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+--- Thread: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too (/thread-1617404.html)
Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - jaredhuizenga - 05-14-2020
Bowman drops next Friday (apparently) and Blowout has HOBBY boxes (not jumbo, not HTA, HOBBY) going for $280.
https://www.blowoutcards.com/pre-orders/2020-bowman-baseball-hobby-box.html
That means blasters and hangers will be impossible to find in retail, too.
Guess I'm a singles collector now without a chance of landing a hot prospect and a stack of Donruss cards that get opened when I need to scratch the itch.
Do we blame Phil Hughes? Gary Vee? Scott Baio? That orange potato-looking fella in DC?
I liked this better when it was a hobby and not the flipping business it's turning into.
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - kerryandbeth - 05-14-2020
First of all, calling Nancy Pelosi a 'fella' is not necessary in spite of any similarity!
Prices are crazy and there is a post about that. Being out of work I am still relieved I bought Bowman Sterling back in February before it gets out of reach for most.
And, yes, blasters will be hard to find except marked up on eBay. Are the hobby days gone??
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - jaredhuizenga - 05-14-2020
(05-14-2020, 08:34 PM)kerryandbeth Wrote: Are the hobby days gone??
Just like basketball this year, that appears to be the case.
For Prizm this year I was able to pick up a handful of hangers on release day, but never saw them again. Never saw Optic in retail. Was able to pick up 3 blasters of Prizm marked up 50% at the LCS and an Optic blaster marked up 100%.
I suspect Bowman will be the same thing this year.
I have no issue with having high-end product. In fact I like it - people buy boxes/cases for hits and then I can pick up the "scraps" that I want for cheap. But when basic, flapship base sets aren't even close to affordable, that's when I get mad.
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - flamethrower - 05-15-2020
(05-14-2020, 08:00 PM)jaredhuizenga Wrote: I liked this better when it was a hobby and not the flipping business it's turning into.
^^^ This right here and it F*ing sucks...
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - mgruber2 - 05-15-2020
(05-14-2020, 08:34 PM)kerryandbeth Wrote: First of all, calling Nancy Pelosi a 'fella' is not necessary in spite of any similarity!
LOL!
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - Texsun55 - 05-15-2020
Other than basketball product I have been able to find most everything that has come out retail. I live in suburban area and close to some smaller town and did manage to find some basketball Prizm and Mosaic. In bigger cities the LCS has connections and snags up everything as soon as it comes out. I really doesn't bother me that much if individuals are buying some and end up selling a little on secondary market, but it really aggravates me for LCS and big online sellers who have access to hobby product at wholesale price selling Walmart and Target exclusive product for twice retail price and more. I am not talking a few months after it releases but it is showing up on Blowout and others within the week that it was released.
I am old enough to remember and collected prior to the Junk wax days, and what we are seeing now is what led to that era. High secondary market values leading to over production by the card companies. Now instead of flooding the market with base product they are flooding it with endless releases of product with different names. With all the various products, and then variations and parallels you can take any given rookie and there will be as many rookie cards for him in circulation as there was in the Junk Wax heyday.....Rant over
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - rjcj2017 - 05-15-2020
Jared, I agree 100 percent with everything you said.
Wanted to point out one thing and please don't take it as me picking on you, because I consider you one of my longtime buddies on here ... but you mentioned you grabbed some after market blasters at 50 percent and 100 percent markups.
That is the problem right there ... if you support these losers, they will keep doing it.
I get it, I do ... like someone else mentioned above, I found exactly one blaster of Optic basketball and none so far of Mosaic.
One blaster, total, of two different products ... in seven different stores.
I just don't have the time ... you know, with being a contributor to society and all by having a real job ... to chase the delivery trucks around a 50-mile radius and become buddy-buddy with the distributors.
So I can't compete. It's beyond frustrating.
But I feel like real collectors need to stick together and not give in to the temptation to support these dooshes.
Anyway, again, please don't take it the wrong way, I am as frustrated as you are.
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - jaredhuizenga - 05-15-2020
(05-15-2020, 12:22 PM)rjcj2017 Wrote: Wanted to point out one thing and please don't take it as me picking on you, because I consider you one of my longtime buddies on here ... but you mentioned you grabbed some after market blasters at 50 percent and 100 percent markups.
Anyway, again, please don't take it the wrong way, I am as frustrated as you are.
