Has the hobby turned into gambling? Do you buy product looking to keep anything?

[MansGame]

I thought this would be an interesting thread/topic to discuss after someone commented with “finally someone is gonna keep something they pulled; seems like no one keeps anything they pull these days!” on a thread where I showed someone from my LCS who pulled a 1/1 bat knob last week and it ISN’T on eBay :lol:.

The idea: Has the collecting baseball cards got to a point where it’s more gambling than it is really collecting or a hobby? I remember going to the LCS back in the ‘90s and essentially everything I opened got filed away and put in my collection. I was a collector and was excited to add to my PC and make it well-rounded.

Today, does anyone buy packs, boxes or cases with a card (or cards) in mind that they would actually keep for themselves if pulled or is the idea when opening product “what would this sell for on eBay?” or “did I get my money back for the price of the product?”. I watch people open up product at our LCS here in Dallas and it’s like I’m at a gas station watching people scratch lotto tickets lol::facepalm:: Especially with packs/boxes being mega bucks.

Personal example: I collect Albert Belle and nearly every Albert Belle card produced over the last two years has spiked on eBay. I don’t even have to buy product in search of his cards because I know they’ll show up on eBay :twisted:. I will admit it’s because not very many people care to have an Albert Belle card but it's just an example of people unloading nearly everything they pull when opening product.

An example here on FCB: A board member purchased a case of 2012 Topps Tier One, pulled a Clemente Bat Knob 1/1 and immediately turned around and sold on eBay. Full disclaimer, I would have done the exact same thing considering it sold for over $3,000 BUT someone said (to the seller in a thread) “You obviously aren’t hurting for the money since you were able to afford an entire case, surprised you didn’t keep this card for yourself”. This comment was because some would think this card is the holy grail of this set and what else could you be hoping to pull when buying a case?!

So back to my original question, do you think the “hobby” has turned into gambling? People buying product to make money and flip everything they break? Does anyone open product to keep anything in particular anymore?

I sometimes think there are two types of people in the hobby today… (1) Those who open product and (2) Those who collect baseball cards and wait for “product openers” to release their wanted card to the world

 

[James52411]

I'd argue that it has been for most people since the 1970's and definitely turned into that during the boom that started in the mid-1980's.

 

[87ws91]

I'd say if you aren't on a budget where you can afford to buy several cases a month, then it's easier to keep stuff. You're not going to make much money, or at least for a sustained time, if you buy a box, sell the hits, and buy another box. Would lose half your money on most of the boxes, so it wouldn't work. Normally if I get a decent hit, I'll keep it if it's someone I like or don't dislike, and try to trade it if I get an offer I can't refuse, but otherwise normally keep it for a while. It does seem like there's more money to be made in keeping sealed cases versus ripping and flipping, maybe with the exception of Allen and Ginter or base Topps where the sets sell in bulk, seems like a better investment to buy something like 2012 Topps Chrome knowing that it will hit $100 a box in not too long.

 

[schmidtfan20]

I open large quantities of heritage and ginter every year, mostly for tradebait, but if I pull a super rare cards early on it almost always goes to ebay
becuase early on guy spend dumb amounts of money on certain cards. If I pull any nice autographs out of heritage or ginter, or any rare Ryan Howard
it is almost impossible for me to move them, they usually end up in my PC. I open bow chrome and stuff like that strictly to try to hit something big
and sell it. I am not interested in any prospect. I also try to stay away from products that are sticker auto. They really are hard to move now a days.

Kevin

 

[gt2590]

Sounds like a cop-out answer, but I think it's a little of each. But long-term the true Collectors keep the Hobby going...

Personally, I don't open up much product at all, and just pick out cards I'm looking for later from what others have Ripped.

But I was a Card store Manager about 5 years ago, and can speak from what I saw. We had some who just wanted the "big" hit to flip but also had more Collectors who just enjoyed the rip and kept most of their stuff. Heck, one of our Best customers was a guy who's collected for 25+ years and never sold or bought a Single card or even traded for one...

From what I've seen, the "speculators" just looking for the "Monster" hit usually don't stay around the Hobby for long. But the hobby is now well over 30 years strong and that's because the base of hard-core Collectors.

 

[ThoseBackPages]

 

[Pastretta]

I've met a few around that felt that way. One said I might as well do this and get something then lose the money at our casinos here in Arizona.

 

[allstars]

Tons of my customers keep their stuff.

