quote:

Originally posted by tangent:

Personally, I handle it by killing my completist tendencies.

I do the same thing Jen. The problem is its against the collector's instinct and that's why we are seeing so many collectors leave the hobby. I maybe wrong, but that's my gut feel.

Ceejay - you are probably correct, but I don't think the woodies is the only answer.

Both of the "dual" signers wil be available in packs, so it's not as if you can't acquire them as singles. That's a much better situation than having an auto that is only available as an incentive and never in packs at all. I don't like these incentives either, but I understand the reason behind them. It's not greed, but dealers who order product and then provide them to us need something to help defray costs of ordering product and keeping it in inventory. I don't think it necessarily increases orders from dealers to the manufacturers, if so it's certainly not a lot.

quote:

Originally posted by Redemption:

quote:

Originally posted by Arvin Sloane:
As much badmouthing as Topps has received recently at least they can say that a collector has a chance, albeit a very slim one to pull any card in their products.

The Jennifer Garner Elektra auto... collectors had only the secondary market to be able to get that card as it was only given to a few dealers as an incentive.

Quite true, however the key word was, "recently."

quote:

Originally posted by tangent:
One of the advantage of these incentives going to dealers is that they are available to collectors. Let's say there's 50 of these cards made. If they were pack inserted, most of those would be retained by the collectors who pulled them. This would mean low supply on the secondary market and high prices. So, unless you are lucky enough to pull one, it's impossible to complete.

By going to dealers, all 50 are likely to hit the secondary market. I know it seems counterintuitive, but this actually reduces the prices on the ultra-rare cards. Yes, they are still expensive but not the thousands of dollars level.

Personally, I handle it by killing my completist tendencies. I just work out which cards I am going to collect and call that 'complete'. In fact, because the dealers can make money from the incentives, I believe I get lower prices on the boxes I do buy and it's actually cheaper for me to collect what I want.

Don't all flame me at once I just thought the other view might be useful for discussion.

No, Jen your thought that these cards tend to lower box prices does have merit. I said this when these case incentives reared their ugly little heads awhile back.

I've always felt a solid product didn't need help to sell itself. I also believe dealers tend to buy just a little bit more to reach the incentive level and then sell the product at cost or even less. Good for the collector in the short-run, but somehow I doubt it's healthy in the long-run as you definitely get a trickle down effect throughout all levels of that product from the base set on up.

Who are these dealers that are out there buying 3-10 cases of new card sets ? Do they really exist anymore ? It seems to me that this was something which we saw years ago, not now. Again, I ask this question not looking for names. All I know is that when I go to the Philly show and see the "big" dealers, I don't see anyone breaking cases in this volume. They do maybe a case or two tops.

So who are the dealers getting these 10 case incentives, and how many dealers do you think will get these dual autos ? None that I know of.

Let's remember that a 10 case purchase gets you all 3 incentive cards. Some dealers can indeed move this much product, as they will list cases near or at cost just to get rid of them knowing their profit will come from the 3 incentive cards.
While the short lead time on this product might hamper sales it can be done.

I don't want to name anyone, but they are out there, in numbers that may surprise you. There are even private collectors who break that much, and then some. 10 cases is far from unheard of.

Doesn't RA put some incentive cards in boxes? I think that's a good formula for the situation as it is.

Personally, I see no difference between multi-case incentive's and extremely "rare" cards. They're both going to gut your wallet.

quote:

Originally posted by David R:
Who are these dealers that are out there buying 3-10 cases of new card sets ? Do they really exist anymore ? It seems to me that this was something which we saw years ago, not now. Again, I ask this question not looking for names. All I know is that when I go to the Philly show and see the "big" dealers, I don't see anyone breaking cases in this volume. They do maybe a case or two tops.

So who are the dealers getting these 10 case incentives, and how many dealers do you think will get these dual autos ? None that I know of.

I am surprised that you keep asking if there are dealers that buy 10 or more cases.
If you did a simple search on ebay when a new set is released, you will many dealers who list over 200 lets say auto's that come only 1 per box. You can also do a simple search in ebay stores and see many sellers listing over 100 auto's or to make it easy sketch cards.

Lets start off with the Women of Marvel 9 case sketch card. There have been over 50 of them on ebay selling for less than $200 and at the Philly show, at least 5 different dealers had at least one, I saw 1 dealer that had 3.

There were at least 5 different sellers on ebay who listed over 200 Women of Marvel sketches at the same time. That is 16 cases. And right now there is one seller that has 146 Women of Marvel sketches listed in their ebay store.

There is one seller that has 78 DC legacy sketches listed in their ebay store. that is more than 6 cases. I can only imagine how many more the seller has already sold.

Also you stated
"All I know is that when I go to the Philly show and see the "big" dealers, I don't see anyone breaking cases in this volume"

The Philly show has become a small trading card show (sorry Harris). Many "big" dealers don't go their because most don't live in the North East of the United States. They live everywhere. Texas, California and even Internationally like Germany and Australia. It would not be cost effective for them to travel to the Philly show.

The title of this thread is also misleading. "Ultra-Rare". Rittenhouse Archives has been producing 9 card incentives for years, and they are not hard to come by. Artbox has 25 case incentives and Topps inserts 1 of 1 cards. To me Ultra-Rare should be a term used only for 1 of 1 cards.

quote:

Originally posted by David R:
Who are these dealers that are out there buying 3-10 cases of new card sets ? Do they really exist anymore ? It seems to me that this was something which we saw years ago, not now. Again, I ask this question not looking for names. All I know is that when I go to the Philly show and see the "big" dealers, I don't see anyone breaking cases in this volume. They do maybe a case or two tops.

