Since the start of 2011, Topps has been committed to driving good looking cards and on card rookie autos. I love both of these things. Not only have they upgraded or created each product in a way that is visually awesome, but the overall construction of the calendar has been VASTLY superior for 2011 over past years. On the other hand, one specific thing has really got me frustrated, and I doubt that I am the only one who feels this way.
First, we all know that lower tier rookies cost less money per signature, so its obvious why they are included at a higher rate in each product. Because there are a lot of lower tier at the premiere each year, a lot of their cards are going to be produced. As we have seen in the first few important products from Topps this year, this plan is continuing. That is not the issue though.
The issue is that it seems as though it is getting THAT much tougher to pull the good rookies out of packs or boxes. Players like Ingram, Locker, Ponder and a few others, usually have cards at a lower insertion rate than the lower tier guys, but from the looks of this year, its less than before. In fact, cards like this from Platinum and Finest are great examples of what I mean. For the three I mentioned, but not limited to them, each only had 11 jumbo relic autos in Finest
. A red refractor /10 and the supers. Each of the other top tier rookies had over 100
. For the regular patch autos, the cards were also severely short printed, some to 25
. In platinum, its looking to be a very similar situation, especially in the on card versions of the signatures
. Locker, Ponder, Ingram, Jones, Green, Newton, Dalton, and company have significantly less cards overall.
There are ripples to this decision, both good and bad. The good is that each of these cards is going to be worth more than they normally would because they just don’t have as many cards. This is very good for the people who are selling the GOOD cards they pull from boxes, but not good for wax breakers in general. The bad is that its going to be more expensive to buy the cards for player collectors, and boxes wont have the same potential they normally would. If you cant pull the good players everyone wants at a higher clip, the odds on buying a worthwhile box drops.
Again, I am only going off of what I have witnessed on eBay and the message boards, and I am sure it has just as much to do with cost of signatures and player availability as it does a direct result of contrived scarcity. But, I have seen it mentioned a few places, and it can be pretty disheartning when the cool card you want to normally pay 50 bucks for now will cost 200 bucks because there are 10 instead of the expected 100.
I’ve noticed this as well in the boxes I’ve pulled so far this year. I busted 4 boxes of Inception and didn’t pull any top tier rookies. It’s one thing to go through a cold streak but it seems unlikely that half a case wouldn’t contain a single high end rookie auto.
I think I’m okay with this. It’s kind of overdue with all the crap flooding the market anymore. Granted, if I broke boxes and couldn’t ‘hit’ a top rookie auto at 1:4 boxes, or whatever seemed like the odds the past few years, I would be upset. On the other hand, the values of the ones that are pulled will increase even more if people stop opening boxes. I’ll wait until some of the more premium products are released. Maybe Topps is planning on loading up 5 Star this year with top rookie autos…?
Do you think it is a cost savings effort by Topps (and the other companies as well)? It would seem that way to me. Get a bunch of cheap autos of the mid to low tier guys to fill out the release and then get a few of the pricey top tier autos to make sure there is some buzz about the cards. I would think the card companies have to have some bean counter that tells them the maximum amount to spend on a release and still profit.
The first case of 2011 Finest my store sold had 2 Newton auto patches. I can’t speak for all cases, but there was at least one good one out there.
It appears that there are only 25 Jake Locker on-card red rookie autos in Topps Inception as well, not including the 25 signed in silver paint pen, whereas the lower tier rookies have on-card base rookie autos numbered to 600.
From Topps perspective, it’s not fishy at all…they figure that demand for “HOT” rookies is inelastic, so by making them scarcer they will increase sales, since people will have to buy more boxes to get one.
It’s the same concept that has been driving the hobby for years (i.e. creating demand through artificial scarcity), just taken to the next degree. The only thing that is suprising is that collectors are still falling for it.
And it’s not anything new…most of the top rookies and HOFers in 2010 Topps Magic FB were /10 or /15 (for chromes).
In this day and age it is unacceptable IMO to produce autographs /900, /1200, /2200, etc. Especially in mid to high end stuff. And who knows with their unnumbered autos. Say what you want about Panini, but they rarely go higher than /600. Topps is boxing s**t and shining it up to look like gold.
In actuality this isn’t “artificial” scarcity it is actual scarcity. Which in my opinion is a good thing.
Yeah it might be harder to get that premium auto but now it actually has value….my only hope is that every company would do this but we know Panini won’t….if they continued the trajectory we were on auto values would eventually plateau and settle down at a lower value because of it no longer being scarce.
You say troubling….I say great.
What I meant by “artificially” scarce is that the level of scarcity is directly controlled by the manufacturer.
As opposed to “real” scarcity, such as condition scarcity for pre-1970 cards, the rarity of Topps test issues from the 60’s/70’s, etc., which were not directly controlled by the manufacturer.