A Look At High End: Where Does It Fall?

Now that Topps and UD are out of the Basketball market, I am also assuming that high end basketball is leaving with them. That leaves football's 3-4 products and hockey's 2-3 products as the only high end products left. I assume that UD will focus a lot more energy on making their products better in those sports, but I doubt the difference will be noticible for a few more years.

I have noticed a few people over the internet hailing the switch to Panini in Basketball as a good thing as it will bring the hobby back to producing "cheap fun sets." Guess what? Basketball collectors could give a shit about cheap sets. If you look at the Basketball market, its all about high end, especially internationally. In fact, I would expect Exquisite basketball outsells Football 2 or 3 to 1 - mainly because basketball collecting isnt worth it if you collect cheaply. In my opinion, this will not only cripple basketball cards, but signal a bidding war over licenses in other sports so that only one company has the ability to produce. That fucking blows.

What is funny, is that even after all of these high end products, we still do not have (non rookie edition) Exquisite baseball in the form that Basketball and Football have it, and I don’t think we will get it. I believe that Prime Cuts and (gah!) Topps Sterling and Triple Threads will sadly continue to be Baseball's only "high end" products at 170-200 dollars a box.

As has been discussed before, right now, its pretty much impossible to produce a high end baseball product with an MLB liscense, mainly because of the over-ridiculous price it takes to obtain the autos, and the need for historical players to drive a product in contradiction to MLBPA rules. Does this mean Exquisite baseball will never happen? You bet your ass.

Even after all the price problems, the central issue is not the cost of making the product, but rather finding people to buy the product at normal Exquisite prices. I mean, look at the way Football and Basketball (RIP) drove the markets. Both had a crop of RC players that never had problems garnering huge values due to immediate playing status, and even the retired and current players still had a good handful of people who demanded a lot of money for their cards without contrived scarcity involved.

That just doesn’t happen in baseball. Even the most accomplished superstar players are hindered by their city's market, which means if you arent Derek Jeter, A-rod, or Albert Pujols, you probably wont get 100 dollars for an auto that cost the company 200 dollars to obtain. Hell, even David Ortiz, pride of Red Sox Nation, usually doesn’t get that much for one of his autos, and he is the most popular player in the biggest market outside of NY.

I discussed before that baseball collectors are not the same as the rest of the sports. Baseball collectors have been forced into a hobby life of set collecting, mainly because there just isnt anything else to collect. Before Prime Cuts, there hadnt been a box over 100 bucks worth buying since 2005. That is a fucking long ass time, if you ask me. In the mean time, thousands of new collectors have come to the sport and seen a world without worthwhile products to bust for needs other than set collecting, so naturally they went the other direction. People on the blogosphere will argue that a limited budget and lack of willing to spend on high end is the reason they went the way they did, but really, its not possible to adopt a different philosophy.

Ill give you an example.

I came back a few years ago into the hobby with VERY little cash and NO cards. I immediately started to look for the coolest cards I could find, but I quickly found out that the hobby had changed quite a bit since I left. Exquisite Football was the king of the mountain now, and I immediately swooned at the amazing cards it produced on a yearly basis. I could not believe my eyes. I rapidly jumped on board with mid-end products like Limited, Absolute and LCM so that I could build a collection worthy enough of selling in a high end market. After a few years, I had enough cards to accomplish that. Set collecting was the furthest from my top priority as it could get, because that is not how football functions.

Then, when I tried to take the same mentality to Baseball, I found that the other collectors were thinking about collecting in a completely different manner. Only recently have I come to the realization that there really isnt much else they can do. You could cite Sweet Spot and SPA as successful mid end products, but even the mid hits in those products cant break $50. SPA and Sweet Spot in Football has 3-4 rookies a year that break that barrier, plus a generous handful of retired players, current players, and others that break it. Its also a hell of a lot cheaper to produce, though the price for football autos has been on the rise as well (Matt Ryan was the most expensive rookie auto I had ever heard of).

Basically it comes down to this: If you want to make a successful Baseball product, you either fill it with rare jerseys of pre-war players and tons of cut autos for a reasonable price, or you make a product with a huge and cool base set for people to collect at a really cheap price. Other than that, you have no chance - there is NO in between.

The Modern Value Ceiling

People buy a product for the chase cards, whether its the Ruth cuts or the Mantle cuts, or even the Logo patches and the octographs, etc. But with all of these cards, we never really understand how much possible value there is in one single chase card. Lets say you pulled the quad cut auto of all the Presidents on Mt Rushmore, which I consider to be the craziest fucking card ever produced. Even if you find a SERIOUS collector, how much can you expect them to pay? What is the ceiling we can understand is the top value for any modern chase card?

So far, the craziest price I have seen is when the taints at Beckett sold the Ruth Cut WS ticket out of premier. It sold for close to 40 thousand, and I couldnt believe that A) someone had the money, and B) that they wouldnt buy a BMW instead. However, that was more a piece of Ruth memorabilia than anything, due to the rarity of the ticket, and the person that signed it. Those types of things sell for hundreds of thousands every time memory lane has an auction. So, I guess that is tops, but its not really what I am talking about.

