Why newer cards suck
ranger63
Posts: 328 ✭
I dont know how you guys feel about this topic but i hate to look at newer cards (post 85ish) becasuse there are just so many brands and different sets, there are a dozen rookie cards for each player, they are made of bats and uniforms, and they all seem to be 1/1500. Anyone else feel the same?
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Comments
ahhhhhh ok, yeah sure, thats it!
Good Luck
Kevin
#1 If it was 1975, this post would read "Why is there only 1 card set. That's so boring. I wish we had more choices"
#2 Just because it's available, doesn't mean you have to buy it.
2. yeah, the manufacturers have screwed up with overproduction, too many jersey and serial numbered cards, etc. unless you're investing in newer cards, who cares? again, selection- if i wanted an Alex Rodriguez jersey card, i'd rather have 500 Arod jersey cards that sell for $5 each to choose from, as opposed to 15 that sell for $75 a pop.
3. too many products= great deals for buyers. i only collect PSA graded cards, and i'm having a field day buying Bowman Chrome PSA 9's for $3 that used to cost $15.
<< <i>Why newer cards suck >>
ranger
You have stepped on a topic that has been discussed many times and I can feel your pain - I don't even try to keep up and at this point - frankly - don't care to - I have found a few sets that I enjoy that are also very affordable.
Heritage collectors: see you this winter!!!
your friend
Mike
The irony is if we didn't have "so many brands and different sets, there would be no Heritage
collecting 2003 bazooka standups in psa 9 or better.......
<< <i>why is it that some people get so deffensive about a topic instead of just having an intelligent conversation? >>
If you want an intelligent conversation, stating that someone's collecting pursuits "suck", is probably not the best way to go about it.
When I first joined the boards back in November of 2003, I went guns a blazin' after the new card market, i.e., conveying all the reasons why I didn't like them, that they're bad for the hobby, that they led me to sell my collection in the late ‘90s, etc. Then it dawned on me, what was my objective? Do I want everyone to collect what I do? Since I collect harder to find oddball stuff, the answer is no! Am I looking for unity or confirmation?
However, I still feel somewhat passionate about the misconception regarding the investment potential of not only new cards, but many vintage ones as well.
In the end, we’re free to choose what to like and what to buy.
Now from a collecting and aesthetic point of view, I think it is foolish (note the small "f") to suggest that modern cards "suck." The GU explosion has taken away some of the charm of those cards, but modern cards do have an appeal, if not financially, at least from a collectible angle. Do the rabid vintage guys look at modern cards and truly think they're ugly? I can understand being disillusioned with the sheer volume of cards that have been available for more than a decade, but there are some innovative things about modern cards that I really like.
I think it is great to be able to get an autograph of a player and have a card company backing it up. An autograph card (not a band-aid) looks good, and I like the peace of mind knowing that it's real -- not something some creepy dealer signed in his basement after practicing for a couple of hours. As I said, I like SP holoviews. Does anyone remember seeing the Sports Illustrated with Michael Jordan selected as "Sportsman of the Year"? It was a hologram of him and as it was turned he would smile. This was the early-90's and at the time I thought it was the coolest thing, and remember it getting a decent amount of attention. That's what the holoviews remind me of. By looking at cards you can get a sense of history. The uniforms, and hair styles change, as well as the technology used to produce cards.
Even though I'm most familiar with modern cards, I'm not as interested in the newest thing anymore. I've found myself stuck in the 90's collecting the players I remember watching when I was a kid. At the same time I like vintage cards and can see the charm.
Argue about what will hold value all you want, and I'm not saying I don't care whether or not my cards are "worth" anything, because there is some fun in that, but I think it is naive to suggest that there is no appeal in modern cards and dismiss them altogether.
Everyone thought they could open a store and make insane amounts of money.
So dealers where ordering tons of cases , but they were mainly trading among eachother and other speculators.
Lets say the base of collectors was 100 grand, and each bought a set each year, but because of the new "dealers" and speculators the card companies were making ten times the actual demand amount.
People kept buying them, in the card companies shortsightness they keep producing more and more cards.
This led to a horrible amont of overproduction which led to stockpiles of cards that even to this day 10 years later have not been dissapated into the market
In the early and mid 90's after most of these dealers and speculator have gotten burned by this ponzi scheme all got angry and left the hobby.
Even factoring inflation out, these cards are worth less today than they were worth when they bought it (1988 topps for example)
Companies were slow to react but when they did, they adapted quickly to the fact that the collector base had shrunk by at least 75 %.
They came out with much more limited cards and new inovations such as refractors and game used cards.
But they also by now had to deal with two new elements, Ebay and PSA.
When ebay broke big with collectors the companies lost a ton of dealers but they also saw the limited products were doing well and that people would chase the big cards with a lottery mentality. so their response was to make it even more limited so that the payout would be bigger and the temptation to buy boxes greater.
however in order for the companies to make more money they had to create different brands each with a twist and each with "rare" limited cards.
this backfired in a bad way when angry set collectors could not afford to complete master sets or simply were too stunned by the amount of different sets, as cards became more limited, team collectors felt the same way and left... the last standing group of collectors are the player collector the most hardcore of them all, but as 1/25 or even 1/1 cards hit the market in greater quantities even they feel the squeeze and have to bail out.
the vintage market by this time has also gotten stronger picking up collectors who have exit the new card market.
before PSA the vintage market was volatile and was ridled with overgrading, fakes and lack of a direction.
when PSA got big it brought a unified standard to the vintage market and with the registry it brought back the direction and more importantly the fun back to quite a few of the dissolutioned collectors who were tired from the treatment of the card companies.
with PSA vintage cards have a stable price and with ebay new cards have a price transparency that usually leaves new collectors pretty schoked when they see the huge price drops on cards that were hot just yesterday.
new cards suck because they were made to be hot only for a short amount of time, until the new hot thing comes out again.
i dont know how the companies will countinue to survive, the base card concept is dead, game used cards are overkill now...their last selling point is auto cards and those are starting to drop like crazy too.
Groucho Marx
You have seen the light
But just as important, you don't have to buy everything.
In football I collect and make sets in Topps, Stadium Club (non defunct), Score, Fleer Tradition, Ultra, Upper Deck and SP Authentic. SPx, Heritage, Finest, Bowman's Best are all great products, but not for me. I would rather see them printed rather than not exist at all.
That being said, a couple things that I really do like about new cards is eye appeal and individually serial numbered rare cards (30 or less).
Edited for spelling