Actually Change Things?

[Mahoody]

I'm still waiting for topps to call my store ONCE since I opened in 1998 tocheck how things are going or get advice.

Some years ago topps developed "topps pro" which was a site dedicated SOLELY to it's dealers complete with message boards etc.

Not once that I know of did they ever respond to anything asked to them. And this was THEIR site they developed for us dealers to communicate with each other and then.

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Hmmmm.... Hey Mike has BG ever responded to your inquiry as to why Leaf hasn't put out a low end product that children 10-15 yrs old could afford to purchase in your store ?? Does he care that they can't afford to lay out $75 - $200 for a box of his product unlike panini & topps ??

Still waiting

 

[maxe0213]

Hmmmm.... Hey Mike has BG ever responded to your inquiry as to why Leaf hasn't put out a low end product that children 10-15 yrs old could afford to purchase in your store ?? Does he care that they can't afford to lay out $75 - $200 for a box of his product unlike panini & topps ??

Still waiting

It seems leaf is not geared towards children. Not sure why anyone would have a problem with that. He chooses to put out products that are more expensive and have more hits per box than anything Topps puts out.

Don't think its an issue at all if kids can't afford Leaf products.

 

[BBCgalaxee]

Leaf made the right more eliminating valiant as it was basically a mirror image of metal with a few tweaks.



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[BBCgalaxee]

Hmmmm.... Hey Mike has BG ever responded to your inquiry as to why Leaf hasn't put out a low end product that children 10-15 yrs old could afford to purchase in your store ?? Does he care that they can't afford to lay out $75 - $200 for a box of his product unlike panini & topps ??

Still waiting

I didn't ask him why they haven't. I asked him
" if" leaf was going to issue more affordable packs this past March in Vegas.

I'd love if he issued a "leaf" product like Donruss used to in the mid 00s at a $5 price tag.

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[BBCgalaxee]

And no, I don't carry as many leaf products as I'd like to because nearly all their products are one packs with a high price tag.



It's a TON easier to sell a box with 20 plus packs for a hundred than one pack for $90 for me.

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[Mahoody]

It seems leaf is not geared towards children. Not sure why anyone would have a problem with that. He chooses to put out products that are more expensive and have more hits per box than anything Topps puts out.

Don't think its an issue at all if kids can't afford Leaf products.

Really I think it is an issue if you want to have a MLB license and compete with Topps. If you don't get the younger collectors interested in your product now, what makes you think they'll be interested when their older ?
You can make a collector & customer for life if as a 12 yr old spending $5 - $10 and getting 2 -3 packs and pulling their favorite player they get hooked. Walk into a store and see $ 75 - $225 for a box and they will look for something else to spend their money on.
Eventually people leave this hobby and don't return -- paying off college, get married, buy a car, children and find other uses for their disposable income. As a sportscard manufacturer you have to look for ways to get the younger fans interested in your product - otherwise its a losing effort.

on your other post I'd rather buy one box of Bowman Sterling and get 18 prospect & rookie autos in their team uniforms with logos than 2 boxes of Trinity where you get 10 autos. It's just more fun to break than trinity

 

[RiceLynnEvans75]

They have websites.

Imnot saying they have to hit everyone, but set up a website, do a poll, SOMETHING that proves you actually give a damn about the customers...Its not hard!

 

[CatdaddysCards]

I would disagree with this. I agree that they don't do everything for the customer but IMO Leaf cares about their customers much more than any other baseball company. BG listens to consumers, handles redemptions very well, and overall tries to leave customers with a good taste in their mouths.

Topps and Panini usually just tell you to shove it though.

No point trying to argue with biggiobrooks. Nice enough kid but he won't listen to reason.

 

[csmtampa]

No point trying to argue with biggiobrooks. Nice enough kid but he won't listen to reason.

From reading his posts in this and the Leaf thread, I don't think he has any idea on how the real world operates.

 

[Dmscards]

From reading his posts in this and the Leaf thread, I don't think he has any idea on how the real world operates.

That guy always baffles me.

 

[Mighty Bombjack]

Quite honestly, I don't see much, if any, "innovation" that can come along and change things.

I don't see any immediate fix to the hobby and think it's too far into the weeds at this point to actually do anything. My suggestion would be to go to the bare bones basics (flagship product), issue the rights to show logos to two other companies (Leaf and Panini) and keep it at that. Let things go from there. The hobby has been so consumed with so much crap in the last 20 years that it needs to be restarted in my opinion. There was the hobby boom in the 80's/early 90's and then things started to go downhill from there, right along the time of multiple products and higher pack costs.

