Card Manufacturer Obligations? Hobby Quick Hits E227

0:01 Hobby Quick Hits, delivering that breaking hobby news loaders. You want to know those Josh card shopshop, You've got your copy, your host. John new Name, Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of hobby Quickts. Today's episode titled what is the responsibility of card manufacturers? Right? What do we need them to take more ownership of? What do we need them to do better?

0:47 Where are they lacking? And so that you know, I'm going to kind of take it from the perspective if I was in charge, what I would do different? What are they doing wrong? And not everything they're doing is wrong? And I know we just had recently Tops Chrome Football come out at astronomical prices, and yes, I'm going to touch on that, but you know, not everything they're doing across the board is wrong and not even so much always just wrong. But what can they improve upon? And so that's what this episode is going to be about. Let me know. But if you listen, let me know what I got right, what you agree with, maybe what you disagree with. So you know, opinions are welcome and so and this isn't just Tops, this is you know, and I know Panini doesn't hold the same license see anymore.

1:46 But this is for anyone that produces cards, even your if you want to call them small boutique brands like Onyx and Sage and press Pass and that sort of thing. This discipes to everybody. But obviously, when you hold most of the licensing as TOPS, does you know you're you're gonna be the standard bearer if you will. All right, time for the next few weeks of product releases. Let's start with day of release of the show April twentieth, twenty twenty five, twenty six TOPS Chrome Bundesliga Soccer Sapphire Edition on the twenty first, twenty twenty six Futura Incredible Collection Series two. Let's go to the twenty second. These are all April twenty second, twenty twenty five, twenty six Bowman Basketball Blasters, The Lighthanngers Hobbies and Jumbos twenty twenty six, Leaf Metal Baseball, Hobby and Jumbos, twenty five Slash twenty six Panini Donors Road to FIFA World Cup twenty six Soccer twenty five, twenty six Upperneck Skybox Metal Universe Hockey going to the twenty third, twenty twenty six Top's Finest

3:17 Premier League, Soccer to twenty fourth, twenty twenty six, Sage Football High Series, Blasters and Hobbies, Pokemon Mega Evolution, Ascended Heroes, Booster Bundles and Exbox on the twenty eighth, twenty twenty five Historic Autographs, President of the United States the White House on the twenty ninth, Frasier Premier Edition Trading Cars also on the twenty ninth, twenty twenty six Leaf Magnificence Multi Sport, twenty twenty six, Panini Donors Racing twenty five Slash twenty six Panini's Select Serie A Soccer going to also on the twenty nine, twenty twenty six TOPS Chrome Black Baseball, twenty twenty five Tops Definitive Baseball, also on the twenty ninth, twenty twenty five twenty six TOPS Cosmic Chrome Basketball moving on to April May May first, twenty twenty five, Tops Chrome Football Vegas, twenty twenty five Tops WWE Royalty. So that is the new release schedule for the next couple of weeks, and as we always say, you know, choose your product. Happy Rippy.

4:49 Let's go round the hobby verse and catch up on this week's hobby news. All Right, Tops had their Industry conference in Arizona. Let's talk about some of the news coming out of that event. Twenty three NBA products will be released this year, including high end products, Dynasty, Definitive in Royal, MVP buybacks are coming to football now, starting immediately with the NFL releases and Matt Stafford being the MVP. We're going to see more game used football jerseys and football and the items are going to be streamlined and direct from the NFL locker rooms. I've given credit where credits do. The Major league debut patches have been one of the best things TOPS has done in a while. With that, they're going to continue now in basketball and football with debut debut patches from those boards and no rookies. Speaking of baseball, TOP Series two, you know we had the Manno. Fifty two TOPS Chase in Series one. That's going to continue in Series two with two cards. A Hank Aaron nineteen fifty four TOPS Rookie, a card I'm proud to own,

6:20 and in nineteen fifty two, in nineteen fifty three Jackie Robinson Tops not a rookie card, but a iconic classic card just the same. Also mentioned as fanatics is getting into the credit card business. So you can run up your credit card buying all that overpriced wax if you will so put it on your card. I'm kidding, but as someone who years ago ran up ten thousand dollars on a credit card opening wax, it's easy to do.

