I don't get the insane Julio Rodriguez Hype

[steve B]

Originally Posted by packs

I go to Walmart and Target when I'm upstate and I don't have any problem buying blasters of anything. Maybe three years ago I might have. But not now.

Do you have an example for what you mean when you say a set gets expensive because there's a prominent insert? Every card can be picked up individually and individual cards of inexpensive players don't get expensive because there's a card of someone else in the set.

At the height of the pandemic, our local store Target had nothing in stock. Except maybe the tiny mates or whatever they call the like 1/2 inch tall plastic figures that are just generic with different names printed on them.

I had a friend that worked there, and he said they literally had people hanging around the empty shelves at stocking time and nothing lasted more than 10 minutes.
Not at ours, but others had parking lot armed robberies of boxes of cards. Not a give me your car or money, but literally "cough up the Topps series one or else" When someone in the midwest got shot in the parking lot over cards Target shut down all in store sales.
They gradually restarted them, but at least at ours it's nothing like it was, and there's still very little remaining in stock.
My friend has moved on to Lowes, where they have the same problem with 10mm sockets (Just kidding, a long running mechanics internet meme/joke that isn't as innacurate as most)

A card set having some special card or insert or series of inserts that makes it more money has been nearly every hot set since at least the early 90's.
93 Finest at $25 a pack because of limited run bought by a few dealers and refractors being in it.

Whatever set had Randy Moss rookie in it. at something like 5x msrp a week after release.
And so on.

Whatever set has this kids card and is a $600 product wouldn't be a $600 product without the special cards, especially his.
Maybe that's MSRP, but without the prospectors a $600 price point is a difficult one to support.