The Coronavirus has been declared a pandemic and travel restrictions are beginning to be implemented. I wonder how this will affect this year's shows.

The Emerald City Comic Con has been postponed. Do you think the San Diego Comic Con will be cancelled? What about the smaller cons or card shows like Philly and Chicago? What are your guesses?

I think they will all be fine unless state or local restrictions force them to cancel.

Everything with any expected large attendance is going to be postponed. Card shows and Cons are the least of it. I don't see how baseball season starts. The NBA season is cancelled, hockey has to follow. They will try the tournament with empty seats, but that may be closed also in the coming days. Broadway shows will be shut down soon. St. Pat's parade is off. Commercial and cargo flights from Europe to the US will be restricted for at least 30 days. Even on domestic travel, every business conference around the US scheduled in March and April has been postponed. That's what all my friends are telling me.

The response now is unprecedented and parts of the economy are basically being closed down for the duration of the outbreak. That is at least a month, could be two, could go well into the summer if the medical end doesn't come through with a cure or doesn't stop driving people into a panic. Many. many people now are too afraid to attend these events, so it makes no sense to hold them, even if the organizers want to.

It's a mess and proportionality an overreaction compared to the normal flu season numbers, but its an unknown virus. so no one wants to take the chance of large scale infection. Who is it that said he wished "to live in interesting times"? Well, this is a new one.

SDCC has said that they plan to have the show as scheduled. While I personally applaud the position they're taking, I doubt that it will hold. SDCC is dependent upon celebrity appearances and vendors. I don't see any celebrities taking a chance by attending. And once that domino falls, the rest will quickly follow.

Attendees who go to the show primarily for the celebrity panels will probably not go. The vendors will see the lowering attendance figures and probably think it's not worth the expense to attend without the full attendance.

I hope I'm wrong in my guess. We do indeed live in interesting times.

As of now yes there are going to many cancellations but by the beginning of May things should start to return to normal, hopefully. The trickle down effect on the economy is going to be serious, a lot of people will not be able to work during upcoming weeks, industries like restaurants, travel, hotels, just to name a few will have a lot of adversity to deal with.

Most I'm seeing are postponements, not outright cancellations.

It's really wait-and-see, but the tough part is when you don't know until the last minute. They just postponed Monster Mania (horror convention) last evening with the show originally scheduled to start this Friday. 48 hours notice is tough for people with travel plans.

According to the Twitter feed, guests Brad Dourif, Catherine Hicks and Chris Sarandon pulled out of Monster Mania shortly before they decided to postpone the whole thing. So that will be the pattern for all entertainment events. Guests are going to bail until its safer. I mean Tom Hanks caught the Coronavirus in Australia, golfers won't sign any autographs at the tournaments and MLB is meeting to discuss the new season now. Hopefully it will all be short lived, but any big gatherings in the next 4 - 8 weeks will be postponed just because of the pressure from all sides.

Wondercon just got cancelled.

I'm guessing most will be canceled/postponed for the next couple of months.

It's too soon to think about SDCC but I assume the Chicago show people are talking about options now. That is still more than four weeks away so there's time to see what the situation is 2-3 weeks from now before a decision needs to be made.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Kennywood:
The Coronavirus has been declared a pandemic and travel restrictions are beginning to be implemented. I wonder how this will affect this year's shows.

The Emerald City Comic Con has been postponed. Do you think the San Diego Comic Con will be cancelled? What about the smaller cons or card shows like Philly and Chicago? What are your guesses?

All Broadway shows were just cancelled. The St. Patrick Day parade was cancelled. Certain school districts and colleges are closing up. I don't think New York did this during World Wars. They didn't do it through the polio epidemic or the recent measles outbreak or when HIV was running rampant. I know they didn't do it after 9/11.

It is really quite extraordinary and its going to be hard for anyone to ignore it because all the closings and the public anxiety is going to effect everyone's daily life. At least in the short term.

Official Statement from The Chicago Non-Sport Card Show...

quote:

We are still 6 weeks out from our scheduled Spring Show. We are currently watching events unfold just like everyone else.
We will make our decision in the coming weeks on whether the show will go on as planned. We will watch for guidance from local and national agencies and our host hotel, The Holiday Inn and Suites in Carol Stream.
As of today, we are still ordering promo cards and making plans to hold the show as normal.
Should that change we will make the appropriate announcements on our webpage, social media, and online forums including Card Talk.
You can sign up for our newsletter on our website: Non-Sport Card Shows

This is the way.

