Without many exceptions, I have hated those gaudy inserts that were popular back in the late 1990s. Although many people love them above all else, spending the price of a car to buy some of the rarer ones, I cannot stand the busy designs and the awful foilboard. Again, they are some of the most valuable non-autographed cards in history, but it was a different time and a different hobby back then.
When 2010-11 Totally Certified Basketball was released, it was a popular product for the main chase of the first Panini video cards. Since that time, the product has severely cooled off, only to start back up with the resurgence of the low numbered parallels selling like crazy on eBay. In fact, they are selling at such ridiculous prices, that I don’t even have an explanation as to why.
Check out some of these prices:
Blake Griffin Totally Certified Emerald Base Card /5
LeBron James Totally Certified Emerald Base Card /5
Kobe Bryant Totally Certified Gold Base Card /25
With so many cards being numbered these days, including some products where EVERY card is numbered, I don’t get the appeal. I understand that the cards remind people of ones like the Precious Metal Gems, but the fact that so many things have changed should negate that situation. Numbered cards don’t mean anything anymore, and it is completely shocking how much these cards are on fire.
Usually, it will take a low numbered Chrome refractor to be a valuable non-autographed card, but these basketball cards are succeeding where EVERY other has failed. This is all despite a terrible name for the set, a terrible design, and nothing more than collector nostalgia and contrived rarity to drive price.
Maybe someone who knows more about basketball can fill me in. Is it that so few people bought this product? Color me stumped.
One of the main reasons these have gotten so hot is because there have been NO NBA licensed products released this year. Normal collectors and collectors with deep pockets are starving to open some new products and Certified offers it. Plus it gives case breakers a great chance to make their money back which is rare for any Panini product.
Factor that in with the PMG craze and you have a product that has skyrocketed in “value.” It’ll be very interesting to see how the new UD Fleer Retro product will do since it is an entire line devoted to the popular inserts from the 90’s like PMGs and Autographics.
My theory is that there is a shortage of high end cards for Basketball and the fact that even older PGM cards are now on fire. People love speculating that there will be something that will actually go up in value in the next 10 years vs. depreciating daily. With the fact the the Totally Certified cards are designed to almost duplicated of the older PGM cards, people see this as the next sleeper product. Jersey’s and Autographs are so over produced these days dealers are buying them as low as .50 per card. I am happy to see people are starting to invest back into cards and not just jersey and Auto’s. But is is scarey to see what people are paying for common player….
If someone actually *paid* $711 for that Griffin they need to be punched square in the balls. That being said, I always wondered why low-numbered star inserts didn’t sell for more than they typically do. Sure, it’s not autographed, but it IS scarce, and player-collectors NEED one for their player-collection. I have paid FAR more for parallels /10 or less than autos /299 for my various player PCs.
In 1998 a customer pulled a PMG Green Michael Jordan #d/10 from my store. At the time, it sold for about $150 and I thought that was crazy. But, it helped sell boxes and it was good for the hobby.
Since value is the result of supply and demand, even the rarest of cards have little value unless there is significant demand. This hobby needs something to generate excitement in the chase. The current response to 2010-11 Totally Certified Basketball is good for the hobby. It sells boxes.
This hobby continues to look for the next great thing. Great autographs, sick patches, improved product designs, video cards, solid gold cards, diamonds on cards are all moves in the right direction. But, this hobby needs more great ideas and maybe looking back to the 90’s is part of the answer.
Again, supply and demand determine value, and there just aren’t as many collectors in this hobby as we had in the 90’s. The fact is, we don’t have many set builders putting together numbered sets. I love numbered cards, but too many layers of parallels just cheapens the value of low numbered parallels. Hopefully, the card manufacturers can expand upon this product’s success by coming up with products with rare inserts/parallels which are not just one of many layers of parallels.
Yup. The first company that can figure out how to make the “cheap” (ie non-auto or GU) insert/parallel cards in their product more desirable will benefit in a big way. The best way to put it is this: Chase cards do NOT have to be autos!
Guessing those big spenders are from overseas. I saw NBA.com made a big deal about the Chinese New Year, so that has to tell you something.
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