Of the remaining comic stores, most don't sell much in cards anymore largely because they didn't sell fast even in the late 90's to early 2000's. However, I was able to talk one of them into stocking NSU over the past year. I told him I was an old man so I still collect cards.

No one can afford to have even a little store that has mostly non-sport or even just a small selection of old and new non-sport cards. The last of those stores closed in the late 90's. I do see some 90's-2000's non-sport packs in the sports card shop bargain bins.

There are only a couple of places locally where I can get basic supplies like a variety of binder pages (2-card, 3-card, 4-card, 9-card, and full page pages for various promo card sizes) or widevision-size top loaders.

I saw that episode of "Comic Book Men" too and was surprised the dealer didn't at least look into the prices but then the collector wasn't going to like the offer he would have gotten (likely 25-30% of book because he was going to assume the cards were going to actually for 60-80% of book).

quote:

Originally posted by boadster:
Raven, I am stunned how few non-sports cards are actually being graded. As a PSA Member, I can see the numbers, and am surprised how few have been submitted. I get that Beckett also grades, but nonetheless, there aren't a lot of graded Non-Sports items up for sale on Ebay...

Logan, while I enjoy watching Comic Book men, keep in mind that they are highly jaded in their opinion. There is a dealer here who I have said should get some of the cards, but he refuses, and brushes off the idea. Some seem to be pretty simple creatures who are stuck in their ways, and are living on a tight budget, and don't want to deviate from their core competency...As in cards, most comics are never going to rise. It's all about key issues..The autographed cards are one of the only ways to ensure that you are getting a legit autograph from that star...The costume cards are, IMO, nowhere near as desirable...

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

It just seems small minded, and I am thinking specifically of the store nearest to where I am, that the proprietor sells many styles of Marvel, DC, and The Walking Dead issues extremely well, and has willingly branched into keychains, T-shirts, toys, higher end figurines, Funkos, dice board games, compilation comics, and the like, but the one area he WON'T touch is cards. Seems like comics guys don't like card people??? Is it like oil and water?

quote:

Originally posted by boadster:
Seems like comics guys don't like card people??? Is it like oil and water?

That sounds like you think it is a philosophical thing, like the difference between dog people and cat people.

No, business is business and although some hobby store owners miss opportunities, others are just doing what they believe will get them the most customers without accumulating a pile of unsold inventory. Remember a store owner only has so much available cash and it can't be tied up in things that don't sell or have to be priced below what he paid to sell.

It comes down to having knowledge of the non-sport card market and many comic guys and many sports card guys don't know it. So they rely on their distributors, who probably carry only from one or two card manufacturers and maybe not even all the titles from them. They purchase a small number of boxes of only the most well known titles and if they do sell them, they hardly ever go back to get more of the same title. Maybe a store may only have a handful of customers that even buy non-sport cards, so they are not a priority.

I was in my LHS yesterday, it was mobbed with mostly older teenagers. They were playing downstairs and buying cards upstairs. Know what is was? Yu-Gee-O, may not have spelled that right, but that was the game and they had a ton of cards for sale. I didn't know it was that popular, but there it was.

So in closing, my point is, this really is a small hobby, especially when comic and card brick and mortar stores are so scarce. You have to find good dealers and stick with them for first purchases and then go to the secondary market and maybe the same dealers for later buys.

There are several great contacts that post to Card Talk who I deal with regularly. I am not permitted to name them, but they know who they are. I would highly recommend that collectors establish a list of reliable sellers that specialize in non-sport cards and work with them.

One only points to idiot Walt on the episode of Comic Book Men, who, as mentioned on this chain, refused to consider a nice set of Twilight Zone cards simply b/c they were cards. Didn't he call them a pyramid scheme? The guy closest to me seems to be anti-card as well. I do think there is some disdain that hard-core comic people have towards cards..I don't make the news. I just report it..

It is a real disconnect sometimes and that's why it is missed opportunities for some of these stores, but it is Comic Book Men in the title. They don't know about cards and they don't want to learn about cards.

And sad as it is, many, many people can look at those Twilight Zone autographs and not know more than 2 or 3 actors. I mean I have conversations with people and they don't know who Humphery Bogart was, they never saw Casablanca or the Maltese Falcon, classic stuff like that was just before their time. It was before my time too, yet I learned about it and I saw old movies.

It's just not in the culture now. Five years back is a lifetime for people under 30. So even given the TV marathons, cards like that do not have a new demand and the people who do want them already have them. They probably passed because for them it was not worth it.

Well, the Stash at least ought to handle the upcoming "Clerks" card set from Upper Deck...

Wow! What an interesting and insightful post from the past.

I thought there was some returning collectors to Marvel trading cards when Marvel Masterpieces return in 2007 and then again with the 2016 Joe Jusko version of Marvel Masterpieces.

Maybe that's happening again with 2017 Fleer Ultra Spider-Man and 2018 Fleer Ultra X-Men?

