opportunity to chat about some of the hockey card issues this year.
I guess the biggest 'issue' was Upper Deck tricking us with Series 2. Only shipping what was preordered and then saying that is it. This in effect drove the wholesale price up from issue by about 75%. Hobby boxes are being quoted on the secondary market at $100 or higher and even the retail and blaster boxes are taking a hit.

The other big issues stem from the disappointment with Panini products. Redemptions that are taking far too long, product quality and the low value placed on Luxury Suite singles. I myself was disappointed by the resale values placed on most Panini high end products such as Luxury Suite and Crown Royale. The Panini All Goalies was a great factory set with some very decent cards strangely looking a lot like SP Authentic. The downfall was the Score R & T factory sets. The autos were all dinged to varying degrees and the back card which seemed to always be Taylor Hall took the same damage. The 'hoax' card was a very nice addition and definately propelled interest. Overall, too many parallels and inserts were a nuisance and suffered the same resale fate for Panini and their customer service led a lot to be desired. While I enjoyed the low end Score product many others did too as it sold out rather quickly. Nice card design, price point and a decent book value for resellers of singles.

I guess for me there just seemed to be way to many different card sets and even Upper Deck had to slip extras into some of their core product like Black Diamond and Spx. This year's SP Game Used was a hit or miss bust as usual along with Spx and in my own opinion Upper Deck needs to work on these issues. Spending a hundred bucks or more on a box to get nothing of value is a terrible marketing strategy. Every box should have something decent in the high end department or else collector's are just going to stick to buying their favourites on eBay. When your 4 card pack books at almost 50% less then the box price paid something is wrong. This was very evident with the new Ultimate product. Interest in the higher end Upper Deck product has dropped tremendously because of the continued 'dead' box/pack syndrome.

Luxury Suite singles took a big hit as even the jerseys are hard to get five bucks for and even the regular Upper Deck jerseys are booked low at $6 which is a shame.

Their needs to be more of a reward for collector's who want to buy high end boxes/packs and not just the 'chance' of getting something decent. Case hits are nice but how many normal collector's buy cases ? Most big sellers that buy cases crack them until they get the case hit and then sell the rest of the boxes off cheap without the buyers knowing that they don't have a chance in hell of hitting one.

That is just my own opinion from talking with collectors over the last few years and the current market conditions that we've seen.

Hopefully this didn't put you to sleep