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RIP, Upper Deck?

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by TheSportsPredictor, Aug 13, 2009.

  1. Rusty Shackleford

    Rusty Shackleford Active Member

    Is that guy on the right about to punch that chick in the arm?
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 15, 2014
  2. Bad Guy Zero

    Bad Guy Zero Active Member

    Topps Total was great the first couple of years it was out. The design was solid without the flashiness of the higher-priced Topps, Donruss, Upper Deck, Fleer, etc. Products. It had a couple of insert sets that were easy to put together because there was one in every pack and it took many, many packs to put the full set together. But then it fell victim to multiple parallels and the autograph and relic cards. And Topps apparently decided to not give a shit about what the cards look like.

    I really like some of the retro sets that have been coming out. Topps Heritage is a great set though it's a pain in the ass [and expensive] to put together. But now there seems to be a trend to try to attract non-collectors by including 40 card Obama insert sets and cards with Abraham Lincolns hair.

    I'd like to see the card companies scaling back to releasing only four or five products for each sport:
    1. An inexpensive line [under $1.50 per pack] that has solid design, zero parallels, and no more than two insert sets.
    2. A line priced in the $3-$5 per pack range that would be printed on a higher quality cardstock and feature foil stamping and/or similar bells and whistles. One or two parallels and no more than five insert sets would be included for the master collector. Autograph and relic cards would be limited to top names in the sports and top draft picks. Pulling one of these cards should be exciting. That's diminished when you have to visit a team's website to make sure that - yes, indeed -Kevin Payne plays for the Chicago Bears.
    3. A retro set [max $5 per pack] that would include current and former players. Parallels, inserts, and auto/relic cards would follow along the lines of 2. Some of the parallels and inserts would be hobby exclusive.
    4. A set marketed to the investor/collector. $100 packs that contain two cards? This is that set.

    The card companies need to realize that just because they can produce ten sets a year per sport doesn't mean that they should. They turned their backs to collectors many years ago opting to sell their souls to people that have $100 to spend on a single pack that might contain a piece of a bat that Babe Ruth might have actually held at some point. Now those people have no interest in dropping hundreds of dollars on cards because their attention is turned to decreasing the impact of the current economic crunch on their various accounts. So the card manufacturers resort to signing exclusive agreements with the various leagues thinking that they can boost sales by getting rid of the competition. I got bad news for them: people aren't going to be more likely to buy your ugly-ass, overpriced cards just because it's the only product available.

    It's time for the card compaqnies to CTRL-ALT-DEL and go back to square one. Win back the love of the collectors. Release an inexpensive product that's affordable to kids. They're the collectors of tomorrow. Many of us older collectors have continued to purchase cards because we remember how much fun it was when we were kids. Give us that feeling again and we'll never go away.
     
  3. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Well said, BGZ.

    I, too, like some of the retro sets they've come out with, although I don't really pay attention to the industry these days. My subscription to Beckett ran out more than a decade ago.

    Have NEVER understood the appeal of the "game-used xxx" cards, however. Never will.
     
  4. My earliest memories of childhood are of walking to 7-11 every morning. My dad bought a pack of smokes and bought me a pack of Topps baseball cards. Now he has chronic health problems and I have a complete set of 1980 Topps, and near-sets of just about everything else from that era (including all sets from 1986 through the early 1990s when I got priced out).

    Now that I have a son, a newborn still, I was thinking about getting back into it through him once he gets old enough.
     
  5. cranberry

    cranberry Well-Known Member

    Couple points:

    --UD and other companies never "priced out" kids; the companies continued to manufacture low price-point sets (.99) throughout the late '80s and '90s, however, kids didn't want them. Kids (and adults) wanted expensive cards with the stupid chase sets.

    --The "hobby" died when collectors realized almost all of the cards were being way overproduced and would never carry values like the cards from their parents' attics.

    --Companies first reacted by adding more and higher "chase" cards.

    --Then around '93 or '94 Pinnacle/Score started produciing limited runs (3,000 cases per product, numbered boxes, etc.) using the marketing slogan "Guaranteed Scarce," which then forced the bigger companies to do the same. To make up for the lack of volume (sales) caused by the limited runs, the companies all began issuing 10 or more releases each year.