I am talking about the other types of chases, the stuff created that contains cuts and jerseys, the 1/1s, the whatevers. Like the John Lennon cut auto, or the Hendrix cut auto, or the Pope cuts, stuff like that. In reality, I think the ceiling for these cards may be $10,000, because above that, you start getting into Mantle territory with the vintage graded stuff.

You know, I look at the high priced listings all the time, and you see tons upon tons of stuff, all over the place that falls into this category. The Jordan/Kobe dual logo man, the Peterson and company quad logo card, the Babe Ruth bat barrell card. Many are listed at 100K with Best offer, but they never sell because no one will pay more than 10 grand, and that is tough even to find.

This is all completely based on my own perception, but unless it is a pristine graded RC card of a top guy like LeBron, Jordan, Montana, or something like that, its not going to break 10K from what I have seen.

With this type of assumption, I think it puts a further limit on busting copious amounts of high end product. I see it all the time at one of my local stores, busting case after case of exquisite at 1200 a pop looking for logo cards. Yet, after spending close to 8K a visit, and coming away with nothing, its interesting to think that even if you ended up with a Montana, B Sanders, Emmitt Smith, and Jerry Rice quad logo auto, its still not going to get you your money back.

You may think I am pulling the above out of my large ass, but you would be shocked to learn how common of a practice this is nationwide, even with the largest recession in recorded history. People bust and bust, and then they actually bust... their wallets, thinking that the one chase card is going to be worth their own body weight in gold. What they fail to understand is that even if you pull THAT card, you still have to find a buyer, and that is the true challenge.

High End to No End

With the reported layoff of UD employees, the obvious crapfest that is the current economy, and the seemingly growing downward trend in this once recession-proof industry, its going to be a long haul until things start perking up. High end products seem to be suffering the most, as expected, mainly because many of the shops that buy the boxes to sell end up selling them at a loss or extremely minimal gain due to the lack of whales that can now waste their money on cardboard. Yet, the companies keep churning out low quality, high cost products like Topps/Bowman Sterling FB and BB, Eschelon BKB, even Premier FB and BB in some circles, among others.

So, if the shops are getting killed, why are these products being created at an alarming rate? Hell, Razor has even created the first $1000+ product, and though its ridiculously limited to 99 boxes, its still happening. I think its time to look at inserting something that makes these products valuable again, and make it less than one per one million cases. UD is revamping Exquisite to include 1 more card that is a guaranteed "gold edition" auto, plus adding many new features including a guaranteed pull from the A List per case. Will it help? Maybe for the select people that can afford a case these days, but not the rest of us. Job security is low in many industries, and 40% of Americans say they will spend less this Christmas season.

Here is what I would do:

-If you are going to charge more than $200 dollars for a product, there better be autos on every jersey card.
-If you are including non-autoed hits, they better be of valuable or dead players.
-Encase all the cards. I dont need a chipped card when I spend more than $200.
-Give me a guaranteed list per case
-Photo database of cards needs to be available, I know this may be tough with the people who do this living in different states than where the cards are boxed, but it needs to be figured out.
-More contrived scarcity instead of larger numbers of needless parallels. Why would my card be a 1/1 when there are 4 parallels of the 1/1 itself? Keep the numbering low.
-No base cards. I dont need to pay 100 dollars a card and see a base card in there.
-More colors in higher end product patch cards. I know you have 1 color parts of the jersey, but save those for the lower end product.
- Better boxing a la National Treasures. Make the box look as nice as the set.
- Not a single sticker. If you want me to shell out the dough, get the athelete to sign. Redemptions are fine if you can fufill them properly or replace them nicely if it is impossible for the athelte to sign.
- Keep the checklist to people that matter, RCs and Stars only. No more Brodie Croyle, Charlie Frye, and company in these sets.
- Keep the checklist to skill position players and important defenders if they are not retired.
- Put more than one box hit in a box. Products like Sterling will not work in todays market because no one wants to spend $350 on a box where the hit is a jersey card. Even worse when it is obvious the jersey is "event used" from an old timers game rather than game used.

There are others, and yes, this is a pipe dream, but it should be happening. If the manufacturers actually produced better products or products with tons of value, then people will buy, thats the way it has always been.

Where Does It End?!?

Well, you know that claim that says 80% of all secondary market memorabilia is fake? I am starting to buy in. I used to think that if an item is up for auction with a place like heritage and other top houses, it should be researched beyond comprehension. Most of the time, the items come with massive provenance, but that doesn’t always mean they are real.

I started looking around gameuseduniverse.com lately because I am always interested in parts of the hobby I know nothing about. What I found there was shocking, disheartening, and very educational to say the least. On multiple occasions, people have posted threads on the site showing how a certain item cannot, under any circumstances, be real - despite any history described in the auction.