Not saying just keep a flagship product forever, but start there for a few years and then grow again slowly from there. Sure, many people would bail now, but I think the regular base/flagship products are what got people into the hobby in the first place and it's still heavily collected. Grow the collecting population again first and then grow the card population, though a little more cautiously this time.

I agree. My suggestion to Topps would be to hit "reset" and scale everything back. Everything.

I explained this in another thread. Basically, they have complicated their baseball card business model so much that the costs are outweighing the product, and 99% of their "chase" cards sell for less on the secondary market than they cost to produce. You also have myriad redemptions and CS issues. The model is unsustainable.

The answer could be to simplify. They can leave two stand-alone prospect products (which are profitable), but the vet products should scale back towards the late 80s or early 90s base sets. STOP guaranteeing so many hits. At the beginning of each year, purchase a few bats and jerseys of a select few superstars from past and present, as well as a couple of choice auto contracts, and make a single GU and auto card set that can be seeded across all of the year's products. Basically, there will be Topps, Finest, whatever few brands they want with soem numbered parallels and cool inserts, but these will have no GU or autos of their own. Instead, there will be a simple "2014 Topps Game Used and Auto" set. These cards fall every other case or so, and are true chase cards. They would hold some actual value, and they would only have to be designed and produced once. No redemptions. For 2015, repeat but with different players. Revenue would of course drop, and staff would have to be let go, but ths could even out and the end result would be a simplified and purer product and business.

Or I'm just crazy.

 

[maxe0213]

Really I think it is an issue if you want to have a MLB license and compete with Topps. If you don't get the younger collectors interested in your product now, what makes you think they'll be interested when their older ?
You can make a collector & customer for life if as a 12 yr old spending $5 - $10 and getting 2 -3 packs and pulling their favorite player they get hooked. Walk into a store and see $ 75 - $225 for a box and they will look for something else to spend their money on.
Eventually people leave this hobby and don't return -- paying off college, get married, buy a car, children and find other uses for their disposable income. As a sportscard manufacturer you have to look for ways to get the younger fans interested in your product - otherwise its a losing effort.

on your other post I'd rather buy one box of Bowman Sterling and get 18 prospect & rookie autos in their team uniforms with logos than 2 boxes of Trinity where you get 10 autos. It's just more fun to break than trinity

I guess I see your point. Maybe if at some point when he actually does come to the forefront and try to challenge Topps he could come out with some lower end stuff. Panini has prizm stuff (which IMO is low end, they have retail for pretty cheap). Leaf really doesn't have anything. I think it would be fairly easy to accomplish. Maybe a set with like 150-200 base cards and a few insert sets (all the base could be HOF's, Vets, and some rookies) and then insert an auto or so per box at a low price point 20-30 bucks a box and have retail.

I completely disagree with the Sterling analogy though. Sterling is an awful product and needs to be discontinued. It looks nicer this year but 2012 was so bad I don't think I'll ever buy it. Trinity has some insane patches even if they aren't game worn. I think some things could've been done better (some players just writing their names, no inscription on some autos, etc.) but I would still choose Trinity products over Sterling. If Meadows, Bryant, etc blow up I would bet that these Trinity patch cards sell for much higher than the Sterling Autos of the same players.

No point trying to argue with biggiobrooks. Nice enough kid but he won't listen to reason.

Yeah I'm not really sure where he was trying to go. Ignoring anything that didn't agree with his argument and only responding to stuff that hardly mattered. The website? He ignored everything else from that post.

Oh well

 

[notjomommasclint]

I'd like to see sets with game used tied to historical games. This bat was used in ***'s 4 home run game. That would be sweet.

 

[gt2590]

I've always wondered why Topps doesn't do these ideas:

1. Make Archives Retail only. The autos are cool players but do NOT merit $100/box prices.

2. Make factory sets available as HTA and online only.

3. Make a clear, acetate and/or die-cut set (like Tek, EX) with nice, low-print run Inserts/parallels.

4. Make a $20 per pack, 1 Gu or auto per pack product.

5. Rotate GQ, A&G and another "throwback" looking set into a 1 per year Cycle...

Is that what you were looking for in the OP or were you looking to propose a Specific set?

