So I went to to Target today to get some of our good friend's son some baseball cards for his eighth birthday. I asked his dad what he likes and he said anything related to baseball (boy is turning 8). I asked if he liked baseball cards and his dad said yes so I thought this would be a great thing to get him. Nothing brought me more pleasure than opening up those wax packs of Topps cards with the crappy bubble gum in it. So I am at Target in Pearland and I go to the section that sells the various trading cards. In the section there are two guys there, one in his 40's the other in his 30's. They are acting and they are literally going though every pack in every box. At first I just thought that was weird but I noticed what these assholes were doing. They had metal detector and scale and were going through every pack (baseball, basketball, football, nascar and the cartoon cards) and buying all the packs that had the high dollar, limited edition cards in them. I looked on line and it turns out if you have a scale that measures to the gram you have a good chance of telling which packs have the cards that have thicker paper, glossier coatings, parts of jerseys, bats, etc because they tend to weigh more. With the metal detector you can find out which packs have the cards that have lots of metal added to them. Maybe it is just me, but that seems so *****ty of those jabronis to do. I mean what do kids have to look forward to if people like that ruin any opportunity to collect the limited edition cards. Am I out of the loop? Does every baseball card shop operate like this? Do kids have no chance to get these cards unless they buy the entire wax box? It is bad enough that packs that used to cost 50 cents now cost 3 dollars and you get anywhere from 4 (yes I said 4 cards) to 12 cards per pack. But now you have to buy a box of 24 packs to have a fair shot at cards?
The world of collecting is a dirty place. One day lift up the bottom shelf in the action figure/car section at Toys R Us. You will find all kinds of stock that employees and dealers have hidden underneath. You will see collectors trash the boxes of toys just to ruin the value.
That's pretty messed up, I didn't think you could do that, and if I was Target, I'd throw those guys out. That being said, the way to avoid that is they have the $20 "retail" boxes at Target that are Factory sealsed with 8-12 packs depending on brand. Most of those boxes usually have a one per box retail only chase card, or an extra pack for the price. Stick with those to avoid the jabronis searching.
I remember when I collected basketball cards and I am so glad I got out of that too. When I was collecting I remember stores would still have those packs of cards that go for $1 and you could pull some pretty decent stuff from them. It seemed as I got older, card companies just took it further and further. I remember Topps came out with its Finest brand and those were going from $7-$12 a pack. Now I have heard they have packs of cards going for hundreds of dollars per and that is retail. It is ridiculous.
I used to be a big fan of collecting baseball cards. The whole reason the industry went bust was because card companies kept pricing a pack of cards higher and higher. Packs were going for 5-6 bucks and there is no way a kid could afford them. In addition to this card companies kept introducing more and more various lines of cards, that it was hard to follow which ones were relevant. I'm kind of glad the industry learned the lesson. But collecting cards was a great pastime for kids, and taught me valuable business skills while growing up.
You know who ruined it? Upper Deck. When it was only Topps, Donruss and Fleer things were easy, packs were cheap and kids could afford them. You coudl find them at drug sotres, walmart, gas stations. I remember Upper deck came out and I think packs were a buck fifty. Then they started putting less cards in them. Then they came out with the ten million different variants and 50 million versions of rookie cards. That is when card collecting started to suck.
I still get a few cards from time to time, but nothing like we used to. You have several different comanies putting out several different series, with variants of every card in every series of every company. Then you have some that you can only get "hobby", some you can only get "retail" and some "direct." Add to that the introduction of graded cards and what that has done to the market, its just too much to follow.
In my heyday, it was 25 cents for a decent piece of bubble gum and ten cards. These days, anything over a dollar is ridiculous. This is just one of the many things from my youth that has been corrupted. Corona used to be decent, cheap beer. Now it's yuppified and expensive. Popcorn used to be just popcorn and Crackerjacks. Now there's friggin' gourmet popcorn. Comic books used to be everywhere for 25-50 cents and some were reasonably well written. Now, they're insanely expensive and there are limited editions and you can only find them in specialty stores or big book stores. Yea, I'm turning into a grouchy old man, but jeez, the price of those cards... which were always crap (fun, but crap)... is absurd.
Weighing packs or measuring the thickness of packs won't work anymore for finding good cards. That's because now (in the upper-tier products) there's usually a big, thick piece of cardboard in each pack to create uniformity in size and weight. (I'll bet you've always wondered why a plain, white piece of cardboard was there, right?) Okay, so it's not 100% effective, but for the most part, it is.
Yeah but then you have those dealers who use resealing machines. In my hometown, there is a card and comic dealer called Heroes and they have been known to use one.
I wouldda said something to those douches I used to collect basketball cards when I was younger....and pokemon cards
Back in the 90's I had a buddy who discovered that special insert cards were a tiny bit bigger than the regular cards. He spent $100 on a digital caliper to measure the card packs, and did just the same thing that you ran across. The funny thing is that he still has the cards, even though his rationalle was that he would make a fat profit. Collecting comics and cards changed in the early 90's with special holograms, inserts, variants, etc. It turned me off to collecting entirely.
What is grading? The only thing I remember about cards was conditions they were in such as mint, near mint, good, fair, etc.
People mail off their cards and they get graded by a company. They are returned to you in a sealed case
I've never been much of a card collector, although I have some early Astros cards in a box at my parents house in Houston. Wynn, Aspromonte, Wilson, Dirk, and so on. But I did and do love comics and totally agree with you here. I wanted to buy my kids comic books to read when they were little and could rarely bring myself to do it, even if I could afford it. The prices were and are absurd. Beyond absurd. Kids can't afford them unless their parents just fling money at 'em. It really bums me out. Also agree with the rest of it, although the prices of my youth are even lower than that.
Remember the 1989 Upper Deck baseball cards with "The" Ken Griffey Jr. rookie? Well I learned a system of counting the cards in unopened boxes where you could pull a Griffey rookie with buying no more than 3 packs. It was flawless. I used to do shows dealing cards when I was 16-17. There was another dealer next to me one day that didn't believe me. He had several unopened boxed of 89 UD. I pulled 3 from him in one afternoon. He even gave me the first two pack for free in each box, thinking it was a fluke. It NEVER failed that I would pull it within the 3rd pack. Soon after that, I lost all interest in collecting. I still have a few cards...Clemens 84 Fleer rookie, MJ 86 Fleer rookie, Hakeem 86 Fleer rookie. Not much else cuz the grading phenomenon took the speculative value away.
Cards are stupid. The end. Only nerd collectors care for this nerdy ****. Here's an idea. Play the game and have these dumbasses do the same to your card one day. I never understood the fascination.
