No more sports cards at Target

[commishbob]

Oh wow...a TRACKING DEVICE!!!

People truly ARE insane. And pathetic.

I used to buy a pack or two (or a blaster if i was feeling flush) just to see what they looked like in-hand. I remember doing that as far back as my college days in the 70s when I was way out of the hobby.

No more. I won't miss the new cards anymore than they'll miss me.

[Eric72]

Originally Posted by commishbob

Oh wow...a TRACKING DEVICE!!!

People truly ARE insane. And pathetic.

I used to buy a pack or two (or a blaster if i was feeling flush) just to see what they looked like in-hand. I remember doing that as far back as my college days in the 70s when I was way out of the hobby.

No more. I won't miss the new cards anymore than they'll miss me.

The Dylan quote in your signature is entirely appropriate for this conversation:

“People are crazy and times are strange, I used to care but things have changed -Dylan”

[toppcat]

I only collect some Mets cards from Heritage each year, mostly team sets and a few of the extra cards that mimic the older inserts. There's enough of a challenge to keep a short wantlist going and it's kinda fun but this is my last year doing so, the lottery mentality is ridiculous. Mugging someone for cards-unreal!

[G1911]

That's a shame. I don't buy packs anymore, but that's how I got started in cards. My first sports cards were a pack of 1997 Topps Football bought at Target. Wonder if Wal-Mart will follow suit and give even less of an opportunity for people to get started casually.

[mrmopar]

If I had not kicked myself of the pack habit years ago (maybe 99-00), as it literally was nothing more than a gambling addiction, I would have been done this year for sure if I somehow even managed to make it the 20 some odd years.

I'm finding a number of converging factors that have sucked nearly all the fun left out of collecting. I should have started selling 6 months ago, but not organized enough and didn't want to give ebay more money either.

[tulsaboy]

This is also, I think, to a certain extent the fault of the manufacturers. They have worked quite hard to create a lottery ticket mentality with new product. When every single card has a literal rainbow of parallels, signed parallels, etc., buying packs and boxes becomes just gambling. During COVID my wife and kids and I had fun grabbing packs and some blasters and, for the first time in years, putting a set together from packs. It was wildly inefficient financially, but the process was a hoot. Baseball packs usually weren't difficult to get, but football and basketball became super hard because folks were swooping in seconds after they were stocked so that they could resell them on the secondary market.

The manufacturers know all of this. And could simply ramp up production to meet demand. They won't, though, because they benefit from the perceived scarcity of their product. Panini Football or basketball cards aren't scarce at all. They are everywhere. What has happened is that by flippers buying Target and Walmart out seconds after the cards are stocked, folks perceive the product to be scarce and thus are willing to pay the higher prices. It is ludicrous. The chances of pulling a $25,000 card from one of the blasters is almost nil, but the thrill of the possibility gets people to pay $150 for that $20 blaster. Just dumb.

The folks this decision actually hurts are kids and regular folks in towns without card shops. In the 1980s cards were everywhere- at grocery stores, convenience stores, book stores and Target and Walmart. They disappeared from the gas and convenience stores in the early 1990s, and even from Target and Walmart for a while. Now they are disappearing from those two retailers. Sadly, it will greatly limit the ability of average folks to get a pack or two of cards. When you make things hard, you change folks' willingness to buy. This will limit casual folks from buying cards, which is bad for our hobby. I don't blame Walmart or Target for doing this, I blame idiots who are looking to make a quick dollar and the manufacturers who have facilitated it.

kevin

I read it also in the news this morning. Guns and tracking devices. Geez. People say the good old days weren't as good as we remember. Ha. Never saw people fighting over baseball cards. I still think they were pretty good.

[deweyinthehall]

Originally Posted by tulsaboy

This is also, I think, to a certain extent the fault of the manufacturers. They have worked quite hard to create a lottery ticket mentality with new product. When every single card has a literal rainbow of parallels, signed parallels, etc., buying packs and boxes becomes just gambling. During COVID my wife and kids and I had fun grabbing packs and some blasters and, for the first time in years, putting a set together from packs. It was wildly inefficient financially, but the process was a hoot. Baseball packs usually weren't difficult to get, but football and basketball became super hard because folks were swooping in seconds after they were stocked so that they could resell them on the secondary market.

The manufacturers know all of this. And could simply ramp up production to meet demand. They won't, though, because they benefit from the perceived scarcity of their product. Panini Football or basketball cards aren't scarce at all. They are everywhere. What has happened is that by flippers buying Target and Walmart out seconds after the cards are stocked, folks perceive the product to be scarce and thus are willing to pay the higher prices. It is ludicrous. The chances of pulling a $25,000 card from one of the blasters is almost nil, but the thrill of the possibility gets people to pay $150 for that $20 blaster. Just dumb.

The folks this decision actually hurts are kids and regular folks in towns without card shops. In the 1980s cards were everywhere- at grocery stores, convenience stores, book stores and Target and Walmart. They disappeared from the gas and convenience stores in the early 1990s, and even from Target and Walmart for a while. Now they are disappearing from those two retailers. Sadly, it will greatly limit the ability of average folks to get a pack or two of cards. When you make things hard, you change folks' willingness to buy. This will limit casual folks from buying cards, which is bad for our hobby. I don't blame Walmart or Target for doing this, I blame idiots who are looking to make a quick dollar and the manufacturers who have facilitated it.

kevin

This is pitch perfect - I feel like I could have written it myself. Thank you.

For myself, and probably a fair amount of others, it was cards that actually got me interested in the sports and not the other way around. In the spring of '78 I learned all the teams and the players before I'd ever watched a game.

What we're seeing was inevitable, and it's terrible. I'd love to know what is being said in the company board-rooms about this - because you know they're talking about it.

A few years back, after the glut of the 90s and 00s, sports dialed back on the licenses and that helped restore some sanity to things. Wonder if there's a chance the current situation will make manufacturers rethink anything about distribution. If two giants like Target and Wal-Mart cease selling, they'll probably need to.

[Bigdaddy]

Originally Posted by tulsaboy

This is also, I think, to a certain extent the fault of the manufacturers. They have worked quite hard to create a lottery ticket mentality with new product.....

The manufacturers know all of this. And could simply ramp up production to meet demand.

They tried this starting in the mid-80s and you see what happened - the junk wax era. Seems like the manufacturers can't figure out a stable production/price level. Either too little and the secondary market goes wild or too much production and the cards are worthless. Certainly in the long run the hobby doesn't want the only cards that are worth keeping be the chase cards and all the rest are practically worthless - seems like that is where we are now. And even then, many of those chase cards will fall off in value over time as today's hot prospect goes the way of Joe Charboneau. I'm not sure we will ever see anything resembling stability in the hobby regarding modern cards anymore - it's too much of a lottery, win big or lose. And I don't see how that is good in the long run. But hey, what do I know? I didn't buy Apple or Tesla.