This is an interesting thread after reading everything i think that our hobby is dying it is just us oldies keeping it afloat children are not interested in cards you could give a kid a hundred high value cards and he would put them in his bicycle spokes if he had a bicycle all they are interested in are their screens also having no outlets dosent help about 1984 when trading cards first hit the N Z market my first meeting with them was in the Woolworths Supermarket were they were in an opened box at the checkout they were Australian rugby league cards although Topps bubble gum cards were being sold these were the first packs without the gum in them they had what was called a set of gold cards but buying swags of packs never got me a gold card then small bookshops started to sell them and NBA cards in my town the children and schoolkids were going mad over them some schools even banned them from schools the shop i used the owners son did all the card business even then realising that inserts and rookie cards were a bit better than the rest these kids are the last that are still collecting today the hobby is the same here I belong to the N Z club they hold a few meetings a year in the main cities wich I cannot get too and a A G M wich I normally go too but the same thing always crops up how do we get children interested in the hobby it dosent matter what you give the kid you could give him a 1/1 card and he would look at it and shrug his shoulders and within five minutes throw it away thats the trouble children pester their parents for expensive articles clothes shoes phones etc but in this throw away scociety thats what they do here today gone tomorrow no matter what we come up with it will make no difference we are not going to get children into our hobby price and availability have nothing to do with it they are too busy looking at screens so unfortuntely it is going to be us older and over thirties that are going to have to keep the card companies in business just a note In New Zealand with a population of about four and a half million there is only one big dealer and a few home based ones Tha card Club only has about 600 members and that is it so it is up to us even in the U S A there are card companies going out of buisness all the time and I would say that within 10 years that there might not even be any of them left the prices that are charged with the new styles cannot be sustained when there are only 6 cards in a box for $20 or more will kill our hobby but that is what we asked for and that is what we got LOL the hole has been dug and waiting for our dying hobby to be buried

Always fun when someone bumps up an old thread and you get to see how well or how badly the comments have held up over the passing years. The demise of our hobby has been predicted for a pretty long time now and, despite all the innovations and new tech options, not a whole lot has changed. New non-sport card collectors are not rolling in and old collectors are still dropping out in large numbers. At least that's what they say if their posts are true.

I, as one of those old card collectors, have come to the conclusion that the fate of the hobby doesn't really matter to me. I'm still going to collect cards. I have slowed down, I'm not quitting.

Quitting to me is nothing short of liquidation. Selling off or throwing out everything you have in your collection and moving on. There are only 3 good reasons I can think of for doing that and none involve the state of the hobby. 1. You have lost all interest in cards. 2. You need the money. 3. Life changes and you don't have the room or your life partner thinks you're nuts.

Beyond that, card collecting is up to you, even if you are not so much a buyer anymore. As long as you have your collection, you collect.

And there will always be cards to collect. If another one was never made, there are millions on the market already that you don't have. Someone will always be selling them, somehow, somewhere. So I'm not going to be anguished over the future of our hobby. It won't stop me from commenting about it, but I'm not worried about it. If the hobby dies, card collectors can go on for as long as its not their turn.

I was reading a report today about how comic book sales are off another 10 % so far this year, and how so few comic stores are left in existence, aside from several BIG ones which do alot of on line sales

I predict that within 10 years, most comics will be digital only, and maybe alot of cards as well

I have 3 kids, all under age 10, and I have shown them comic books, and none of them are the least bit interested. I don't get it. I was very much into comics at their age, back in the 1980s

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
I have 3 kids, all under age 10, and I have shown them comic books, and none of them are the least bit interested. I don't get it. I was very much into comics at their age, back in the 1980s

I get it. Comic books of today don't even resemble the comic books of the 60's, 70's and 80's. They don't look the same and the stories are not the same. They aren't even individual stories, just continuous storylines and the mainstream superhero titles are not even aimed at kids under ten. This is fan boy reading.

The lines between kid's comics and adult graphic novels have been blurred and erased. The kids are getting shut out because they want things to play with, not things that have to be explained to them. Half the time I don't understand some of the underlying meanings in these comics of today.

The ironic part is that, if you never got the kid into comics or trading cards, they are less likely to pick those hobbies up later in life. What we wanted as kids, we do tend to return to when we have the money and the freedom to collect. But face it, we can't raise kids like we were raised even if we try. Their world is completely different from when we were kids.

With regard to comics, the problem is that in the mid to late 1980s, they felt a need to make everything more "grim and gritty", more "realistic", as things released even 10-15 years before that were deemed to be old school and out of touch.

