What's up with this EBay sale?? Am i missing something here?

[jameslacarte]

Scrolling through EBay & seen this. Is this not the regular set rookie? Selling for $180.00 plus $20.00 shipping? Thats just crazy!!
Also gotta say i especially like the .50 cent card auctions with $22 shipping. Why waste your time? Nobody is gonna buy a .50 cent card for $23. Some people's children!!

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/2013-14-Nath...oAAOSwlKlgIeGB

[jameslacarte]

Here's a perfect example of a .50 cent card for $26 & there are lots like this.. Lmao, Crazy stuff!!
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/1990-91-Uppe...EAAOSwvfZf~kBm

[30ranfordfan]

Scrolling through EBay & seen this. Is this not the regular set rookie? Selling for $180.00 plus $20.00 shipping? Thats just crazy!!
Also gotta say i especially like the .50 cent card auctions with $22 shipping. Why waste your time? Nobody is gonna buy a .50 cent card for $23. Some people's children!!

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/2013-14-Nath...oAAOSwlKlgIeGB

Yeah, that's the regular rookie. Prizim took off like crazy in the last year. There are not a ton of big cards from the base set, but that's one of them.

Here's a perfect example of a .50 cent card for $26 & there are lots like this.. Lmao, Crazy stuff!!
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/1990-91-Uppe...EAAOSwvfZf~kBm

He's not charging $26 for shipping. He's signed up for the Global Priority Shipping program. He mails the package to a processing center, and they mail it to you. Once they receive it, they take over for all liabilities over lost shipments.

If you toggle to shipping to an American address, it's $4.55 USD.

He's charging a couple of bucks for shipping, and the GPS is jacking the cost up to their price. This has been going on for years, and a lot of sellers don't even realize what ppl on the other end are being charged.

[jameslacarte]

Damn!! I have like 10 of those MacKinnon rookies!! Woohooo, i am officially rich!! It books for what? $20?

[RGM81]

Thanks to the popularity of Prizm in other sports (basketball, football) the madness has made its way to hockey. As a result, Prizm cards of superstars have shot through the roof in value. Collectors love the shiny stuff. If you've got anything from 12-13 of Crosby or Ovechkin take a look at those and be prepared to prop up your jaw.

[30ranfordfan]

Damn!! I have like 10 of those MacKinnon rookies!! Woohooo, i am officially rich!! It books for what? $20?

No idea the book value (if it books for $20, the book is continuing to show how irrelevant it is. That card has been a $100+ seller for the better part of a year).

If you're sitting on a stack of them, that's awesome. Crosby & Ovechkin base from 12-13 do really well too (not RCs, but their "first Prizim" cards). MacKinnon is selling for leaps & bounds more than the other RCs, but if you've got guys like Tarasenko, Huberdeau, Kucherov, Barkov: All worth varrying degrees of decent $$$ now.

It's an insanely popular set in other sports, and the couple of years that Prizim Hockey was available, have found new love.

[Savard18]

I would assume at some point from a market and economic perspective there will be a correction, however if there is it's way down the road and inflation will take care of that.

As someone who minored in economics the card market makes no damn sens today - it's absolutely bonkers. It's like collectors are asking arbitrary prices and buyers are paying them.... The last time I saw this happen was in the early 90's during the junk wax era boom and "normies" that knew nothing about the hobby were buying cards for ridiculous prices thinking that one day these cards were going to send their kids to college or payoff their mortgage, when in reality they were just driving the price up artificially by the sudden popularity and demand for cards - that and paying ridiculous prices for "common cards" that had a star or superstars name on them....

I mean back then I was doing shows every weekend and on weekdays I worked at the local card shop and it was absolutely bonkers what "normies" would shell out for cards... I mean I'm sure many of you were around when Lindros, Selanne, Mogilny, Fedorov, Bure etc rookies were fetching ridiculous $$$ and now you can find them in any dollar bin/box.

I remember Selanne's 1991-92 Upper Deck Rookie easily selling - and selling fast for $40-50 bucks, the same for all of the previously mentioned players and others.. Heck, I remember selling the 1990-91 Upper Deck WJC checklist with Lindros on it for $75 bucks because it was Upper Deck - hence king - and Score owned the exclusive rights to put Lindros on cards, so there was a premium on anything Upper Deck that featured Lindros and Upper Deck did their best to squeek Lindros into as many cards as possible.... The same goes for the 1991-92 Canada Cup checklist that features, Lindros, Hull and I believe Gretzky?.. Yea, that card was essentially gold at one time - $15 bucks right there in any card shop out of the pack, and $25-$40 if you could hold on to the weekend and shop it around at a card show or two...

