Has anyone else noticed the new level of incentive cards recently?
I know Rittenhouse has 2 case and 4 case incentive cards for their dealers who buy direct, but these were relatively easy to get on the secondary market.
Their larger purchasers also got Archive Boxes, which had a full master set of all pack inserted cards as well as the odd case incentive card from time to time.
Now, it seems they have upped the game by including cards in the Archive Boxes that aren't part of the regular set- like the Ruby parallel set for Women of Marvel series 2 and exclusive auto cards for the Six Million Dollar Man. The only way to get these cards are in the Archive Box- making it even worse for the average collector who now has almost no shot at making a master set unless they are willing to buy the Archive Box.
I am interested in knowing how you feel about this- is it a good idea or bad?

Thanks.

This isn't by Rittenhouse, but the incentive which upset me was the 40 card (or whatever it was) expansion set that Topps did on their 2012 Star Wars set, that you could only obtain by buying that $500 plate set. And the numbers on the expansion set picked up where the base set left off, so you had to have it !

Well, I am what you would call a bottom feeder. I don't have the cash to plunk down on an archive now or ever in the past so I just don't worry about it. It would be nice to have access to some of the "extras" they put in there but there is nothing I can do about it.
My last Master set was Scooby doo 2.

They'd be nice to have, but I'm not a millionaire and so I don't like never being able to have these super rare or super expensive cards. If they did away with almost impossible to get incentive cards, autograph cards limited to one (or eight) cards, parallel cards, redemption cards, and sticker signed autos, I'd be a lot happier.

quote:

Originally posted by David R:
This isn't by Rittenhouse, but the incentive which upset me was the 40 card (or whatever it was) expansion set that Topps did on their 2012 Star Wars set, that you could only obtain by buying that $500 plate set. And the numbers on the expansion set picked up where the base set left off, so you had to have it !

Well, the joke sorted ended up being on anyone who bought one of those plate sets specifically to get the expansion cards, since all of them were reprinted (with only slight differences) as the first 24 cards in Galactic Files series II. I suspected they might do that if a second series was released, but at the time, no one knew there'd be a second set, so it did put collectors who didn't want to miss them in a bind.

I don't know if Topps will do that again, and I hope they don't since it completely messed up the ordering system for series II set which should've just been renumbered 1-350 but instead were numbered 351-699 with a second number 1 card. I think the reason for this is that they didn't want the re-issued 24 cards to have different numbers.

Chesspieceface, another classic "screw the collector" ploy was the first Marvel Masterpieces set. It was limited to 5,000 serial numbered boxes I believe. Collectors responded and the series sold out. Then people started paying more than double the retail to get older unopened boxes. So what did they do? They reprinted them all and issued them in "tins", along with added cards, for less than the original boxes. So the early people who first supported the product were totally screwed, and the ones who paid double for boxes were twice as screwed.

Whenever I find a new product costing more than a vintage product to truly complete, I say "forget it" and buy the vintage stuff instead. I put that price around $200 to $300. Nothing new should cost more than that to make a master set (four or five boxes max, plus some trading). That's just my opinion, mind you, but one I live by.

People who fall for that kind of manufacture manipulation do it by choice-- and it's there's money so whatever. But there is one advantage to fake scarcities created by companies who play those games: their base sets are dumped and given away for next to nothing by those obsessed with buying and searching cases of cards to finish master sets. So if you can control your impulse to "want it all," you can usally get the best part for pretty cheap!

The Topps Mars Attacks Invasion comes to mind. There are so many levels of chase cards, many of them at impossible odds, that to try to assemble a real master set is basically insane. It would be cheaper to buy all of Topps Inc. in a leverage buy-out deal, then get the cards you need when you liquidate the rest of the company and sell various parts to others to fund the deal.

But I'm not criticizing that they do it. Like I said, there is a real upside to this kind of con artistry. The people who fall for it are basically wasting no one but their own money, and they help drive the prices of the more common cards down to dirt-cheap regions. I think the base cards are great-- so like Dinosaur Attacks did in the 1980s, I'm betting that in the future, this kind of super cheap dumped product will introduce another generation of collectors to cards for years to come.

But then again, I tend to be an optimist.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: monsterwax,

Difficult incentive levels are nothing new -- Artbox regularly had 25 case incentives.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Difficult incentive levels are nothing new -- Artbox regularly had 25 case incentives.

The Artbox Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Pt2 had 2, 5, 10 and 25 case incentive cards. The 25 case one was an autograph card of Ciaran Hinds as Aberforth. Absolutely brilliant actor, but no way would I pay £150-200 on his card. The choice of incentive cards was very average in terms of the 'wow' factor, and not worth buying all the cases for or buying on the secondary market. A real shame...

RA has been inserting exclusive cards into some archive boxes for awhile now though. Autograph variants (Heroes), even sketch card artists that were exclusive to archive boxes.

Making a parallel set in this fashion isn't that big of a shocker (to me anyway). And they'll pop up online from people that crack the archive boxes for the sketches so anyone who truly wants it will have a chance

Ah yes, I remember HP and Artbox. It started with Prisoner and the Pear Tree Leaves card, # to 30. But there also were pack-inserted cards # in the range of 70 to 96, and autographs as low as 50 signed.

I remember when that set first came out, we didn't really know what to expect from the market. One of our favorite dealers/manufacturers listed PTL as a $499 Buy-It-Now on that auction site and it sold within a couple of minutes. For a while I wanted to stay home from work on release days.