State of the Post War Market

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Originally Posted by Johnny630

What vintage card collector ever thought that in 2018 people would be buying or bidding on teams or players in box/case breaks ? The new guys that do this don’t collect it’s all about the Gamble not the love of Team or Player. I equate this to team/player loyalty being blown away by the Fantasy Player. To me it’s just like going into a casino. This is why I stick to Vintage.

I have to somewhat disagree. My 9 y/o does quite a few case breaks and he certainly is not trying to get the big hit.

Although he is primarily football, the example still relates. Even some of the lower end sets are too expensive for him to put together. The base Donruss football set is 400 cards, 300 veterans and 100 rookies that come 1 per pack. 24 packs per box at $65 a box. If we get extremely lucky (astronomical odds actually) and every rookie is different, we're $260 invested and still a couple of cards short of finishing the set. Sorry, but a 9 y/o really is not capable of "selling" the various inserts to recoup some of the money spent. There are some inserts he likes, and will keep for his personal collection, but most don't mean anything to him.

So the typical set building that most of us remember from our younger days really isn't feasible for the typical youngster today.

Since set building is out, most will collect players or teams. We do case breaks and purchase our local football team. If we were to buy boxes of let's say Donruss Optic, it would cost in the neighborhood of $120 a box. We might get 10 cards for his team, and if we get really lucky maybe he'll get a rookie or insert. Not exactly getting our monies worth. But if we buy into a case break we can get all of the cards for his team for maybe $50 (of course if you have some big/hot rookies on your team it will cost more). Yes, we get quite a few of the same base cards, but that's not a bad thing. We also get a good number of inserts and rookies. He's able to trade his duplicates to friends of his for some of the other players he likes (his friends get the boxes from Walmart/Target). I haven't done it in just over a year, but we were able to take our other duplicates to our LCS for trade credit also.

Anyways, not everyone who does the case breaks does it for the gamble. Actually I think for some it has strengthened team loyalty to a whole new level. It allows team/player collectors to focus their limited collecting budgets on only their primary interests.

If you're going to the National this year, you'll be able to find the 2 of us in the case break pavilion, as well as walking the floor.