[rjcj2017]

Basketball has been sooooo disappointing this year. I haven't found any basketball at any of the Bay Area Targets all season. Hoops, Donruss, Contenders, Prizm, Optic, nothing. I've settled and bought some blasters on eBay (paying the normal price I would have paid at Target so it's not like I was overpaying and got a really nice Barkley auto redemption hit) but it's ridiculous that you can't walk into a store and find any retail, especially with hobby box prices being astronomical.

So congrats on finding something AND getting what you wanted out of it.

Thanks man ... Hoops and Donruss were pretty easy to get around here for a while.

I got lucky on Prizm and must have found it right before the Bubbas got to it.

Same with Contenders, it didn't sit around for more than a day the two times I saw it.

Optic, though? As I said, I've only seen one empty vending/display box ... in like seven stores ... three in my area and the four I ventured out to last week.

It sucks for sure. I'm pretty confident it won't be like that next year, because the draft is supposed to be pretty weak.

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These guys in the Sports Card Investor discord chat have entire rooms dedicated to finding retail versions of this stuff and buying every bit of it on the spot. I see tons of posts about people cleaning out entire displays.

Apparently there is a company called Excel Marketing who stocks the sports cards in retail. A couple months back a female employee posted pictures on Facebook of her with dozens and dozens of Prizm basketball blasters and mega boxes...that her boyfriend followed her store to store and bought immediately as she stocked them...and in the picture she was wearing her Excel branded employee shirt and a name tag...I think it got blown sky high on the BO forums.

I've yet to find a single Optic anything in retail this year at all. So congrats! Two amazing pulls.

Thank you my good man.

That's awful about the Excel lady ... bad enough when it's the sharks, 10 times worse when it's an "inside" job.

The vendor that scored me the Optic blaster said that the card shop owner that cleared out the shipment in his other store ($900+) told him that the reason he was doing it was so that he could sell it in his shop, because the card shop owner's distributor wanted to charge him $400 per hobby box.

So, a definite trickle down effect there.

On one hand I want to tell the card shop owner, "hey, that's not my problem, leave retail alone" ... on the other hand, I get (to some degree) that he's got a business to run.

Personally, I would never buy secondary retail (other than singles) ... too many factors.

For example, I hit Zion and Morant in my one blaster. It's very possible that those could be the only Zions and Morants in that entire shipment.

Let's say there were nine other blasters in that allotment, and the card shop guy bought them all.

He sells all nine in his shop to the same customer, and let's assume he's marking them up to at least $30 for his time and trouble.

Guess what, that customer spend almost $300 after tax on nine dud blasters, because neither he nor the card shop owner knew that I got the one blaster with the Zion in it.

I could be totally wrong ... there could be a 1/1 Prizm auto of Zion in the other blasters for all I know ... but I doubt it.

The whole thing is completely frustrating. I consider myself extremely lucky to pull the Zions I have to this point.