    That's how the industry began evolving into the mess it is today.
     
  6. Bad Guy Zero

    Bad Guy Zero Active Member

    Obviously, I'm quite envious of your complete set of 1980 Topps Baseball.

    Here's something to do for your son: pick up a box of baseball or football or whatever sport(s) you choose from the year your son was born. Put them away until a rainy day when he's six or seven years old. Bring them out and open them. You'll have stories about those players pictured on those cards. You'll pass along some sports history and possibly even the joy of collecting sportscards.
     
  7. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I used to make money in high school by selling cards at shows.

    This was when Gregg Jeffries was supposed to be the next Mickey Mantle and for whatever reason, it was really hard to find 1988 Fleer cards. A buddy of mine called the Fleer distributor and found out when the Price Club by us was getting a shipment. We found out and my friend and I split a crate of Fleer. I think it was about $1,500.

    We start opening the boxes and we find out that they're cellophane packs, not the wax packs we were expecting. It was about 3,000 cellophane packs of cards that the retail price was about twice what we paid and they were selling at shows for about $2-3 each because you couldn't find them anywhere...

    Well, with Fleer cards about 20-25 years ago the cards were sorted well. If you opened about 10 packs you could find out which cards came before Jeffries and Mark Grace and make a pretty educated guess about whether you were going to get one in a pack.

    We had 3,000 packs of cards. By going through our "system" we pulled 178 Jeffries and 146 Graces out of just about 500 packs.

    We went to a show about a week later and they were selling the cello packs for $2 each. We sold them for $1.50 (Three times what we paid) and sold out in about two hours. At that show, the Jeffries card was selling for $15. We sold 75 of them for $12 apiece and about 50 of the Graces for $3 apiece when everybody else was selling them for $5. 20 years later, the Grace card might be worth $5 and the Jeffries card might be worth a dollar.
     
  8. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    I love that story. I vaguely remember going to Price Club at that time to buy cards. There is zero chance a Jeffries card is worth a buck now, right?


    I have the age old story - I have tons of cards from 1972-75 - but my brother (!) threw them out when we moved.

    I got back into it as an adult at 24 or so in 1989. I bought Cal Ripken rookies for $4-$5 at card shows. I have probably 30-35 of his rookies, split between all three brands - and one Topps traded for that year. I doubt they are worth much now.
     
  9. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    You going to start smoking too?

    I keed...I keed... That's a neat story and a great idea.
     
  10. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    My collection has been professionally appraised for insurance purposes for $75K.

    My wife asked me, "Could you sell it for $75K?" I said no.

    She said, "I'll get the gasoline, you get the matches..."

    Here are the highlights of my collection...

    1959 Bob Gibson rookie professionally graded at a 9.
    1959 Mickey Mantle professionally graded at a 9. I paid $30 for it at a show when I was 10.
    1955 Ted Williams
    I have every Mantle from 1963-68.
    Tom Seaver rookie. I haven't had it graded, but it would probably be an 8.
    Nolan Ryan rookie
    Steve Carlton rookie
    Rod Carew rookie
    Johnny Bench rookie
    George Brett, Robin Yount, Reggie Jackson rookies...

    I got a couple Mantles from my grandfather, but the rest I got on my own at shows over the years. I've sold a bunch over the years, but people stopped buying that stuff, or at least paying Beckett value for it about 10 years ago.

    The inserts ruined the hobby. I started seeing kids buying packs, pulling the inserts and throwing the rest away. It was sad to watch...
     
  11. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    I went to some big national memorabilia convention a couple weekends ago in Cleveland with a buddy who is a pretty good autograph collector. His mancave has about 12-14 HOF autographs in it (Namath, DiMaggio, Mantle, Koufax). He has been going to these shows for years, and he said the memorabilia market has absolutely crashed.

    It was sad seeing these guys with fantastic collections just begging you to buy something. Take solice that the MFers that ruined the baseball card market are now nearly ruined themselves.

    On a side note, I get back to find out that my father in law has a baseball autographed by Jackie Robinson who was one of his patients a few decades ago.
     
  12. 93Devil

    93Devil Well-Known Member

    Give me a baseball card pack with 25 cards for $2.00 and I will be a collector again.
     
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