General Forum

Looking at the state of the hobby my mind goes back to 1990. This was a combination of overproduction and over hype in the hobby. 1990 Donruss were selling for over $100 a box because "they are so hard to get". I saw a man and a woman get into a fist fight in Sams Club over 1990 Pro Set football. 1990 Score was riddled with intentional errors like the Sandberg card.

Keep in mind that this was pre internet or at least pre ebay so I would say that things are magnified right now in comparison. I don't see myself buying any more new product for quite some time. That aspect of the hobby just isn't fun for me anymore.

New product? We don't need no stinkin' new product!

Besides, plenty of gaps to fill in other places. Some of the sets I still need, well, I can wait a few years when sanity returns and the market is reflooded (Donruss FB, USFL, 2021 products, etc)

Edit: And this listing says it all for me https://www.ebay.com/itm/294156085261?hash=item447d11a80d:g:6BMAAOSwkuVgjz6B

I'm on board this train. I stopped buying new product quite a while ago. I am only buying local stuff I want when it comes up on auction or facebook market place at the right price. Luckily (or not) I have thousands of cards to organize and keep me busy until the pendulum swings.

Totally agree, I bought a pack of new stuff for 70 bucks (marked up) just on impulse and got 4 dollars worth of cards.  I have way more fun finding badly listed eBay lots or trading on here and it's not like most of this stuff will go up from where it is.

I dont see how it can go anywhere but down except for maybe the 1/1s. Case in point 87 Topps baseball with that awesome rookie class. Look at those cards now

Totally agree. I'm not buying from the lcs who buys up everything in Wal-Mart's and has a group of people stand in line for him at target to wipe it out. This whole thing has discouraged me from buying. So now I'm mainly selling and trading. I mean, my jaw hit the floor when I saw wwe sold listings on ebay! Now, I just need people to answer back or try to counter a trade so I can keep momentum going! 

I've been saying this for awhile now. Greed, overproduction, and shady dealers put the hobby on life support around 1993, and the baseball strike in 1994 was the kill shot. Things are more sophisticated today with all of the fancy product, graded cards, and online sales, but ultimately history is repeating itself. Interestingly enough, all of the current flippers, speculators, and 'investors' were either too young to have known what happened in that era, oblivious to history, or don't care.

As a collector, I will say to other collectors, 'hang in there'. The market is already showing some signs of cooling...more people are spotting new product in stores, eBay sales (while still brisk) are not going through the roof for ridiculous items, Topps quality control is in the toilet, and a lot of folks selling on COMC have said that sales are grinding to a halt. This coupled with all of COMC's shipping and processing problems, plus PSA not taking submissions probably means that the hobby is already seeing a correction.

History does tend to repeat itself.  There is a good chance of a work stopage in baseball after this season.  The last time I read on the contract negiotations the ownere, and players had a lot of mistrust between them.

For years I have been buying Score football boxes.  I probably will skip this year, because of the high prices for presales.  There is a listing for a blaster box at $150.00.

Hopfully things get better soon.

I turned 14 the summer of 1990, and by mid-summer I was making a few bucks doing odd jobs. I remember buying SIX wax boxes of 1990 Donruss for $16 over the summer. That was a lot of pack opening, lot of sorting and set building, and very little value. I think I sold off those cards and many more junk wax commons after college around 1999 for maybe $50 plus shipping cost. 

I have had multiple people tell me not to worry, because Topps and Panini know better than to over produce this time around.

1. It is not in either companies interest to not sell more cards.
2. They are already producing a ton, it's just broken into different sets/releases now.

I just wish the junk wax prices would come back down to earth.