But once you started going down that path, you just dug yourself into a hole, from which you can never get out, in my opinion. They claim that kids want more "adult" and "realistic" comics. But it gets to a point where the readers have seen it all before, and they just stop buying or reading. Same thing with TV shows

Many, but not all of the comics of the 1940s and 1950s, were more geared towards adolescents, and they sold millions more copies than they do today, so I guess maybe they were doing something right back then. Unfortunately, today's youth are so jaded that you can't return to those earlier times

Yes Raven you are right I myself will never give up collecting cards and there will still be cards out there Trading Cards are a relatively new genre there are still swags of other types of cards to collect the Cigarette Card still commands a following but i do not think any of our clique wil go that way but I would say that a number of this board will collect some Cigarette Cards also there are hundreds of Premium cards old and modern that most members will also collect on the side but not as avidly as trading cards I myself have collected Stamps Coins Postcards and as you put it liquidated them for various reasons. The early New Zealand postcard collection of a specific early NZ photographic companys pictures was purchased by the National Museum so that is still intact as a collection. Also I have a nearly complete collection except for one set of what are called in NZ Weet Bix cards these are premium cards issued by a Cereal Food company since 1941 and still anually issue a set of cards wich really hold no value even though the issue is only out for about three months there are that many they dont hold a great monetary value as there are not enough collector base here to give them a great value but they are there to collect i think that i am up to 8 or 9 folders now i never look at them just annually add to them and i will never get rid of them as these are a lifetimes collection that i have actually collected myself not purchased yes cards in some form will always be there but the collectors although i see from some of the threads that some of the members have children that collect with them they are lucky as i know that when i go my children will liquidate my collection for pennies as tommy c says i cant understand it

Once upon a time, I owned a comic book store. Flash forward 11 years since I closed my doors and I still talk to comic shop owners.
1. All the owners now rely on something else besides comics to support the shop either Funko Pops, toys, art (yes, one shop makes more off of local art then comics even though he is a comic book shop), antiques, records you name it.
2. Current customers are dropping 3.99/4.99 comics to.... buy comics from the 80's and 90s from the budget bins. Why buy 1 issue of the current Spider-Man series when you can by 5 issue from the 90's for the same amount of money. From this standpoint, it looks like the comic book market is shrinking but might actually just be stagnating because back issues are not counted in the current numbers.
3. Going back to one, Mississippi has had 3 shops pop up in the last year that is a store that carries comics as well. One is a pie shop that has a comic subscription service and spinner rack section!

I have 2 totally unrelated comments. . .

1st I think the answer to this question will vary widely depending on where (even which forum) it is asked on.

2nd -- I don't understand why there isn't crossover with gaming stores. While I do see some sports card/comic stores that add gaming I have been in a TON of gaming stores that have no idea what I am talking about when I ask for entertainment cards.

In fact I don't think I've ever been to a gaming store that carried sport or entertainment cards.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon

I have been in a TON of gaming stores that have no idea what I am talking about when I ask for entertainment cards.

To me this has always been the hobby's biggest problem, most people in the world don't even know it exists.

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:

2. Current customers are dropping 3.99/4.99 comics to.... buy comics from the 80's and 90s from the budget bins. Why buy 1 issue of the current Spider-Man series when you can by 5 issue from the 90's for the same amount of money.

So where does the blame lie for this? If a Spiderman comic costs $5 now one from the 90's should be worth at least that much, the fact that it is not worth anything shows what the $5 comic will be worth 10 years from now. If there was no bargain bin the comic would hold it's price. The same goes for cards, if all the older cards which now fetch next to nothing were all destroyed the ones that were left would be worth something.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
I don't understand why there isn't crossover with gaming stores. While I do see some sports card/comic stores that add gaming I have been in a TON of gaming stores that have no idea what I am talking about when I ask for entertainment cards.

While you may have visited a ton of gaming stores, have you ever stopped to talk to a gamer? I don't think so, or else you wouldn't be asking why gaming stores don't sell entertainment cards. Nobody wants them, that's why.

Gamers are not card collectors. They are generally teenagers or young adults, or at least young-minded adults, who regard gaming as a competition and a skill. They run in local packs, with local meeting places. Gaming can't be a solitary pursuit since you must play the game with a group. The purchase of cards has the goal of getting a deck that can win the game. And new game editions and new game rules keep coming out.

None of that has anything to do with entertainment cards. Its not a crossover. Its not even a shared obsession. Some gamers may be fan boys of Marvel or DC, but they are spending their money on functional gaming cards, not on Black Panther boxes. Its as simple as that.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:

quote:

Originally posted by barobehere:

2. Current customers are dropping 3.99/4.99 comics to.... buy comics from the 80's and 90s from the budget bins. Why buy 1 issue of the current Spider-Man series when you can by 5 issue from the 90's for the same amount of money.

So where does the blame lie for this? If a Spiderman comic costs $5 now one from the 90's should be worth at least that much, the fact that it is not worth anything shows what the $5 comic will be worth 10 years from now. If there was no bargain bin the comic would hold it's price. The same goes for cards, if all the older cards which now fetch next to nothing were all destroyed the ones that were left would be worth something.

There is no one to blame just a change.

When I was buying comics as a kid they were 35 to 50cents. When I closed my shop DC has a slogan called Drawing the line at 2.99!

The individual hobbyist determines what is the value of an item.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
While you may have visited a ton of gaming stores, have you ever stopped to talk to a gamer? I don't think so, or else you wouldn't be asking why gaming stores don't sell entertainment cards.

Well, that's a wildly inaccurate assumption.