Normally at the end of every year I open up a thread so that Card Talk members can answer a couple of general questions about what they have been collecting this year and what they expect to do next year. In 2022 we personally, and the hobby as a whole, have tried hard to put the pandemic behind us. It's worked to a certain extent, but normal hasn't exactly returned and probably won't. So, for this year, no poll questions.

Just post whatever you think about card collecting in 2022. The good, the bad and the ugly. Any new trends? Any old ones coming back or fading away? Anything your loved about your card collecting in 2022 and anything you hated? Personal best cards added and cards you wished you hadn't bought?

I could think of a lot of things, including stupid ideas like digital cards and NFTs going mainstream despite not actually being real. However not being able to write a novel, I will leave it just with this "Epic Website Exclusive Card" offer that Leaf has sent to my phone. For a limited time only, Livvy Dunne rookie cards and autographed rookie cards from one of the most famous young women in the US right now.

Ahh, the exclusive non-sport "rookie" cards of a social influencer that I never heard of and would never want to know. Yes, that says a lot about cards being peddled in 2022. Your turn . . .

I picked up chasing autographs on non-sport cards again, after having quit for a quarter century. Since April, I've sent out about ~425 requests, and received back around 1/3 of them. Favorites are Stephen Root, Billy Crystal, NASA flight director Eugene Kranz, Vietnam ace William Driscoll.

This is tough to answer for me.

On the one hand I've become extremely bored with collecting. . . On the other hand I'm starting to see signs that perhaps things might be turning the corner.

I feel like most of the sets getting produced are rehashes of old sets. I'm probably missing something, but I the coming soon lists seem like they could largely been the coming soon list for any year in about the last decade.

I've become exhausted with the sports card bros and investors. The $.50 card getting graded, called an 'RC' and getting a $500 price tag slapped on it. Really all the worst things about the hobby wrapped into one -- IMO.

I don't get the influencer autograph cards, but at least they are new. I guess I'd rather see that than yet another Marvel/Star Wars/Star Trek/GPK set.

I'm still priced out of the cards I was collecting 18 months ago, but some of the prices in those cards are crashing hard.

In the meantime I'm biding my time while looking for deals and opportunities. I'm hoping that the new set from ESG is as good as it looks and perhaps the first of many.

Money was tight this year so I didn't buy a lot but still added cards to my collection. When you collect promos, sometimes you can still have fun with just a few bucks. A couple of cheap flea market finds helped make it a good year. It looks like I have a new job starting next week so 2023 is already looking good.

I don't buy much new stuff because there's still old stuff I want. Some of the new stuff is going to be cheaper the longer you wait anyway. I certainly won't buy any digital cards, NFT's, nor cryptocurrency as I live by a rule of spending my real money on only real things.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
This is tough to answer for me.

On the one hand I've become extremely bored with collecting. . . On the other hand I'm starting to see signs that perhaps things might be turning the corner.

I feel like most of the sets getting produced are rehashes of old sets. I'm probably missing something, but I the coming soon lists seem like they could largely been the coming soon list for any year in about the last decade.

I've become exhausted with the sports card bros and investors. The $.50 card getting graded, called an 'RC' and getting a $500 price tag slapped on it. Really all the worst things about the hobby wrapped into one -- IMO.

I don't get the influencer autograph cards, but at least they are new. I guess I'd rather see that than yet another Marvel/Star Wars/Star Trek/GPK set.

I'm still priced out of the cards I was collecting 18 months ago, but some of the prices in those cards are crashing hard.

In the meantime I'm biding my time while looking for deals and opportunities. I'm hoping that the new set from ESG is as good as it looks and perhaps the first of many.

Late November/December is generally a good time to buy cards off of feebay. You have a lot of people selling cards that have sat in a collection off for Christmas money, and a lot of people aren’t buying much in December because of Christmas….At least that’s been my experience.
And, I will never consider an “influencer” worthy of an autograph card. I’d rather have a 30th Trek or Marvel set.

quote:

Originally posted by Electrawoman Cards f/k/a jane:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by webjon:
This is tough to answer for me.

On the one hand I've become extremely bored with collecting. . . On the other hand I'm starting to see signs that perhaps things might be turning the corner.

I feel like most of the sets getting produced are rehashes of old sets. I'm probably missing something, but I the coming soon lists seem like they could largely been the coming soon list for any year in about the last decade.

I've become exhausted with the sports card bros and investors. The $.50 card getting graded, called an 'RC' and getting a $500 price tag slapped on it. Really all the worst things about the hobby wrapped into one -- IMO.