No offense taken. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't pay the markup, but since my Walmart stopped selling cards, I'm down to Target and the LCS and after weeks of not seeing Prizm, I caved.
Since Prizm always seems to be hot, Optic had become my default. So after weeks of seeing empty trays every time I looked, I bought the lone blaster on the LCS shelf.
The next time I was in they were selling Target and Walmart exclusive baseball. They weren't marked up at all, but it dawned on me that it was possible, if not likely, that this is where all of the retail product is ending up.
Haven't been back since and not planning to any time soon.
I've even gone so far as to buy my supplies online from other vendors rather than them. Nice enough people working there, but snatching up retail product to get people in the door is pretty shady.
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - rjcj2017 - 05-15-2020
(05-15-2020, 02:20 PM)jaredhuizenga Wrote: No offense taken. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't pay the markup, but since my Walmart stopped selling cards, I'm down to Target and the LCS and after weeks of not seeing Prizm, I caved.
Since Prizm always seems to be hot, Optic had become my default. So after weeks of seeing empty trays every time I looked, I bought the lone blaster on the LCS shelf.
The next time I was in they were selling Target and Walmart exclusive baseball. They weren't marked up at all, but it dawned on me that it was possible, if not likely, that this is where all of the retail product is ending up.
Haven't been back since and not planning to any time soon.
I've even gone so far as to buy my supplies online from other vendors rather than them. Nice enough people working there, but snatching up retail product to get people in the door is pretty shady.
No worries, my good man ... I hesitated to even post because I didn't want it to come off as an attack.
(And, for what it's worth, I do hope you pulled some good stuff.)
Yeah, the card shop thing bothers me.
The day I got my one blaster of Optic, the distributor was there at Walmart putting out other stuff and handed the blaster to me (it had been buried under some Pokemon stuff in one of his big cardboard boxes).
He told me that the day before in one of his other stores, a card shop owner cleared out $900 worth of Optic and said it was because the card shop owner's distributor was charging him $400 per hobby box.
So the card shop owner "had" to clear out Walmart so that he would have some product in his shop.
Wow, so noble, right? I'm assuming he wasn't selling the blasters for $19.99.
It's like dude, that's your problem, leave retail alone.
(And, if I am wrong and he was indeed selling them for SRP, then I sort of apologize. But I doubt I'm wrong.)
Anyway, I hate that this is such a sore subject for me.
I generally get a lot of joy out of cards and just haven't been feeling it the past few months with the losers who keep doing this.
RE: Guess I'm Priced out of Baseball This Year, Too - jaredhuizenga - 05-15-2020
(05-15-2020, 02:31 PM)rjcj2017 Wrote: No worries, my good man ... I hesitated to even post because I didn't want it to come off as an attack.
(And, for what it's worth, I do hope you pulled some good stuff.)
Yeah, the card shop thing bothers me.
The day I got my one blaster of Optic, the distributor was there at Walmart putting out other stuff and handed the blaster to me (it had been buried under some Pokemon stuff in one of his big cardboard boxes).
He told me that the day before in one of his other stores, a card shop owner cleared out $900 worth of Optic and said it was because the card shop owner's distributor was charging him $400 per hobby box.
So the card shop owner "had" to clear out Walmart so that he would have some product in his shop.
Wow, so noble, right? I'm assuming he wasn't selling the blasters for $19.99.
It's like dude, that's your problem, leave retail alone.
(And, if I am wrong and he was indeed selling them for SRP, then I sort of apologize. But I doubt I'm wrong.)
Anyway, I hate that this is such a sore subject for me.
I generally get a lot of joy out of cards and just haven't been feeling it the past few months with the losers who keep doing this.
Luckily I did alright:
One Prizm blaster had a Zion base and Emergent insert; one had a Ja base; and the third had a Herro silver Prizm and a Hachimura prime swatch /10.
Optic has a Zion My House insert and a purple auto of Okpala.
But I'm with you. I got back into the hobby because a) I finally had some excess cash to do so, and b) because it was fun to have a hobby again. And, yeah, the last few months haven't been much fun.
Don't get me wrong, I like picking up singles that I like, and organizing/sorting has always been a stress-reducer for me, but stopping in the card aisles and only seeing Donruss, Topps, occasionally Heritage and the same 15 boxes of hockey, racing and soccer cards sucks a lot of the fun out of it.