7:01 Don't fall down that prep home if you will. All right, game stop. We all know they're a hub for PSA cards to get your cards graded. They're getting into the digital pack opening game, much like Arena Club. They're called power packs. The packs are digital, but the cards are real, ranging anywhere from twenty five dollars all the way up to twenty five hundred. You rip that digital pack and pull aps and get a PSA card, which you have a choice to keep in the vault list on eBay or sell back to them with an offer price that they will give. Not a fan of these, but you know, actually for fun. The group I was set up at the last card show I did, we each bought a twenty five dollars Arena Club pack and I got a Joey Bell nineteen ninety leaf PSA eight. Yay me. All right?

8:16 They say, don't knock it to you, try it, So I tried it. Now I can knock it all right, let's moving on the more news. You know, most every month, Michael Jordan usually leads the way in basketball for most cards submitted for grading at PSA. Well, March there's a new leader atop that board. Now, Jordan did finish second with thirty thousand cards submitted, but your new leader for March was Cooper Flag, who had thirty two thousand cards. So Cooper Flag thirty two thousand, Michael Jordan thirty thousand. JSA and Mike Ray have announced a new partnership which will allow sort of a combo deal for photo matching an item and auto authentication. Uh so, the combo saves you a little money, gets the item photo matched authenticated and the autograph authenticated as well. And that's again assuming it passes their inspection. eBay has announced cancelation cancelations. We've all probably been there if you're an eBay seller, right, someone wins an auction or even a buy it Now, and you know then says, well, my son, my son got my phone and bought that, or you know, I rolled over in my sleep and bid on it Unknowingly, you won't be able to do that no more. You

9:46 cannot cancel cancelations, or you can't cancel your high bid or winning bid. You can request that the seller cancel your bid, but you your self health I can't do that now. I actually like this new rule. I think it puts the you know, the onus on bidders like to honor your bids and your you're buy it now if you will. UH. In the Lawsuit department of the month or or week, Michael Rasmussen out of Arizona isssuing Collector's Holdings for supposed monopoly now that they own P S A, SGC and Beckett Grading. Uh. So he is suing for numerous compensatory and other damages. He is requesting a jury trial. This is pretty fresh news, so nothing is no date for trial or whether it will go to trial. UH is uh set yet, but that is at least it's been filed.

11:02 And let's close with a story. I love Nick Barton of Mean Daddy Cards, and I'm going to effort to get him on Sports Gardination. He has set up and all he's calling it the All Stars Card Show. It would be taking place June fourth at Villanova University in Philadelphia, and it's it's a card show designed with UH collectors and kids with disabilities and their families. So it's gonna be more spaced out, the roles are gonna be wider, free admission. It's gonna be set up where there's not going to be a lot of noise for for kids that are noise sensitive. And you know, someone who works in the special education department in teaching, I understand a lot of these things. And so to have a show designed for folks with dealing with those disabilities, UH in mind, UH is is great. Right, It's a It's a great thing to do and not easy to do. And again, it's not about the money, right, there's no admission. This is just about the experience for these kids, UH and their families. And so UH kudos to UH, to Nick

12:34 and Mean Daddy Cards who are behind this event. And now, all right, today's episode is going to be pertaining to you know, what card manufacturers are sort of should be obligated to do or what they should be about in my opinion, UH, maybe you'll disagree, maybe you'll read that to you obviously. Now I had written down this idea for this episode before the Tops Chrome Football release. But let's start out by talking a little bit about that and the four figure price tag on a hobby box, which I think is I'm not going to mince words, right, I think that's outrageous. I think that's ridiculous. And you know, but again, right, the buyers set the price, but a lot of this price is being set by breakers who are buying up the product. And so I guess my first thing is I'd like to see these companies, you know, have these these products be more affordable for for any you know, for a lot more people to purchase, rather than people playing in the high end space. Only I know it's chrome in this case what we're talking about, but there's no way to that product should be twelve hundred or more dollars for a hobby bock. And again