I don't get the influencer autograph cards, but at least they are new. I guess I'd rather see that than yet another Marvel/Star Wars/Star Trek/GPK set.

I'm still priced out of the cards I was collecting 18 months ago, but some of the prices in those cards are crashing hard.

In the meantime I'm biding my time while looking for deals and opportunities. I'm hoping that the new set from ESG is as good as it looks and perhaps the first of many.

And yes, sports cards are ridiculous right now, but they appear to have crashed. A buyer’s market now, for the most part, if you’re not interested in autographs. Those are ridiculous.

I've mostly been catching up on older releases, the only new product that interests me now are just base sets for the newer Star Trek series. Totally steer clear from Star Wars now- I REALLY don't like the place they've ended up in.

In summary, my collecting is limited by my minimal disposable income, and my limited interest in new material.

The final hurdle now is shipping prices to deliver by mail. I am able to get some things delivered to my daughter who lives in the U.S., and she delivers them to me here in Canada. Shipping from U.K. is pretty well not an option anymore. New material here is few and far between. Unless it's gaming cards

So still enjoying the hunt, but the experience is not exciting. The hobby is truly shrinking in more ways than one.

My usual of ignoring new product and trolling the secondary market continues. Made a few purchases that taught me to wait out the hype a bit longer.
Still much cheaper than busting boxes.

I think Robert De Niro signing was the biggest autograph news of the year for me.

Higher box prices containing less cards is a bubble we can only hope will bust in 2023.

This is my first year fully vested in designing custom cards and working through printing processes. I already have a healthy project list for 2023.

I'm a collector of several entirely different things and I'm finding it harder to get really excited about trading cards anymore, other than picking up really small level things from sets, and those do feel more fun in a way.
The way the lack of value in boxes is going I don't see myself buying boxes much at all in the future. Even base sets are losing their appeal to me, and I always used to love those.

In needing to sort out some of my collections, and house space, I do see myself offloading large parts of my collection in the coming months. And deciding what I own and really love, and what I can easily live without.

I have basically stayed the same as the last three years , concentrating on small sketch sets such as Perna , Braiiinz , Island Dreams etc . The only sealed product I break is Unstoppable as it's UK based so I don't have to worry about postage and customs .

Any sealed product from the USA is now so overpriced due to the speculators from Sports and the £/$ exchange rate that I just don't bother .

I haven't collected anything this year. I haven't even gone on eBay this year except to check prices and compare a few things once or twice, not to buy. As some of you know I am really not happy with the way the trading card prices/distribution/creation/etc. has been recently. So, I have stopped collecting. I haven't even been looking at the few Xena cards I don't have. I'm just tired.

I have, however, been collecting (slowly) 8x10 or 11x14 photos that are signed. I have participated in a few of the send in signings like Milla Jovovich, Emilia Clarke (haven't gotten them back yet), and some others. Very happy with the ones I've gotten back so far.

I also am collecting prints which are signed of a model/photographer/editor/one woman amazing artist called Threnody in Velvet whose art I absolutely love. I have also gotten a few very large prints and have had them custom framed with wild frames and absolutely love them. But the framing has been pretty pricey LOL!! So that's pretty much where my budget has gone :-)

So, that's where I've been in collecting world for me. I am hoping to come to the May NSU show. We will see, I had planned on the Fall one, but health issues came up.

This coming year I plan on finally going through my current collection of cards and cataloging them and selling/giving away the ones I really don't want (there are a lot). I will probably only keep my Xena and Witchblade and maybe the few Firefly that I have. Not sure about all the massive amount of Vampire Diaries though.

I have been pretty minimal. The biggest news is I am now only 2 sets away from having at least 1 sketch card from every set Mary Bellamy has ever contributed to.

Other than that I have not been buying much as the prices are outrageous. A few Perna packs are about all the sealed wax I have broken this year, other than Pokemon.

I’ve started going after the Star Trek TOS Skybox autograph cards. There are a few that I can’t get - Kirk & Spock mainly. I got a McCoy last year with my tax refund. From the main cast in Skybox, I’m only missing Nurse Chapel. I have Majel Barrett as Number One. There are a more than a few guest stars I don’t have, the biggest being Ricardo Montalban. So, I’m saving my pennies, because these were not produced in short supply the way Rittenhouse has done over the years. And there’s several Rittenhouse Spock autos I’d love to get. Namely a Mirror, Mirror one with the beard.

My collecting has be spatics this year. I have been going back and buying some cheap xena/x-files/Dr.who/twin peaks autos. I have slowly been buying twilight zone autographs again but those have risen up in value and cheap purchases are slim.