So who are the dealers getting these 10 case incentives, and how many dealers do you think will get these dual autos ? None that I know of.

Even a mid-level dealer probably orders at least 10 cases of anything with even a modest demand.
The local dealer I usually use opens a certain number of cases but also takes orders from collectors and I've bought between 1 and 4 cases of various products from them over the last year. If I ordered enough for the 2 or 3 case incentive they send me that too but Inever ordered enough for any 9 or 10 case incentives but I'm sure my order along with what they planned to open and maybe a few other case buyers helped them reach that level so they did get one.

10 cases is insane! lol i'd only buy them if i was a billionaire! lol
Just a few questions:
How many cards per pack?
How many Packs per box?
and how many boxes per case?
So basically, for 10 cases, how many cards total would you get?
And - if this isn't too cheeky - how much is a case? i'm sure they vary depending on company and product, but a rough guess? as i haven't bought one before and never will do...unless i'm a billionaire!

10 cases (judging by prices on the bay) would cost about $5000
this would get you
120 Autographs (inc hopefully at least 10 Mulder or Scullys)
120 Pieceworks (proberably including a couple of rare short packed variants)
10 case cards
3 pieceworks case incentives
1 dual autograph
plus about 30 mini maser sets and 1 billion base sets

compared to prices for some cards out there this sounds like a better deal to me than $7000 - $10000 for 1 Harrison Ford Signature

Thats just insanity! and it shows why base cards loose value, if i got 10 Anderson Autos (no matter how much i love her lol) i'd be pretty bored and not as exciting never mind having to sift through thousands of base cards!
Thats why, when i enjoyed it, one box from 1 set was just fine - and whoever i got (or didn't get) didn't matter, at least i got something.
But there ya go.

I am with most on this, the mor ethe hobby advances (if you can call it advancing) the more you have to buy, I was strongly thinking of breaking with tradition trying for the x-files 2 set but quite possibly not anymore.

They will never learn

quote:

Originally posted by JoeyUK:
Thats just insanity! and it shows why base cards loose value, if i got 10 Anderson Autos (no matter how much i love her lol) i'd be pretty bored and not as exciting never mind having to sift through thousands of base cards!
Thats why, when i enjoyed it, one box from 1 set was just fine - and whoever i got (or didn't get) didn't matter, at least i got something.
But there ya go.

But these 10+ Case buyers are doing it as a business - The main money is in the Auto's/Pieceworks & incentives so you are talking a different perspective than the "average collector" who may purchase a case. There are a couple of Sets that if I had the money, I wish I could have purchased 10 cases - Farscape Season 3 with all of the different Sketch artists would have been one of them.

There is one thing that seems to have vanished from recent threads about Inkworks products and that is Inkworks.

Andy used to come on and pretty much say " right you lot, we've had all the rumours and speculation now here are the facts ".

It seems to me it would be quite useful in threads like this. I wonder why they took the decision to stop doing it?

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
There is one thing that seems to have vanished from recent threads about Inkworks products and that is Inkworks.

Andy used to come on and pretty much say " right you lot, we've had all the rumours and speculation now here are the facts ".

It seems to me it would be quite useful in threads like this. I wonder why they took the decision to stop doing it?

IF you took the beating and flaming they did on here from the switch to sticker autographs would you bother coming back?

quote:

Originally posted by Jim Streich:

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
There is one thing that seems to have vanished from recent threads about Inkworks products and that is Inkworks.

Andy used to come on and pretty much say " right you lot, we've had all the rumours and speculation now here are the facts ".

It seems to me it would be quite useful in threads like this. I wonder why they took the decision to stop doing it?

IF you took the beating and flaming they did on here from the switch to sticker autographs would you bother coming back?

Isnt customer feedback something they should be concerned about though? If we complain about something shouldng they be listening to us as well as dealers?

I am not buying any of this release, i had considered it but the fact i cant complete a master set in my budget theres no way im going to bother trying.

quote:

Originally posted by David R:
Who are these dealers that are out there buying 3-10 cases of new card sets ? Do they really exist anymore ? It seems to me that this was something which we saw years ago, not now. Again, I ask this question not looking for names. All I know is that when I go to the Philly show and see the "big" dealers, I don't see anyone breaking cases in this volume. They do maybe a case or two tops.

So who are the dealers getting these 10 case incentives, and how many dealers do you think will get these dual autos ? None that I know of.

There's plenty of dealers that buy in that kind of quanities. I know collectors that buy 4 cases, 6 cases and even 10 cases. Heck, I know of a collector that bought over 25 cases of the Iron man movie release.....and no it wasn't me. And if collectors are buying that much then you know dealers are.

--Tim

quote:

Originally posted by goldenavenger:

quote:

Originally posted by David R:
Who are these dealers that are out there buying 3-10 cases of new card sets ? Do they really exist anymore ? It seems to me that this was something which we saw years ago, not now. Again, I ask this question not looking for names. All I know is that when I go to the Philly show and see the "big" dealers, I don't see anyone breaking cases in this volume. They do maybe a case or two tops.

So who are the dealers getting these 10 case incentives, and how many dealers do you think will get these dual autos ? None that I know of.

There's plenty of dealers that buy in that kind of quanities. I know collectors that buy 4 cases, 6 cases and even 10 cases. Heck, I know of a collector that bought over 25 cases of the Iron man movie release.....and no it wasn't me. And if collectors are buying that much then you know dealers are.

--Tim

he/she must be loaded! i can't even graps how many cards and packs that must be!?!