Preview....2012-13 THE CUP (UD Info Added 9/27)

[ravens_creed]

WOW! Gilmour & Sundin dual AU shield... You gotta be kidding me!

Seriously, that is a card that is years in the making! I'm already envisioning a nasty bidding war, lol.

[RGM81]

And you know what? It kills the hobby.

...

/end rant.

It might hurt your enjoyment of the hobby, but what you're doing in this post is textbook projecting your opinion/perspective as an objective fact about the hobby at large.

There are so many high-end collectors in this hobby that bust NOTHING but products like Cup, Dominion, Prime, etc. and without these big-dollar products, those guys find something else to do with their money--there's no thrill for them opening up a box of Score in the hopes of getting a neat insert or hot RC--what turns their crank is a super-limited exclusive Gretzky Auto Stick or an Orr 1/1. And guess what? It's those guys who keep your brick & mortar shops operational. It's those guys that break and break and break and then put the cards on eBay for the rest of us to snap up--I'm a guy of modest means who could never in his current financial situation dream of justifying dropping $3,000 on a case of Cup or Prime in the hopes of getting a big hit, but if the guy that *can* do that does and turns around and sells me 2-3 cards that I want for a couple hundred bucks...that's what helps DRIVE, not KILL, the hobby. I get to enjoy the cards from a high-end product, and he's got some extra bucks in his pocket so that he can do it all again in a week or two.

The market, whether it's for hockey cards or sports cards, is NEVER about equality. A pie-in-the-sky vision of boycotting high-end products so that the only products on the market are those that can be affordable by the lowest common denominator would be what kills the hobby as we know it today. Because if the only cards out there can be had for $3 a pop, that's all the value there will be. See: 1990's, The.

The beauty of this hobby is that there is something there for everybody in all financial means and tax brackets. We've had people on this site who think nothing of the money involved in buying a pallet of The Cup....we've got people who scrape and scrounge and trade their way up to get that once-in-a-lifetime SSP'd auto 1/1 that they will cherish forever...and everything in between. Some people can get what they want when they want it, others have to work a little harder. It's no different than the real world. I don't define who I am as a collector by the cards I don't have and I certainly have no animosity towards those who are "higher up" in the "caste system" than I may be...heck, some of my best friends are rich! LOL