- Thread starter
- #1
Welcome to our community
Be apart of something great, join today!
Is this really the current state of the "hobby" card shop?
- Thread starter zyceoa
- Start date
Disclaimer: Links on this page pointing to Amazon, eBay and other sites may include affiliate code. If you click them and make a purchase, we may earn a small commission.
BabyFaceFrank
Member
From what I've heard it's mainly only the big cities that have these kind of "card shops".
Sent from my ONEPLUS A5000 using Tapatalk
WizardofOz1982
Well-known member
Yeah most of them are just trying to scalp. My local LCS will buy retail blaster cases to sell though because he can't get a Topps or Panini account and he's left to depending on distributors who are funneling all their product to breakers.
jpl
New member
- Dec 24, 2008
- 17
- 3
Man, not even NBA Jam Tournament Edition.
dano7
Well-known member
I know of one in a city I visit often.
I have pretty much seen this at a majority of shops in DFW.
They buy from scalpers to have stuff on the shelves.
Sadly marked up retail is cheaper than most hobby boxes.
A pack of cards for sets like Topps Chrome should not be $14 each. (Price of a hobby box on blowout divided by number of packs in the box.)
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
They buy from scalpers to have stuff on the shelves.
Sadly marked up retail is cheaper than most hobby boxes.
A pack of cards for sets like Topps Chrome should not be $14 each. (Price of a hobby box on blowout divided by number of packs in the box.)
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
predatorkj
Active member
- Aug 7, 2008
- 11,871
- 2
I haven't purchased a box or a pack in quite a while. I was going to start a thread here and had second thoughts. Since it's kind of already related, why exactly did people start hoarding/scalping blasters? I know it started during the pandemic. I'm well aware of what happened with pokemon, etc. I'm just trying to understand the logic of it happening with sports cards, especially retail (I've heard a s much as $80 for a $20 basketball blaster). Pokemon at least makes sense because the resell on bulk is actually better than any other card type out there(although still terrible at $150 (depending on the shop of course) for a 5 row box full). But even then, a lot of younger folks going after it and it doesn't have the history sports does with the ups and downs of the hobby so people have nothing to compare it to. This looks like the 80's/early 90's all over again. With precedent, why are people doing it/thinking it's a good idea? Was this a side effect of the stimulus checks?
I remember conversations here with people saying older sets wouldn't ever get enough demand to go up. And then they did. Some of these guys holding onto stuff from the 80/90's era are laughing all the way to the bank, finally having cleared out their inventory. Good to hear but I'm guessing it's not healthy , long term, for the hobby.
I remember conversations here with people saying older sets wouldn't ever get enough demand to go up. And then they did. Some of these guys holding onto stuff from the 80/90's era are laughing all the way to the bank, finally having cleared out their inventory. Good to hear but I'm guessing it's not healthy , long term, for the hobby.
Sadly, it's like that in many long-standing, legit card shops. Hobby product prices on the secondary and dealer markets have gone insane, distributors are happy to sell to breakers at inflated prices over their traditional retail customers, and retail became the domain of tweakers who spend their days going from Target to Walmart to Walgreens vacuuming up any sports product they can sell for a few bucks profit, when cards are available at all. Rather than have empty shelves, shops will buy from the people who inserted themselves into the retail supply chain, and all that gets marked up. But having unopened product to sell seems to be a huge key to success today, no matter the form or price.
There are 2 shops I go to regularly, on opposite ends of town. One is doing it the "new" way, and he's been buying and selling everything he can get. He buys from Topps, Panini, and any distributor he can connect with at whatever price is necessary, and he does keep his shelves full, even if it's a large percentage of stuff that came out of the WM a mile down the road at 100-300% markup. But he seems to have kept up with the price jumps and business seems to be going great, he works social media, does breaks, etc., and his shop is usually uncomfortably busy on the weekends (he seems to be a near-Covid denier, even though he and his family all had it already). This shop has multiple Walmarts and Targets within 5 miles, he's near an intersection of two major highways so he gets customers and suppliers from all over, and he has people bringing him blasters and megaboxes all the time. He opens a fair amount and buys a lot of singles from people who rip his boxes, so he's got a good range of singles turning over all the time.
The other shop is run by a bunch of old-timers, been in business 35+ years, and their shop looks like a cornfield after the locust swarm leaves. Located in a more staid part of town, they don't have any big retail stores around them except 1 Target that stopped selling cards. I rarely see more than 3 other people when I go in, and I suspect most of their business comes from Magic, which the other shop doesn't have. They aren't direct with Topps or Panini anymore, or Wizards of the Coast, which cut them out because they didn't run enough tournaments, and they weren't large enough (kinda hard when you don't have the room for 60 people to sit and play), so that just made things harder for them. They seem to be just barely capitalized enough to get a couple cases of stuff, then it sells out and they just sit and wait for the next release. When they have had retail, it evaporates immediately. They have only a small case of "hot singles" while the rest of their cases haven't really turned over in years.
There are 2 shops I go to regularly, on opposite ends of town. One is doing it the "new" way, and he's been buying and selling everything he can get. He buys from Topps, Panini, and any distributor he can connect with at whatever price is necessary, and he does keep his shelves full, even if it's a large percentage of stuff that came out of the WM a mile down the road at 100-300% markup. But he seems to have kept up with the price jumps and business seems to be going great, he works social media, does breaks, etc., and his shop is usually uncomfortably busy on the weekends (he seems to be a near-Covid denier, even though he and his family all had it already). This shop has multiple Walmarts and Targets within 5 miles, he's near an intersection of two major highways so he gets customers and suppliers from all over, and he has people bringing him blasters and megaboxes all the time. He opens a fair amount and buys a lot of singles from people who rip his boxes, so he's got a good range of singles turning over all the time.
The other shop is run by a bunch of old-timers, been in business 35+ years, and their shop looks like a cornfield after the locust swarm leaves. Located in a more staid part of town, they don't have any big retail stores around them except 1 Target that stopped selling cards. I rarely see more than 3 other people when I go in, and I suspect most of their business comes from Magic, which the other shop doesn't have. They aren't direct with Topps or Panini anymore, or Wizards of the Coast, which cut them out because they didn't run enough tournaments, and they weren't large enough (kinda hard when you don't have the room for 60 people to sit and play), so that just made things harder for them. They seem to be just barely capitalized enough to get a couple cases of stuff, then it sells out and they just sit and wait for the next release. When they have had retail, it evaporates immediately. They have only a small case of "hot singles" while the rest of their cases haven't really turned over in years.