Recently, a Mastro Michael Jordan item was proven to be not real, and drew the attention of the national media. What they missed were two items, described in this thread, that should have had the same kind of coverage. There are other items listed, but I took these two as the most important due to the players and the claims of the auction.

The first was supposed to be a game used helmet worn by Joe Namath in SBIII. The auction lists miles of history and even has a quote from the house's president about how this is the one item that should be tops on everyone's list. The problem is, that one of the members on the forum knew more about football helmets than any single other person who worked for the house.

According to photographs from the auction, the Namath helmet was relatively unrestored, but the major "gaff" was that there was only one drill hole below the earpiece. From other photos in the thread, Namath's helmet had two drill holes, done haphazardly to replace the two bar facemask with a three bar. When it was removed, the drill holes remained throughout the season. As you can see from the pictures, the helmets are similar, but not the same. Wow.

Secondly, there was an easier gaff spotted in a Unitas gamer, that brought 50,000+ on three occasions at auction. The issue? The helmet was made by a manufacturer that Unitas never wore in a game. Fucking crazy.

Of course all the claims were immediately refuted by the houses in pretty conspicuous fashions. The person on the forums said that if the claims by the auctions were true, it would be pretty crazy to think that they wouldn’t show up in any of the photos and extra photos provided to him personally.

So, if Heritage, Mastro and all the other houses can make mistakes like this, how many mistakes are there with Upper Deck, DLP, and *gasp* Topps? Im guessing quite a few.

If you havent checked out gameuseduniverse.com, do yourself a favor and check it out. Even if you don’t care about gamers, its still cool to see the collections on the site.

The Times, They Are A Changin'

Frequently I discuss that there is no point buying wax, especially high end, because the odds are overwhelmingly against you to make most of your money back. This got me to thinking that there might be a way to change that, but it means borrowing a page from retail stores - BLECCCH.

Over the last few years, hand packing high end products has become a commonplace occurance on the market floor, but hand packing for value has not. Sportkings Series A was the first product to promote the fact that they not only hand pack their cards, but they also try to make each $400 box contain enough value to be considered a good break. Of course this begs the question of what is actually considered valuable enough for these guys, as most of their boxes seemed less than stellar.

But, what if it was possible to pack a box to contain a certain value like the guaranteed book value packs from Target? Upper Deck, DLP, and Topps could be deciding to make sure that each box contains a good amount of value, but for some reason this isnt reality. I find this especially disturbing considering how much a box of Exquisite and Natty Treasures actually costs. I mean, this is the first time in the history of the collecting world where someone pays so much for so little in terms of quantity. Why not make it worth their while?

Assign "cash values" to each player in the set. Research a number of sources to determine a list, all the way down to the scrubbiest of rookies. People like All Day, Payton Manning, Walter Payton, Tomlinson, Emmitt Smith, and Jerry Rice would all be considered top value football, as Jordan, Kobe and Lebron would for basketball. Then, after all this research is done, start ranking and assigning a cash value (as a reference point).

As a BASIC example, last year, Peterson was the top dollar guy for football so I would say $150 bucks should be his value. Walter payton is probably the best selling retired star, so give him the $150 dollar price tag too. Emmitt Smith and Joe Montana are great sellers, but not as good as payton, so give them a $149 and a $148 respectively. I would say Tomlinson and Manning are top guys now too, so give them those numbers on the active side too.

Now, when building your box of exquisite, you should have to have at least $400 worth of players in the box. Of course a base card will be worth as much cash as a logo 1/1, so you better hope your $150 value hit is not the base version. Of course, you could easily pull some nice cards at a high rate, but of course, the box structure would be the same (1 base, 1 RC patch auto, 1 scrub rookie auto, 1 maximum jersey, 1 patch and 1 wild card). I think this would make sure you really get some nice players in your box and you wouldn’t have to worry about pulling 15 bucks worth of cards from a 500 dollar box as often.

Personally, I think ideas like this will become ESSENTIAL as the NBA and NFL continue to make the RC premieres bigger and badder. This year, for the NFL RC premiere, there were more scrubs than I could count on my fingers and toes. Those guys will be your box hits for Exquisite, National Treasures, Triple Threads and other high end products. Due to this horrible trend, wax busting has gone from bad to worse in football. Products like Classics, Threads, Limited, CoSigners, SPA, and Absolute will all suffer because the RC hits are pretty much the meat of the product. Unlike the NBA where there are only 2 rounds for the draft, the NFL has 7 PLUS unsigned free agents. At most, 5 of these guys will go on to have collection worthy careers. A lot will play in the league for a while, but will not be worth collecting for the long term (Homer collectors aside).

Please, I know this about as primitive as you can get when trying to revolutionize box busting, but its an idea. Ideas like this can be turned into something much better, and could transform the wax busting industry into a venture worth pursuing. As it stands now, forget it, ill stick to singles off eBay where I know I can get the cards I want for less than the box price, AND DEFINITELY less than the case price.