[Nintari]

As with all collectible things, the value in a particular item is only as good as the person holding it thinks it is. To me, there's no such thing as a "junk era". I just got a sealed complete set of 1990 Donruss off Ebay for under $10.00. Why? Because the vast majority of people consider cards of that era "junk". But to me? Those cards are my childhood. The look, smell, players... everything about that era is awesome to me. Sure, the value isn't there unless you have graded Tiffany etc. but I don't just collect cards for value. Sometimes, it's just the story BEHIND the card. The memories etc.

[scottbdoug]

i second this thought

[bengalsandreds]

As with all collectible things, the value in a particular item is only as good as the person holding it thinks it is. To me, there's no such thing as a "junk era". I just got a sealed complete set of 1990 Donruss off Ebay for under $10.00. Why? Because the vast majority of people consider cards of that era "junk". But to me? Those cards are my childhood. The look, smell, players... everything about that era is awesome to me. Sure, the value isn't there unless you have graded Tiffany etc. but I don't just collect cards for value. Sometimes, it's just the story BEHIND the card. The memories etc.

I feel the same exact way. Those cards bring back so many memories of my childhood. The first baseball card I ever got was a 1987 Topps John Kruk. It absolutely fascinated me. I thought the border was actually made of wood! And you're right about the smell... a freshly opened pack of 1991 Donruss reminds me of being 9 years old. Every time I find unopened wax from this era at a flea market or garage sale at a good price I try to buy it. Like you said, the story behind the card keeps me buying these.

[oneofakindcards]

Topps alone releases, what, 40 products a year??!

Topps' printing presses are so fully leveraged that it has to go back and buy cards from previous years to redistribute...

I think you are grossly over-estimating the number of boxes of each product made today. I doubt there are many if any products with 1 million boxes made these days. You could actually do some math to figure it out, based off of odds of a serial numbered card. For example, if a card is numbered to 100, and there are 300 cards in the set, and the odds are 1:50 packs to get one, then the total number of packs is 100*300*50=1,500,000 packs. Now using this same example, if there are 24 packs per box, then the number of boxes is simply 1,500,000/24 = 62,500 boxes (a far cry from 1 million boxes). Even if the odds were 1:500 packs, that's still just over 1/2 million boxes. The odds would have to get closer to 1:1,000 packs before it reached 1 million boxes in this example. Of course there are a lot of variables (set size, odds, serial number, number of packs/box) that you could tweak.
While I agree if you add up ALL the packs today from all the different products it is overwhelming, it still doesn't come close to the print runs of the 80s and early 90s.

[djohn]

Topps alone releases, what, 40 products a year??!

Topps' printing presses are so fully leveraged that it has to go back and buy cards from previous years to redistribute...

I am not going to argue that there are a lot more products from each company being produced. However you're way off in thinking that the print runs, even in total, come anywhere close to the overproduction of the 80s. Consider that most products now have just a couple cards per pack, and fewer and fewer packs per box. Heck, Topps Dynasty has only 1 card per box. Even adding up all of the different cards being produced, there is still a huge gap between that number and the number of cards produced by each card company during the 80s.

As for the buyback cards, Topps has been doing it since 1991 as a way to try to garner interest in products. They promote the buyback cards as possibly hitting some huge dollar, key rookies, but ultimately the vast majority are beat-up commons. It has nothing to do with their printing presses being overworked, in fact it probably has more to do with the fact they can buy mass quantities of cards for less than a penny a piece which is cheaper than it would be to print new cards.

[oneofakindcards]

I am not going to argue that there are a lot more products from each company being produced. However you're way off in thinking that the print runs, even in total, come anywhere close to the overproduction of the 80s. Consider that most products now have just a couple cards per pack, and fewer and fewer packs per box. Heck, Topps Dynasty has only 1 card per box. Even adding up all of the different cards being produced, there is still a huge gap between that number and the number of cards produced by each card company during the 80s.

As for the buyback cards, Topps has been doing it since 1991 as a way to try to garner interest in products. They promote the buyback cards as possibly hitting some huge dollar, key rookies, but ultimately the vast majority are beat-up commons. It has nothing to do with their printing presses being overworked, in fact it probably has more to do with the fact they can buy mass quantities of cards for less than a penny a piece which is cheaper than it would be to print new cards.

Eh, we can agree to disagree here.

[gosports1]

I agree on the 2010 Baseball Products.Bowman Jumbo Baseball 2010 is also scarce if you check on the Bay and from the Major Distributors .Same with 2012 Bowman Baseball Jumbo's Boxes. Then 2012 Topps Baseball Products are following the Scarce mode. I do a inventory search on their web sites, gosports1