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

Enjoyed reading your comments Kevin. Agree with you that the infiltration of "Very Limited" promo cards has changed this promo hobby significantly in the last year or so. Honestly I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. These VL promos are really more like chase cards, aren't they?

One thing I know for sure is I already have too many cards and too many promos!

If new promos are deliberately made to be too unavailable, and then too expensive on the after-market, I just won't bother with those promos.

Also I don't leave gaping holes in my promo binder pages so my collection always appears to be complete to me LOL

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

Kennywood
I have to agree with you although I like to get all promos available (well over 15,000 now) I'm finding it difficult to go after some of these limited edition ones or the same promo with multiple versions. It was one of the reasons I stopped collecting sets and chase cards too many coming out every year, and now I'm seriously thinking about quitting all together in fact if somebody was to offer a decent price for my collectuion I would probably sell and get out.
jeff

I agree with you Kevin. The promo thing is getting out of hand. There area lot of people that just collect promos, but I am a card collector, and I collect even the "worthless" base cards. Promos are nice, but some of them are not really "promos" in that they don't promote the set, they are rare cards that are hard to get.
We can't collect eveything - I think few of us will have a master set of just about anything after a while, with very limited inserts, and almost impossible to find promos. The best any of us can do is collect what we can and enjoy what we have.

I consider any card which advertises a card set to be a promo, whether it's inserted in a DVD, a toy, or given out at a show. However, there have been a few frustrating trends over the past 2-3 years:

1) Exclusive promos given out at ultra-obscure, sometimes non-card related shows, which no card collectors attend; one of the companies has done this a few times in 2011-2012, and these promos never show up on ebay;

2) New promos which are only given to dealers as incentive cards, and not available to the general public;

3) Extremely limited promos which are not advertised in advance, and which you only hear about for the first time months after the fact, when it's too late to find them. This just happened to me with the 2011/12 Planet of the Apes Ursus promo by Studio Hades which wasn't mentioned at all here on Card Talk, to my knowledge, and which I missed the boat on. I can't find one anywhere ! Supposedly only 100 were made.

This thread hits the nail on the head when it comes to promos released, as David said, in the last few years. That is why I have not and refuse to collect any promo issued after 2008. In my opinion, there is no real difference between these "recently" issued promos and chase cards. Once the manufacturer limits the production of a "promo" to just a few dozen or a hundred or so cards, then the majority of collectors will never be able to get their hands on these "free" cards, whose raison d'etre is supposed to entice them to buy the soon to be released product, except thru the secondary market and then have to pay dearly for them. So the target population is not the collector but the dealers and distributors who receive these very limited "free" cards and then sell them online for prices that are equivalent if not higher to some sketch, auto or prop cards effectively making them chase cards masquerading as promo cards.

"Chase cards masquerading as Promo Cards", thats the perfect quote, thanks Albert.

I feel the same way about promo cards at the moment as all the guys above me.

Why are some promo cards being used as case toppers.....whats that promoting?

I get virtually all my promos from ebay, and i check everyday what people are listing, and just recently the promos coming out of the UK are doing my head in, so i've given up on those one's.

And what's the go with Benchwarmers promos, I know in a previous Vault issue they had promos from earlier issues, which i guess wasn't such i bad idea (i managed to finish a few promo sets),but in the new Vault issue they have promos that were not even handed out at the actual convention (from my observations) the 2012 SDCC the one's with the orange background, they'd be classed as inserts now.

Just my view and 2 cents worth.

Check out my posts above about the recent 5Finity cards (Cherry Poptart, Lady Death) which I have seen on ebay

The cards don't say promo or prototype, and don't seem to advertise anything, but they are limited and came randomly inserted in the card packs. For example, Lady Death has 6 of these, some limited to 50 to 150

Are they promos ? They are being sold on ebay, described as such.

This thread title caught my eye and its a great read. I rarely post here because I don't collect promos. I do usually keep ones that fall in my lap because I have trouble getting rid of any cards, even ones from sets I don't buy.

Anyway I'm saying this so that you promo experts forgive my ignorance, but I would call ultra limited promos that are then put up for sale at high prices a scam. These cards are supposed to be advertising, they are supposed to be free, they are supposed to be traded and they are supposed to be just for fun.

What you are describing however is just like any other hot, short printed insert on the secondary market with the exception that the distribution of said promo can be easily manipulated by the maker or whoever is first to get their hands on it.

Its no wonder that some people are getting turned off from collecting promos, but any kind of card collector can feel the same way about the abundance of cards that just aren't worth the selling prices. The trick is to remember that you don't need them. With cards that were made to be free, you really don't need them. What I'm trying to say is that collectors control the secondary market by choosing when to spend and when not to spend. The only way to try to stop the abuse of limited promos is not to provide the demand and laugh at those foolish enough to keep buying.

Don't let the nonsense and greed of others drive you out of a hobby you enjoy when it could be the best of times.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

What I'm trying to say is that collectors control the secondary market by choosing when to spend and when not to spend.

Correct. Sellers can put any old price they like on things but that does not mean you have to run out and pay it.
Look at the Binder promo prices on Ebay. They have gone up and up and up and every time people kept buying them so the price went up again to the point where sellers now want more for the binder promo than they sold the binder for a couple of years ago and that is all the fault of the collectors.