quote:

Originally posted by CordeliaChase_Fan:
I think McNamara/MacAllan/Maines/Lotz will all be popular as well- the first three have never signed for any sets before and Lotz was always a popular signature in the past- any main/prominent guest star female cards for the CW sets usually do well.

Val

Tom Cavanagh, Jesse Rath, Danielle Panabaker, and Nicole Maines will all be expensive too.

Let's be honest, 50% of the boxes contain Osric Chau or Stephen Lobo

Nice looking cards. And 100 signatures each for those guys is good. I hope this is a home run for Crypto.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Nice looking cards. And 100 signatures each for those guys is good. I hope this is a home run for Crypto.

I think it could have been if it were cheaper.

quote:

Originally posted by ravenheart:

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Nice looking cards. And 100 signatures each for those guys is good. I hope this is a home run for Crypto.

I think it could have been if it were cheaper.

The price of the box only matters if the contents of the box don't support the price.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

The price of the box only matters if the contents of the box don't support the price.

Well it matters to me, if i only have $50 to spend on a box of cards. It's no good telling me that the $300 box is worth it because it contains $300 worth of value.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:

Well it matters to me, if i only have $50 to spend on a box of cards. It's no good telling me that the $300 box is worth it because it contains $300 worth of value.

I know what you mean. I want to buy an Emma Watson autograph and I keep making the same argument to sellers, but for some reason no one will sell one to me for $500.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
Well it matters to me, if i only have $50 to spend on a box of cards. It's no good telling me that the $300 box is worth it because it contains $300 worth of value.

I agree. It's a matter of how you want to spend your money also, not just how much you may spend anyway. Buying in affordable increments may cost you just as much or more in total, but it isn't an all at once, upfront expenditure. It's also the way boxes used to be bought by card collectors, a little here, a little there.

So it's not only that certain card collectors may feel priced out of these high-end products, but that many others just don't see the sense of going along with it at some stupid SRP that has to be laid out in one shot. I find there is no fun for me in opening a box when all I'm worried about is whether or not I'm going to kick myself afterwards.

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:

quote:

Originally posted by ravenheart:

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Nice looking cards. And 100 signatures each for those guys is good. I hope this is a home run for Crypto.

I think it could have been if it were cheaper.

The price of the box only matters if the contents of the box don't support the price.

Which they won't in >90% of cases. Just like every other box release for the last 10 years.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

Funny that $215 a box gets to be deemed a bargain these days. It wasn't so long ago that non-sport card collectors would have been fainting.

I still faint as well, especially when there's less packs and less cards in the hobby boxes.

About the release I know some people will be over the moon to finally complete their Smallville collection with the much awaited Tom Welling autograph.

quote:

Originally posted by jademaliburoad:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

Funny that $215 a box gets to be deemed a bargain these days. It wasn't so long ago that non-sport card collectors would have been fainting.

I still faint as well, especially when there's less packs and less cards in the hobby boxes.

About the release I know some people will be over the moon to finally complete their Smallville collection with the much awaited Tom Welling autograph.

Fist Welling sold.
Accepted offer--------$3,000.
WWWWWOOOOOOWWWWW!

Instead of bothering to produce any sort of card set, why don't card makers just print 25 - 50 copies that can be signed by any semi well known genre stars and sell them direct for a few grand each? They are printing money. Putting them into packs and boxes and cases for others to profit is stupid when you can earn it all for yourself.

You may think I'm kidding, but I'm not really. I don't personally know anyone who is buying any non-sport autograph cards at these prices. However somebody seems to be doing it. You can't think that they are all dodgy auctions and fake sales reports, even when you are prone to be a doubter like me.

There is no sense in trying to make any sense of card prices now, when virtually no value you can make up is too crazy to be too crazy. If I was Welling and saw this, I'd print up my own cards and sign until I got carpal tunnel.

So far this looks like a home run -- congratulations Crypozoic! Hopefully this is the first of many more releases!

Hmmmm Tom Welling career during and since Smallville = not $3000!

Stupid times = stupid prices.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

Stupid times = stupid prices.

My question -- regarding this great quote. . .

Is this the same thing that happened in the 1990s with all the sports guys buying up TONs of entertainment product, or is this something different.

Honestly don't recall a bunch of sports guys picking up non-sports unless they were getting it on the back end for a discount.

The 90's I recall was a collectors boom where most people paid full price for product that lost its value as soon as it was opened. Massive over production kept most of that product in the market for 25 to 30 years.