I suppose my point is that you would think there would be a market correction at some point but part of me is saying there wont. Because you have to factor in that back in the late 80's and early 90's demand for cards went up tenfold and the card companies were producing cards to meet demand, however it's not like that anymore - the card companies learned why card values crashed from that era, obviously because there were millions of them... Look, If someone wanted a particular card they could have it, they would just have to pay an arbitrary price.... And it's sorta similar today... I mean the arbitrary prices are being paid but card companies are not printing cards to meet demand the same way they did in the past - today they're creating new products to meet demand - which is fine because they're new sets. But back in the day the card companies just printed millions of one particular set so there was no "economic" diversity.... Which of course is why junk wax era inserts and parallels do pretty well, because there is more of a demand for the inserts than there is supply generally speaking... Just to give one example - 1995-96 Upper Deck Electric Ice Gold are figuratively worth their weight in gold if not 5-10x their weight in gold.. I mean it's been a while since I have looked at a Beckett but I believe they're either 50 or 100x the base? yea, I know Beckett sucks and shouldn't be taken seriously, I agree but even on eBay depending on the player - Electric Ice Gold are indeed fetching anywhere between 20 and 100x the value of the base...A while back I sold a 95-96 Electric Ice Gold Al MacInnis for $7.50, so I don't know what that means other than collectors are willing to pay good money for junk wax era parallels and inserts...

I suppose my point is that it's fine to produce new product and sets to meet demand as long as you have diversity among your product line which is something the card companies lacked and didn't do during the boom of the late 80's and early-to-mid 90's..

As far as the present day and how goofy the card market has been across the board from Basketball to Hockey and even Soccer, IMO there is more of a demand than ever for cards due to Covid, and former collectors coming back to the hobby because they have nothing to do... I mean they cant go to movies, ball games and other social functions that were usual 15 months ago, so many that collected cards when they were younger have taken up the hobby once again.... However that only explains the demand in increase - that doesn't explain the astronomical prices.... I think sellers are asking for arbitrary prices, collectors are paying them and other sellers see this hence they price their cards according to recent sales and boom - you've got your explanation.... And given that there is indeed a finite/limited amount of cards from each set I think these prices are around to stay... Look, new collectors - or those getting back into the hobby - have already paid the price for the card, they're not going to sell it for anything less - especially rookie cards given that the majority of them these days are SP's anyway, so it's not like there are realistically 15,000,000 of a particular card out there and thousands of collectors and dealers have hundreds if not thousands in their inventory of one particular card.. No, some of us may have 10 or 15 of one card that recently went up in value significantly, but even if they have a bunch of them why should they sell the card for anything less than market value?

Look I suppose my point is that maybe cards really were just criminally undervalued and few realized it? perhaps this is a market correction? I mean so far for the most part collectors and dealers have been baffled by the boom in value but like I said, maybe the answer is that cards were undervalued this whole time and the true value was much higher than we gave cards credit for....

This is just my opinion of course, and obviously I could be wrong - I hope I'm not wrong, lol. I think this boom is fantastic and TBH, I got out of the hobby at the right times, lol. I got out in 1997/98-ish and I came back in 2016, accumulated a ton of cards between 2016 to the present and now I have an inventory of 1.2 to 1.5 million cards, and a "card boom" just kicked off, lol.... Hey, I'm happy!

Also, there may be a correlation between the bitcoin/crypto boom and the card boom..

[krunchtyme]

Read an article on CNN about investors getting back into cards. If that is the case, it will "crash". Maybe crash is a hard word. Normalize. I don't see Gretzky, Jordan, etc. dropping dramatically, but some of the other stuff will definitely drop in price. The demand will drop when people go back to traveling, eatting out, etc.. as they will have less time and income for things such as cards.

Agreed the card companies learned, more cards is good, but in different products, but even then there is a cap. If the market is truly expanding, are there more younger people in the hobby now? I coach youth sports and few to none collect any type of cards. They all may have some, but not really collectors and definitely not spending a lot of money on boxes, packs, etc.

The market right now seems to be driven by investors and profit margin. Supply and demand seem to be out of sync. It will normalize. Just like you said. As soon as people realize they have a bunch of cards that are worth $20 each, they will post them, as will 50 of their friends. The market will saturate again and the price will drop, or the sales will become slow to none.

Just my thoughts,,,