Crown Royale Rookie Auto Observation

[centrehice]

I took some time to suss out the Crown Royale Rookie Auto's numbered to /499 I believe on eBay yesterday.

Verdict:

They aren't jumping off shelves or running up the charts. Several common Rookie Autos aren't getting bids at .99 cents combined with less than $3.00 shipping.

At least SPx are grabbing between $2-$3 Bucks on something similar. Wow, talk about disappointment while spending $90 samollians on a box.

[RGM81]

Such is the way it goes when there are so many rookies in there that have little to no hobby appeal. This year there's such an emphasis on the top guys that really the rest of the pack is just being utterly forgotten about - Hall, Eberle, Seguin, Subban, etc. are doing very well but you can't really expect people to go GaGa over the likes of Tommy Wingels and Nick Leddy.

[cardscardscards]

I love Crown Royale, but their /499 rookies aside from Subban (edit: and Bobrovsky) are the ones there's very little interest for. They feel like UD Ice's Level 4 rookies which were pretty awful and way too plentiful.

I think they could have gone by just fine with only 1 rookie per box so they would have been #'ed lower and add another insert to compensate. I was happy to see a competitor come along to teach UD a lesson, but now there's already a LOT of rookies out there and there's even more coming. We have a very dilute card market this year unfortunately and that's too bad considering the quality of the newcomers we have!

[30ranfordfan]

No big shock.

The extra manufacturer has just sped up the process. Normally it would take 6-12 months from release date for scrub rookies to fall into those prices..... but with two manufacturers pumping out the cards, it's happening right away.

I don't expect those same guys in SPA to sell for much more. Only thing SPA has going for it is the following among set collectors over the years...... so the initial month may fair a little better in sales.


You've done a nice job citing yet another example as to why this hobby is headed for another late-90s esque crash.

[cardscardscards]

I'm all for competition, but you're right when you say we're headed towards another 90's crash. I don't think I'll be buying very many packs/boxes for 2011-12 onwards if it continues this way.

The market's changed. There's a much bigger interest in rare, high-end products and since 2005, there's also been a much higher interest in rookies. Unfortunately, those two segments of the market are quickly becoming saturated this year.

We used to have one set featuring rookies #'ed to /999, but now we have two with each numbered to only /599. They seem more scarce at face value, but over very little time, you see just how many more there are.

There needs to be stricter rules on hockey card production to avoid repeating history once again, otherwise it's either going to be a long battle to the death or one of the two will start producing far less, but more prestigious cards and become the "elite" producer while the other one continues to feed the masses.

Too bad that in the end, it's the collectors who lose the most. Again.

[RGM81]

A genius (someone else's word, not mine, which was "nerd") once wrote:

Contraction is a word that often hovers around the hockey market. The inability of some markets to sufficiently support an NHL franchise and keep it viable has led to a lot of discussion about whether the League has become too bloated. With 30 teams, the talent pool is somewhat diluted, and there are franchises that will seemingly never have a legitimate opportunity to compete for the Stanley Cup. Relocation is a preferred option, though one to be strenuously avoided if at all possible, as surely there is a place out there somewhere that these franchises can survive.
The same concept applies to the hockey card market. With a combined 22 releases among the licensed manufacturers and a further seven in the offing this year from ITG, hockey collectors are constantly under siege from new releases. The first five weeks of the 2010-11 season saw five releases: Certified, Artifacts, Score, Upper Deck Series One, and Ultimate Memorabilia. This is simply too much for most collectors to handle. The deluge of products has caused some major player collectors to throw up their hands and drastically claw back on the scope and scale of their collecting intentions. These are collectors that have been maintaining collections for several years now, and even they cannot keep up the pace. While it is of course true that a collector does not have to have everything, a collector has to have everything!
While the hobby was very wise to recalibrate itself after the massive overproduction era that was the 1990s, it has done so in a way that makes the saturation of the market wider rather than deeper. Rather than having a small number of sets with innumerable parallels and sky-high print runs, today we are at a point where there are a large number of sets with medium-high print runs. The high number of sets means that manufacturers have to produce a slate of hits for every product, which leads to the problem of saturation of memorabilia cards that I have already discussed. A Wayne Gretzky autograph used to be a rare sighting and a difficult pull. The Great One is now included in nearly every Upper Deck release that features autographs. The problem in the past was that there were too many of each card; today’s problem is that there are too many different cards.
Nowhere is this issue more readily apparent than when look at rookie cards. While there may have been several thousand Martin Brodeur Score RCs back in 1991, today’s freshman will have up to 22 different rookie cards, each with a print run ranging from 99 up to (speculative) 5000. Add in the numerous parallels and other rookie-year cards, and the totals probably come pretty close to matching the numbers from the days of yore. While there are certainly staple rookie cards like the Young Guns, SP Authentic Future Watch, and more recently The Cup from Upper Deck, would anybody be truly heartbroken if they could no longer add a Be A Player or Artifacts RC to their collection? It is still too early in Panini’s hockey card career to say which cards will stand up as being must-haves and which will be afterthoughts; regardless, it is certain that at some point in the future the NHL and NHLPA will have to enforce some form of hard cap on the manufacturers to restrict the market to some degree.

[gatesnapper]

I'm all for competition, but you're right when you say we're headed towards another 90's crash. I don't think I'll be buying very many packs/boxes for 2011-12 onwards if it continues this way.

The market's changed. There's a much bigger interest in rare, high-end products and since 2005, there's also been a much higher interest in rookies. Unfortunately, those two segments of the market are quickly becoming saturated this year.

We used to have one set featuring rookies #'ed to /999, but now we have two with each numbered to only /599. They seem more scarce at face value, but over very little time, you see just how many more there are.

There needs to be stricter rules on hockey card production to avoid repeating history once again, otherwise it's either going to be a long battle to the death or one of the two will start producing far less, but more prestigious cards and become the "elite" producer while the other one continues to feed the masses.

Too bad that in the end, it's the collectors who lose the most. Again.

X2

the number of products for both panini and UD should be reduced. it is too much. there is just no way, i could be a player/team collector.

[mingus_md]

I agree with the general sense of previous posts in this thread that there are too many products. As a team collector, I would prefer having fewer sets to collect but with more players. I really liked Crown Royale, but I wish there were more cards to collect per team.

[mugmasher]

man!!! i really hope things change for the better!!! i started collecting hockey a little over a year ago..i used to collect every other sport but hockey...but i have been hooked ever since i opened my first pack..i just collect hockey now and love everything about it!!! but to see the direction the card manufacturers are going, is upsetting...as far as over producing....i wonder..do the card companies actually listen to what we as collectors want??? if they did?? did we ask for them to go this route???..i love collecting..even more so now that i am into hockey..

[jonpop]

UD already weeded out some product this year, they have the right amount of products per year as far as I'm concerned. Why less of what they produce now?