 

[prospectorgems]

When I was a kid, I collected for the hobby of it and kept all of my cards in binders and made sets and even looked at the back of the cards. I traded for cards that I wanted and never cared about the value. When ebay finally came around it changed the perspective of collecting for me. I was able to unload my entire Griffey collection for a decent amount of change and I got the taste of making money off of cards. Now the only time I ever look at the back of the cards is to look at the serial number or the set number if I am sorting. Rarely do I keep anything I pull because if someone is willing to give me a certain price for a card, you better believe I will sell it.

I think for myself to actually consider this a hobby that I would actually keep and display my cards would be if I had an incredibly high expendable income, such as winning the lottery, whereas money would never be an issue and I would be able to appreciate the cards more. Until then, I don't expect the life expectancy of a card to sit in my collection for more than six months.

 

[olerud363]

I'm a collector on a pretty strict budget. Apart from my Olerud buys (I try to limit to about $25/month), I might pick up a couple Topps hanger boxes or rack packs at Walmart every couple of months. For me, any "big pulls" would go up for sale so I could recoup some money to put back into collecting. That being said, my buying volume is so low that I never pull anything good, so this whole discussion is kind of moot for me.

 

[cmixer]

I keep 95% - except for the overhyped cards that are only worth the money ASAP ... I'll buy them back next year.

Example: sold my Phelps Fans of the Game during Olympics 4 years ago, rebought it last year.

I should sell mor, but I'm a card hoarder.

Sent from my SPH-M580 using Sports Cards by Freedom Card Board.com

 

[D-Lite]

I think it goes both ways and it's pretty easy to tell which way people lean.

The Collector: The one that goes for complete sets or player collections is the prime example. Also, I think anyone buying packs from a card store is generally a collector as they're paying more for the product than getting cases.

The Gambler: Someone buying and flipping cases is the most obvious, looking for big hits and blowing it out on eBay. Also, prospectors generally tend to be gamblers unless it's specific to a team they're fans of.

The gambling side has gotten a big boost with the advent of the internet and eBay. Before that it was hard to find the audience needed to make money in cards unless you owned a store or did frequent shows. Now anyone can buy and flip.

Personally I do some of both, which is hellish in reality. I have a few sets/collections I'm working on and I also collect Yankee prospects. When it comes to the prospects, I stick with what I know, the Yankee farm system, since I enjoy the team nature of it but also feel I may be able to cash out a portion of it based on more intimate knowledge of the player. As a result I think I'll do well on my Mason Williams, Greg Bird, Banuelos, and Adam Warren (getting the start Friday!) stashes. BUT, if any of them fail, I keep the cards and as a diehard Yankee fan I'll be ok with that.

So, yes and no, there is MORE gambling now than ever, but still healthy numbers of both collectors and gamblers.

 

[TBTwinsFan]

I keep virtually every hit I pull.

I know I am the oddball, but this hobby isn't all about money. I just like to enjoy it for what it is.

I won't lie, I have sold many cards, but most of those are cards that didn't fit in my collection, and I could use the funds for cards that I do want.

 

[tonsofcommons]

The only thing I collect for myself it Pacific brand jerseys and Tyler Sash.

Therefore, I don't keep anything that I hit when busting. But I don't really bust alot.

I plan on buying some Pacific boxes soon and will keep all of the gu. The base will go in my 10 cent box for shows and any #ed cards or rookies/inserts will go in to my Ecrater website.

 

[chompsmcgee]

Hasn't it always been gambling?

 

[Keyser Soze]

I am definitely #2, but I don't look down on #1 because I need him. I need him to bust a lot and pull something I want and put it on eBay. I mainly hate gambling, don't buy lotto tickets, don't want to go to Vegas, and don't buy many boxes. I very rarely buy a box just to feed that subconscious hunger that all collectors have to tear open a pack. But once I have my fix, it's back to singles on eBay

 

[gt5717b]

I've never sold a card (successfully). I tried recently to offload a printing plate card on eBay but the starting price must've been too high. Afterwards, I decided to just keep collecting. I like to rip packs and boxes when I can, but I don't have the funds to do much of either. I look for the big hits but only to add to my PC. My goal is to have a nice collection to hand down to my son(s).

 

[padremurph]

I think it goes both ways and it's pretty easy to tell which way people lean.

The Collector: The one that goes for complete sets or player collections is the prime example. Also, I think anyone buying packs from a card store is generally a collector as they're paying more for the product than getting cases.

The Gambler: Someone buying and flipping cases is the most obvious, looking for big hits and blowing it out on eBay. Also, prospectors generally tend to be gamblers unless it's specific to a team they're fans of.

The gambling side has gotten a big boost with the advent of the internet and eBay. Before that it was hard to find the audience needed to make money in cards unless you owned a store or did frequent shows. Now anyone can buy and flip.