14:07 that's my opinion. I'm not going to open that now. If I go to Walmart and see a blaster for thirty bucks, sure, and that's that's that affordability factor, you know that, And I like to see, you know, these companies want to control a lot of the things. Well, control that as best you can, and I get the secondary market, you really can't necessarily control that, but they can put things in place to make a difference there and like to see it all? Right, what else would I like, you know, to see? Card manufacturers? Do you know parallels are out of control? Right, all these color variations, artificial scarcity. Yes, they're one on ones, but then there's fifty different one on one, so you know, we just have two many uh. And it's just you know, I'm a base cards matter guy, uh and always will be.

15:09 Was from day one before you know, I got into the hobby before there were parallels or number of cards and and and I don't have a problem with parallels and number cards. I just think there's way too many of them. There's there's too much of them, an influx, and what it's done is it's it's put too much emphasis on that. And people don't care about the base cards. Right. Go to the national looking trash cans that are wide open, right, and there's cards just sitting in the trash on top or left at a table, just you know, spread over around. And people don't care about like the regular cards anymore. Or I don't want to say I don't want to paint with a broad but a majority of people don't care about those base cards anymore. And and it's sad for someone who starts in nineteen seventy nine. And again I'm not saying I'm, you know, trying to be the old man on the porch air. I get the the you know, evolution of the hobby and the innovation of the hobby with with you know, parallels and colored cards and Foio cards, holographic cards, and I like pulling those two.

16:20 I just think we have way way too many of them, and there's a there's just an oversaturation of those, and you know, I like to see less. I don't want to get rid of them. I just like to see less to where base cards can can matter. Again and again, maybe I'm in the minority talk about case hits, and I get, you know, case hits are not a new phenomenon. We've we've even had them for many years. But sometimes I really question what's going on. Right, So you know, we all know about the kabooms and the Downtown was in the home field advantages, right, and how they're supposed to be really rare. And had a friend of mine at the National had a whole case full of like Downtown, and I said to him, like, you know, what's the deal here. You're supposed to be you know, rare, hard to get and you know, I'm not gonna mention them by name, but he told me, John, they're not what they're advertised to be. They're coming out at more frequently than we're told. And you know, while he said he pulled some, he bought most of them off other collectors.

17:36 But he was very honest at least with me in saying, you know, the hype is overhype. They're not. They're coming out at a higher rate than they're being advertised. And he even questioned whether some are coming out of back doors of some of these car companies, car manufacturers. So again, you know, i'd like to see transparency in the odds, right. I Sometimes I really question how accurate these odds are. In some cases, I think there's some falsities there. So I'd like to see these card companies, whatever those odds are, live by them, be truthful by them, or don't even post them. Don't even post them. Let what comes out comes out. But if you're gonna post odds, I don't think they're always accurate, and I think they always should be.

18:31 And you know, kaboom doesn't have to be a case hit. You know what, I mean, it's a great card, but if they're coming out at more than one per case, don't call them a case hit. That's I guess where I'm going with this, stickers versus on card autos. I don't hate Stiicerados, and I've said this on the show before. Right without Stigerado's there are some athletes that you would not be able to obtain an autograph in a pack of cards. That that is the tradeoff you have to make now, given the choice between the two. Of course, I think ninety nine percent of us would, if not one hundred, would take an on card auto over a sticker auto. But the sticker autos bothered me a little bit less than probably the average collector, just because I realized, like, without it, we wouldn't be able to get some of these, you know, athletes and celebrities autographs in product, in products.

19:34 So I kind of I'm okay with it, But you know, the more on card autos we can get in products, obviously, it goes without saying the better right relic cards, Right, I remember the days when pulling a game use card out of a product was a big deal and you got excited, and that bloom has come off the rows. You know, we got a lot of these event worn or you know, I hate to pick up Panini, but they're they're famous for this, right is you know they have a an athlete show up at at their corporate and they throw fifty jerseys on them and they look like the Michelin man. And then they have them take off the jersey and they say, you know, was worn by said player and then they cut these up and it's not using the game, it's not used on the on the field. I want I want to see us get back with game use cards, which I still love and I think they have a place in the hobby.