 

[rsmath]

I'd like to see sets with game used tied to historical games. This bat was used in ***'s 4 home run game. That would be sweet.

that would be pretty difficult to do in most cases as the Hall of Fame, team Hall of Fame or the player usually would have priority over a card company when it comes to historical relics.

For a 4 HR game like your example, you don't know when that is going to happen so it's hard to plan for if you want supply of game-used equipment for various parties.

If it's a thing like Cal Ripken's record breaking game played, then you can plan ahead and have Cal wear a jersey for each inning so the Hall of Fame, Orioles Hall of Fame, Cal's personal collection can have a game-worn jersey from that game and then have other game-worn jerseys also available to auction off for charity and sell to topps or whoever for putting into cards.

EDIT: I can see where your idea may be most easily implemented -- rookie debuts. Topps should contract with MLB clubs that when a desirable or highly hyped rookie makes his debut, that rookie will wear more than one jersey top during the game in which he gets his first plate appearance or batter faced so that topps can have one of the jerseys worn in that official rookie debut game to make jersey and patch cards for the following year's Series 1 relic card insert called ROOKIE DEBUT STITCHES, etc.

 

[CatdaddysCards]

I'd like to see sets with game used tied to historical games. This bat was used in ***'s 4 home run game. That would be sweet.

That's a pretty kick ass idea. Or something like a no hitters club GU Glove set. A piece of glove from each specific no hitter thrown.

 

[ASTROBURN]

EDIT: I can see where your idea may be most easily implemented -- rookie debuts. Topps should contract with MLB clubs that when a desirable or highly hyped rookie makes his debut, that rookie will wear more than one jersey top during the game in which he gets his first plate appearance or batter faced so that topps can have one of the jerseys worn in that official rookie debut game to make jersey and patch cards for the following year's Series 1 relic card insert called ROOKIE DEBUT STITCHES, etc.

but then what happens if that highly hyped rookie flops mid year before his product with the pieces of jersey comes out, and then the forums light up with complaints about the hits not matching the prices of the boxes? Then the card companies are prospecting just like the collectors, hoping a player pans out to produce a product of value.

seems like the safe bet is to stick with established stars. Unless he is gonna be exposed to peds, then that product will flop as well.

 

[Therion]

Ah, glad to see the train back on the track.

I just wanted to see some positive ideas. I have always maintained that a four year old can tell you why things are wrong. It takes adults to show how things can be better. Great thoughts so far.

 

[Mahoody]

but then what happens if that highly hyped rookie flops mid year before his product with the pieces of jersey comes out, and then the forums light up with complaints about the hits not matching the prices of the boxes? Then the card companies are prospecting just like the collectors, hoping a player pans out to produce a product of value.
seems like the safe bet is to stick with established stars. Unless he is gonna be exposed to peds, then that product will flop as well.

Topps & other companies have been doing this for over 5+ years maybe more - They hold back putting a potentially hot prospect from Bowman to put into Bowman Chrome or to put into Bowman Draft & lately instead of Bowman draft they wait to put said prospect into the following years Bowman.

 

[Mahoody]

If we want change in this industry it initially has to come from us the buyer not the manufacturer.
As long as we buy these products just to turn around and flip nothing will ever change. We have to use our wallets and stop buying these overpriced scratch off tickets and just buy what we want/ like for our collection. That's what got most of us into this business buying cards because it was fun & entertaining.
I know it's a vicious circle because it would require the lcs to cut back on preordering from the distributors. Some store owners are fearful that they'll miss out on ordring the "product of the year" but in most cases reducing your preordering will be more benificial in the long run. Ordering retro products do you need to order both Qypsy Queen & Allen & Ginter ?
Most owners know their customers well enough (if not just simply ask em) that they could cut back preordering the garbage products and eventually they'll stop making them.
I know this will annoy alot of people here but the prospect products are the biggest problem. They're nothing but boxes of high priced lottery tickets. You buy them hoping to hit it big....but in most cases that doesn't happen and they then turn and complain about the value not put into the product. A lot of the time I see customers leave the base cards on the table after breaking a box or two (not worth keeping ?) Do we really need all 3 Bowman, BC & Draft Products?
Sorry for the long rambling read but bottom line is if we the consumer stop buying every product that comes out and just pick out the one or two that we enjoy & have fun opening and ignore trying to win a big ticket card eventually some change will happen - if the card companies don't cut back on their production of the garbage sets at least you are making a change and saving some money to buy what you want & enjoy.