Ten Things That Are Killing the Sports Card Hobby

[gatorboymike]

10. Disappearance of low-end products
There are virtually no products left that are actually fun to open and collect, rather than just burst so you can throw everything but the hits out.

9. Retail blaster boxes
With these you get four times fewer cards and the odds are four times worse of pulling anything decent. All the best stuff is hobby-only anyway.

8. Sticker autographs
Everyone hates these. What is there to be said? You can peel the sticker off and put it on a ruptured can of beans. Voila, a 1/1 Michael Jordan autographed ruptured can of beans. That'll be $1000 plus $200 shipping.

7. Manufactured patches
If the first game-used cards ever made had been these fake things, the memorabilia concept would never have gotten off the ground.

6. Too many parallel sets
Player-collectors' worst nightmare. A few years ago, only some products had these, and they only had one or two. Now every product has like six to ten parallels, and they're always 1/1, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/99 and 1/199.

5. Overproduction of memorabilia/autograph cards
These were valuable in the first place because they were hard to find. Supply and demand naturally balance out, and demand has gone up while supply has gone through the stratosphere. Whereas people were once overjoyed to get one of these in five boxes, they now get pissed off when they don't get five in every box.

4. Hit guarantees
See above. Anything that doesn't guarantee you x number of hits is seen as automatically undesirable, and anything that does always costs you $300 per box.

3. Rookie mania
Many products guarantee you one rookie-related hit per box. The problem is, every rookie class has five guys who are good and 45 who suck. Get one of the 45 as your hit and you feel gipped.

2. Redemption cards
You know exactly what I'm talking about.

1. Ultra high-end products
With the clearly-partitioned classes of products here, the card manufacturers have essentially created a caste system among collectors. At the top you have the elites who can shell out $3000 for a case as easily as swatting a fly, and at the bottom you have the untouchables for whom a $100 box (the cheapest most things get anymore) is a splurge. This used to be a hobby everyone could enjoy, but they want to turn it into something exclusively for the ultra-rich.

[Po.verse]

Ebays not on the list? lol

[thepistonsfan]

WAYYYYYYYYYYYYY to many 1/1s.

[spuds1961]

Spot on gatorboy mike,I agree with everything you said.Take care Steve

[gladdyontherise]

i agree with everything! especially to many different parallel versions!

[WilyWestbrook0]

As a low end collector, I also agree. Even though their worth today is about as much as toilet paper, I yearn for the innocent collecting days of yore I remember from 1992-1994. Sure, cards were overproduced as heck, and you didn't have mass Internet to help your collection - but everyone could at least afford them, and player collectors didn't have to think about 10,000 unreachable parallels to collect of their player.

Low end products still do exist, but they are in much smaller levels, and so few collectors bother to buy them anymore. I am collecting the 08-09 UD MVP basketball set, but it's been hard to find people on forums who have busted it. I have made a few deals, sure, but not as many as I expected to have by now. I might have to resort to sportlots to put the full set together.

[wolf1bh]

excellent article. i agree with all and yes ebay's business policies should be #11 with a bullet.

#7- manufactured patches- uggh- it was bad enough the manufactured letterman patchs with not even an auto (if its not gu and not player signed basically my aunt debbie could make the same thing out of felt and slap it on some cardboard) i saw recently that they began manufacturing the nfl crest/shields patches and numbering them to 15 or something. just...no...some things need to be kept rare.

#10- low end products. mcdonalds sells 4 card hockey packs in canada for a buck and they sell out everywhere- they are cheap, fun sets for everyone to put together and have just enough inserts to make it a fun chase. it baffles me why they will not do this in the usa with hockey or baseball or any sport.

[Ukiah10]

Personally, All I can say is I'm glad I just do vintage.

With that said, that doesn't bode well for the future or for kids to enjoy the hobby. That's the big shame isn't it? The corps. profit themselves to buyouts I guess.

[WilyWestbrook0]

With that said, that doesn't bode well for the future or for kids to enjoy the hobby. That's the big shame isn't it? The corps. profit themselves to buyouts I guess.

Yes. This used to be a kids' hobby. While I am an adult now myself and many adults have always been into it, it's much more difficult for the younger crowd to develop an interest today than it was when I was growing up.

[the_future]

I completely agree... I couldn't have said it better myself.