20:33 Let's let's quit with these event worn you know, let's get back to game us. And I know TOPS at the the recent and you know, if you heard the new segment, you heard me talk about tops is is going that direction. And so kudo's there for getting back to the real game used uh you know uh cards uh in in products and not event worn or the player touched it for two seconds and now you know, or the Christmas sweaters or you know, the list goes on and on. Let's bring back the significance of a relic or game use card, and I think Tops is laying the groundwork for that. Redemptions right again, sort of like sticker utos for me. I understand redemptions will always be part of products. Sometimes they don't have the items yet, or maybe you know, in a case like the fifty two Tops Mantle Chase, that card won't fit into a regular pack of standard sized cards, so you have to use redemption. I'm not opposed to redemption. What I'd like to see better with redemption is the turnaround times. I think years and years waiting for a redemption card to be redeemed and honored. There's just way too long. That's what we need to these companies need to get better with.

22:00 Is like the time that it takes to get what you got a redemption card for. You know, we talk about waiting for our graded cards to come back. It takes months and months, if not not a year, right, Well, redemption cards are even worse in most cases, right, the turnaround times on redemption cards. Let's let's streamline that process. Let's get that process quicker. The watering down of rookie cards, right, I don't know how you fix this, and I'm going to complain about it. But full disclosure, I don't think it's fixable at this point. So what do I mean by the watering down of rookie cards. Well, if you started in the seventies like I did or earlier, you know, most guys had you know, most athletes had one rookie card, maybe three, four five at the most, depending on on licensing. Right.

23:02 But what's happened now is it's just such a plethora of products and then different versions right of the card that you know where you know Cal Ripkin has, you know, I use him for example, you know three rookie cards. You know too, if you're a Cal Ripkin collector to obtain If Cal Ripken was a rookie in today's day and age, he'd probably have between two to five hundred rookie card choices for that collector. And that's just a lot. And that's just because there's just so many products, and then you got the different parallels and the different versions and different tiers. Again, I'm not a fan of that.

23:45 I'm sort of old school, but I don't think this is a problem that can be really fixed. I think sort of the the the horses out of the barn. The only way you fix it right, is you don't have as many products, and for what these companies are paying for the licensing, that's not gonna happen. We're gonna get thirty forty products of each sport a year, if not more. And that's one company in tops's case, with the three major sports now with football, basketball, and baseball. And so you know when you look at let's let's take hockey for example, right with upper deck whole net license, and you know that young gun of a rookie has sort of become sort of the standard bearer for less rookie cards to chase, right, And I sort of like that.

24:38 I like that, But again, I don't think this is a problem that can be fixed. I think what it really boils down to is if you're collecting rookie cards that you really have to decide which is the few or the one or which ones are you going to try to get. To try to get them all would be literally almost impossible, if not impossible. So I don't think it's fixable. But if you have a suggestion, i'd like to hear, and I'm sure there's more things that I didn't mention. Let me know what you'd like to see from card manufacturers to make the hobby better. I'll add another thing on the fly here. I'd like to see more card companies at events or you know, you go to a baseball game any first, you know, five ten thousand people through the gate get maybe a promo pack free as part of the experience. And I know they do that sometimes at NFL games years ago. I know I got some Pannini team packs at Steeler or Bills games I went to. I'd like to see that become more of a regular occurrence to expose our great hobby right to maybe people who don't even know about it, or you know, getting that promo pack in hand as you walk through that gate, maybe that, you know, creates

26:11 a future collector, and that's a good thing I believe anyway. So maybe more, you know, an on site present at sporting events. I'm not even saying the company has to be there, but maybe doing giveaways or giving away those promo packs as people walk through or enter the stadium or the arena. If so, that's that's all I got. What say you do you agree? Disagree? Did I miss something? Did I leave something out? Let me know what you think and we'll see you next time, Thanks everybody,