I think what we are seeing now is the mass (i.e. sports guys) realization that non-sports has been on a limited production run that has been shrinking since 2000. Also think that the redundancy of the sports market has bored many collectors. Fortunately for me, I was bored with it back in 1998

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
Honestly don't recall a bunch of sports guys picking up non-sports unless they were getting it on the back end for a discount.

Not even then. You're right. You could barely find non-sport cards at a card show in the 90s. A card store might carry a small display. Sports card guys stuck to sports cards, although they might often jump around between the seasonal sports. Comic guys were the ones who picked up Marvel, along with the slew of independent comic related card sets. Autograph collectors discovered certified autograph cards when they became regularly seeded hits. Some collectors might have a bit of crossover hybrid collections, but it wasn't all that many and they still stayed in one camp more than another.

Remember that the internet didn't start to dominant hobby sales until the late 90's. Non-sport cards and entertainment cards were a specialty that you really had to look for if that was your hobby. Sports cards were all over the place.

The idea of sports card collectors, or more precisely card speculators, bringing big money to non-sport cards from sports card buyers didn't happen in the 90s. That started in this century, although I'm not even sure if that simple rumor is truly accurate. It's just business that has nothing to do with any segment of the hobby to me. Collectors don't make money on their cards because they keep them. This hype and pump and dump and stupid pricing and deceptive branding that has leaked into non-sport cards on the heels of the sports card decline is not the work of people who love trading cards.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
Honestly don't recall a bunch of sports guys picking up non-sports unless they were getting it on the back end for a discount.

In my area entertainment cards were everywhere -- the shop I went to would get cases upon cases of product on new release day that would be lined down the hall outside of his shop -- all presold. I'm talking hundreds of cases.

You could get entertainment cards at comic shops, card shops, video stores, many grocery stores, mass merchants, sometimes record stores, arcades, even Big Lots had a decent selection -- they were everywhere. Larger comic shows would often have half a dozen or more entertainment card dealers. Everyone was buying up all the cards they could find as an investment -- what turned out to be junk wax was supposed to pay for people's retirement.

I definitely see that investment mentality creeping into Marvel cards.

That said the difference in print runs is mind boggling.

Marvel Masterpieces I had a 'limited edition' complete set in a tin numbered to 35,000! The most common base cards in MM2020 were individually numbered to #1999. Just based on the tins the print run for MM2020 is at least 95% smaller than MM I -- I'm guessing they produced as many wax boxes as they did tin sets -- and each box could make 2+ sets.

I am surprised to see the selling prices of Crisis . . . are these actual collectors or have investors crept in to this set? It is impossible to answer that question as far as I can tell. Certainly the pricing is impressive, and hopefully enough to encourage Crypto (and other manufacturers) to put more focus on their entertainment card divisions.

Influencers like Steve Aoki are now showing rare cards like Marvel PMGs on their social media. . . That is obviously driving up some of the prices, but given the true limited nature of many of these cards today I'm left wondering what that means.

To clarify my post, the original premise presented was that sports guys were buying tons of entertainment products in the 90's. They weren't as far as I know, they were buying sports cards. I was buying autographed sports cards. I was hitting multiple shows and stores on a regular weekly basis in those years.

Most collectors of anything generally have more than one hobby at a time. So if a sports card collector was also buying non-sport cards, it was because he was also interested in those titles. Co-mingling of products came from having multiple interests, not price speculation in different hobbies, and the vast majority of sports cards collectors stuck with sports cards and only sports cards. I wish I did have the sense to have picked up way more non-sport autographed cards than I did when I had the chance back then, but I didn't know them well enough and didn't make the extra effort to find them.

Big sports card money was not flowing into the much smaller non-sport card market at that time. Non-sport, mostly comic and entertainment cards, had its own market, fans and places where interested collectors gathered to get them. I wasn't one of them at the time.

Perhaps it was a local thing, but in my area sports card guys were buying cases upon cases of entertainment product to leave sealed for eternity. This only lasted a handful of years.

Sports card shops started selling entertainment cards, etc.

In the late 90's, all the local comic shops had at least some non-sport and two of them had a good selection. Both of them even had a special binder of promos and oddball show cards/stickers. I remember driving to all the ones in the San Jose area just to see what they had. Several of the places have since closed and the remaining have little or no cards. However, one store owner who had decided to get out of cards had to change his mind last year when he not only heard they were selling again, he saw some long-sitting singles and sets go from his own display cases.

I haven't really known any people who bought non-sport as an investment though I've heard about it and read it here. I have talked to people who have invested in comics. You should never invest in your hobby as a rule. Something rare and valuable now and tomorrow might only be rare in the future.