Did finally get a bargin on an Ellen Page Umbrella Academy auto for my daughter. Down to two autos to have a master there. She had 3 (out of 63) of the 4 card printing plate sets.

Still have a huge want list of stuff but have been sidetracked on my time looking.

2022 didn't have a ton of stuff for me to collect, but I was happy to finish my "Breakfast Club" movie cast set (the kids, anyway) when Pop Century finally delivered Judd Nelson, the last holdout.

I also like movie director autographs and was pleasantly surprised to see Spike Jonze in the ZeroCool set for "Jack@ss". Those were my favorite single pickups for sure.



As far as cracking packs, it was pretty much limited to Fright Rags' "Creepshow" and the RRParks "Ultraman" set via Kickstarter.

From "Creepshow", I finally added a Tom Savini (horror makeup master) autograph to my collection.



"Ultraman", at the level I backed at, yielded this awesome trio of metal autographs, which I'm thrilled to have.



American-ized episodes of the original "Ultraman" and "Giant Robot" series along with the then-current shows "Six Million Dollar Man" & "Shazam", plus reruns of the original 50's Superman and 60's Batman TV series, are some of my earliest memories of heroic business, all of them predating with me even Star Wars which was a new movie when I was 6 years old.

I continue to stay current with the Topps Online exclusive "Star Wars Living" set all through the year, and Topps also sold some new Mars Attacks/Wacky Packages cards in what has become a fall tradition. I always enjoy those.

I'll eventually pick up those 11 new signers from the Game of Thrones set issued late in the year to keep that autograph set current.

Regarding sales I made, usually on Ebay, I had some sealed blasters of Stranger Things Season 2 that I'd only purchased to get some Cuyler Smith-style bonus art cards Topps had created as an incentive to get rid of the unsold stock.
I never opened the blaster, about a dozen of them, and after the success of the most recent season, I checked their value out of curiosity and found it was surprisingly high. I got well over $1,000 for a quantity of sealed blasters that originally cost me well under $200, and best of all, I still have the bonus cards that was the reason I purchased them.

I also sold a Bill Nye autograph single for $125, a Kyle Chandler King Kong for $100+, and an extra of the Paul Rudd from "Parks & Rec" for around $215. From "Marvel Beginnings" issued about 10 years ago by Upper Deck, I sold Mike Zeck (artist) and Gary Friedrich (writer) autograph cards for $100 each.

On the Cuyler Smith "Trading Cards" front, I added on a Lucas from Stranger Things to my collection from the 2022 edition, which for the first time, was stretched over the course of the year in a series of smaller releases, as opposed to seeing the vast majority of the year's new cards released all one once in late summer gallery exposition.

Going in the other direction on those, I sold a pair of Johnny and Daniel "Cobra Kai" cards from an earlier release for $150 for the pair. The cards, every single one of them autographed by the artist, are awesome and remain highly collectible.

Going back a ways, I noticed the refractor cards from the original Topps 1995 Star Wars Finest set were getting some heat, thanks no doubt to the revival of the brand and popularity of the parallel cards in the new issue. When the cards were newly issued, I bought several boxes and some loose packs and ended up with about 15 refractors, which feature a shiny rainbow-like surface, an eye-catching parallel of the regular base chrome cards. I was disappointed back then in not pulling any of the major characters from my packs, and went to the aftermarket for the #1 title card (which showed the main characters and the series logo) as a refractor to at least have that one in my collection. As I remember, I paid $10 for it about 20 years ago, so some time after the set was issued. While I got between $200-$300 total for the dozen or common refractors I had, I quickly sold that #1 title card alone for over $400, so in that sense, I'm glad I didn't get a Han, Leia, Luke, Yoda, Fett, or Vader from those original packs. If I had, I might never have sought out that #1 card when it could be had for so little.

Late in the year, Topps did an online exclusive T206 card set in 4 waves, each available to order for several weeks. These are Star Wars characters, planets, spaceship, etc., in the style of the smaller tobacco cards featuring baseball players and other other subjects that were found in cigarette packs over 100 years ago. I ordered a quantity of each wave. Having received the first three waves so far, the set looks great and is reasonably priced and fun to collect.

OK, 2023, whadya got?

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

With most box prices still out of control, I definitely refocused.

What I've found enjoyable is collecting limited-run custom cards. Ray Gun Cards, Phantom Cardboard, and Jack's Attic have been putting out some incredible one-offs of properties that, while unlicensed, we wouldn't have otherwise and look fantastic.