[ZSDOne]

Lunacy, all of it ... when $875 is tossed out as a logical price for a box.

$875 is actually high - the LCS near my house had them at $699 (and someone actually bought them, LOL) - at $700 a box, you can get 15 boxes for $10,500

And while that is sheer lunacy, its a lot better than just getting the Cincinatti Bengals from 12 boxes

[rpeterson369]

I keep preaching...we are due for a major economic downturn, people gotta stop spending fortunes on boxes lol. I kinda like the designs, I might be tempted at a rainbow or two if I wasn't already so far behind on a gazillion others lol. At $100 a box I think I'd be tempted to try one. No way am I paying that much! Insane

In all honesty it's not people like you or me buying it and driving the prices up.  It's all of the fly by night breakers that are buying cases of this stuff, and making profits off of folks buying in team by team.  Once breaks started to pick up back in 2013 and 2014, you could literally do the math and see that most were clearing double what they pay for a case.  Over time the distributors have taken notice, and now raised the prices.  Breakers are still paying it because they can sneak out some margin, but normal folk ain't buying boxes or cases anymore.

Watch though, because more and more breakers are having a heard time filling, and it'll be curious to see if they start to drop out.  That is when the market will correct itself.  We went from maybe a few hundred people breaking in 2015, to thousands of breakers on Facebook Live the past 2 or 3 years.  Nothing is wrong with the hobby besides breakers at this point.  A lot of them have even dropped and resorted to breaking Retail instead of Hobby, and that's why the stores look like they do.  

TLTR.......Stop buying into breaks!!!

[rjcj2017]

In all honesty it's not people like you or me buying it and driving the prices up.  It's all of the fly by night breakers that are buying cases of this stuff, and making profits off of folks buying in team by team.  Once breaks started to pick up back in 2013 and 2014, you could literally do the math and see that most were clearing double what they pay for a case.  Over time the distributors have taken notice, and now raised the prices.  Breakers are still paying it because they can sneak out some margin, but normal folk ain't buying boxes or cases anymore.

Watch though, because more and more breakers are having a heard time filling, and it'll be curious to see if they start to drop out.  That is when the market will correct itself.  We went from maybe a few hundred people breaking in 2015, to thousands of breakers on Facebook Live the past 2 or 3 years.  Nothing is wrong with the hobby besides breakers at this point.  A lot of them have even dropped and resorted to breaking Retail instead of Hobby, and that's why the stores look like they do.  

TLTR.......Stop buying into breaks!!!

Agreed ... I've been primarily buying retail for 30+ years.

I've enjoyed the reduced prices, tradeoff being less and better content.

The people that are not "baller" enough to afford hobby are not my problem and I cannot wait for them to go away so I can start collecting again.

[rpeterson369]

Agreed ... I've been primarily buying retail for 30+ years.

I've enjoyed the reduced prices, tradeoff being less and better content.

The people that are not "baller" enough to afford hobby are not my problem and I cannot wait for them to go away so I can start collecting again.

Retail is great, it's just never been impacted like this before.  It had been hard enough to find the hot product at times already, but now that we have breakers and flippers out there, they are killing it quickly.  No one has a chance.  I'm telling you I don't even think half that product ever hits the floor.  I guarantee you there is management at those places with agreements with those vendors servicing their store.