Personally I do some of both, which is hellish in reality. I have a few sets/collections I'm working on and I also collect Yankee prospects. When it comes to the prospects, I stick with what I know, the Yankee farm system, since I enjoy the team nature of it but also feel I may be able to cash out a portion of it based on more intimate knowledge of the player. As a result I think I'll do well on my Mason Williams, Greg Bird, Banuelos, and Adam Warren (getting the start Friday!) stashes. BUT, if any of them fail, I keep the cards and as a diehard Yankee fan I'll be ok with that.

So, yes and no, there is MORE gambling now than ever, but still healthy numbers of both collectors and gamblers.

Well said.

 

[uniquebaseballcards]

The hobby has turned the majority of non-casual people in the hobby into middlemen for the manufacturers.

The "funny" thing is that the hobby would be so much less expensive without all the middlemen.

 

[matfanofold]

All I have to go off of in answering this question is my own involvment in the hobby, locally for the last 25 years and online for over a decade. To that end I think I have a good idea of how the 'hobby' as a whole reflects the OP's question.

In the mid 80's, it was already begining to become a 'gamble' for some. You were begining to see more and more people paying inflated prices for packs/boxes in hopes of pulling a single card to flip. This was not the norm as even in the early to mid 1980's most of the hobby was collectors but keen to the value as well. The 1980's also introduced a new population to the hobby, and these were the people hearing about the closet finds and recent surge in price of baseball cards looking to invest in what was all but touted as a 'sure thing'. I mean, just look at the explosion of card value from 1975 to 1980, and again from 1980 to 1985. Even still, most of the hobby was divided in to 2 distinct groups, thoes who collected and thoes who invested and niether were necessairly 'gamblers' per see...

The early 90's took advantage of all of the naive investors and mass produced to fit the demand. In no time everyone began to understand that value had more to do with rarity and demand then any inherent value based on age thus all of the 'investors' that bought in and helped usher in the overproduction era lost interest (and money). I do not link the mass production investors as 'gamblers' because I believe within the context of the OP we are talking about the instant rip and flip gambler looking for the big 'scratch off' lotto style hit. And this era began to really bloom in the mid to late 90's. Sure there were chase cards earlier that that, but the hobby was not based on it at this point.

In the mid to late 90's cardboard began to include stated odds of gaurenteed hits. Almost uniformally this was happening with all major brands. This intorduced the chase card as common place on a per box level. The dynamics of the hobby embraced this but as a result made busting wax more of a hunt for red october than it was about collecting or at the very least the tides were shifting. The advent of online dealing added to the allure and the value of a card, expecially the 'hit' cards began to dominate the hobby.

Fastforward to today and value is parallel with cards, everyone in the hobby including the pure collector has to appreciate value. No longer are the days where one can enjoy the hobby without paying a premium to the gamble machine. Almost everyone who is new to the hobby is drawn in to it based on value and almost yearly the 'base card' is dying a little more and more, while hit/chase/sp cards are becoming more commonplace. Virtually every single product has a premium attached because of the needed 'hit' element included and every single box break I see, here or otherwise, will simply list the top few most valuable cards pulled and is usually (and quickly) followed with a FS/FT thread.

So, to directly answer the OP's question, I really believe that 90% or more of our 'hobby' has now turned in to a gamble. I do not know a single person who busts wax and is not looking for the big hit(s) to flip. And now we have companies like LEAF heading the apex with products like 'best of' that is undeniably a straight forwardvgamble product by nature, virtually no different that stuffing 1000 envelopes with a $10 bill, and 2 with a $100 bill and selling them for $20 each. In a nut shell, products like 'Best of' by LEAF are selling pure value, a gamble. But more so, even conventional products like Bowman, Topps, ect.. all rely on the gaurenteed box hit's to sell, and what traditionally makes a box hit? A beautiful design? A quality photo? Or is it the possible value associated with it?

Anyway, this is by no means a rant even though I enjoyed the days gone by. The hobby had to create new ways to add value to the products because it was literally dying in the late 80's - early 90's. This new form came as rare chase cards and autos/gu's. THese cards became the focal point of collectors and investors/gamblers and the manufacturers simply and continually try and give more and more of what we want. So in essence, even though the hobby has turned in to a gamble for many/most, it is in my opinion a product of our own invention and not the other way around. Would the 'Best Of' gamble stuff sell out if we did not want, demand it? I am one of the few I know who lives outside this trend, buying singles and avoid busting at all costs. But even in the rare occasion I do pick up a blaster or box, I eagerly anticipate (mostly to no avail) pulling that big hit to flip for some nice coin, and truth be told it makes me feel alive!