Ed

So on sports card forums I have already seen a few posters express their opinion that the whole Coronavirus fallout is ushering in a reset of overvalued sports card prices and that its time to find bargains. It makes sense in that all pro sports are now in a period of suspension. The big NCAA tournament has been cancelled and will not be a showcase for the next wave of NBA stars. Baseball will not start on time and the disruption of spring training is going to make for some bad early play. The hockey season has stalled 3 weeks before playoffs. The NBA is on hold too. Even golf has cancelled The Players championship. So pro sport players, old and new, aren't doing anything to attract card buyers and card dealers/sellers may not have the liquidity to weather the unspecified lull and still buy new product to sell.

Here's my question for non-sport card collectors, both buyers and sellers. Given that there is a certain crossover when it comes to trading cards, and that hobby shows, flea markets and other physical selling places are postponing or suspending activity, do you think non-sport card prices are going to significantly drop while this is happening?

Uncertainty is the worst thing for any economic market. Even though its easy to see how sports cards will be effected by even a brief pro sports embargo, I think non-sport card prices will look for lower bottoms too. Many sellers buy on credit and can't wait for the dust to settle because bills are due. Some expect to make a good profit at scheduled annual events, now postponed or about to be postponed, and were counting on it. My guess is that we are going to see major dumping, even more than usual, on the new non-sport products releasing in March and April and steeper discounting on cards already for sale. Comments?

Many movies are having their premieres delayed. I wonder how that will affect card companies that have licenses for those movies. I can't see the studios allowing the release of cards before the movies hit the theaters. But that's for future releases. As for existing non-sport cards, I imagine pricing will fall slightly, as people turn their spending toward more urgent things.....like toilet paper.

quote:

Originally posted by Kennywood:
As for existing non-sport cards, I imagine pricing will fall slightly, as people turn their spending toward more urgent things.....like toilet paper.

Yep, BJ's is selling by the square.

As for movie delays, I'm not sure how many card licenses are tied up with them. Possibly Bond with UD, but they are putting out a new Bond Henchmen soon, so they can probably wait till next year since the new release date is in November.

For DC and Marvel properties/characters, Cryptozoic and UD could just do another general mixing of past films, if they need to print up something. Nothing will stop Star Wars and Star Trek from having new sets.

Card makers are more likely to want to try new TV show licenses than risk it on films that are one time titles or even first installments of a new franchise. And yeah, they can't produce anything until it comes out, not even until after the whole TV season ends. It can work with a show provided there is a Season 2. With a film, all interest and excitement is stale by the time the boxes come out, even if its a hit. TOPPS manages to keep those Star Wars "preview to the preview" sets going, but Star Wars collectors are about the only group that would spend money on 3 sets leading up to the main set and they're all carried in 6 different design lines. Not even the Coronavirus is likely to slow down Star Wars.

quote:

Originally posted by Kennywood:
Many movies are having their premieres delayed. I wonder how that will affect card companies that have licenses for those movies. I can't see the studios allowing the release of cards before the movies hit the theaters. But that's for future releases. As for existing non-sport cards, I imagine pricing will fall slightly, as people turn their spending toward more urgent things.....like toilet paper.

Maybe now Upper Deck can finally have a card release align with the movie release!

Trump just declared a National Emergency, mostly to cut through red tape and free up testing. I hope it calms people down instead of ramping them up to create shortages that don't exist until everyone decides they need 50 of the same thing. I get the disinfects, but some stuff is just bizarre. I was at a supermarket today that looked like it was the day before a blizzard. I turned around and went home.

Card collectors are looking good.

I was at a supermarket yesterday and the lines inside were long, but at a Rite-Aid in the same parking lot, they had toilet paper, tissues, and paper towels. They were out of alcohol and disinfectant wipes but I went right in and had only one person in front of me in line.

I drove by a Wal-Mart today. The lot was full and cars were circling so I didn't bother to get into that game.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Trump just declared a National Emergency, mostly to cut through red tape and free up testing. I hope it calms people down instead of ramping them up to create shortages that don't exist until everyone decides they need 50 of the same thing. I get the disinfects, but some stuff is just bizarre. I was at a supermarket today that looked like it was the day before a blizzard. I turned around and went home.

Card collectors are looking good.

I agree. Collectors in all hobbies are cutting back at the moment. We're not dealing with the Black Plague but there are unknowns with this virus and blunders with how it's been dealt with so far. We don't have an idea how many people are infected, we don't have dates for when all the teams can take the field again and we're wondering how long we can hold out with the money onhand if things get worse. I didn't get paid last week and that makes me nervous but I'm not that worried. I still might buy a cheap pack of cards this weekend, you know, to take the edge off since I'm not much of a drinker.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Kennywood:
Many movies are having their premieres delayed. I wonder how that will affect card companies that have licenses for those movies. I can't see the studios allowing the release of cards before the movies hit the theaters. But that's for future releases. As for existing non-sport cards, I imagine pricing will fall slightly, as people turn their spending toward more urgent things.....like toilet paper.

I haven't seen any deals on entertainment cards. . . I've been looking. . .