Exclusive Does Not Mean Better

Exclusivity has been the talk lately, and I must say, everything about the stories has me pretty worried. The reason that I like the hobby is because there is a shit ton of products from every company that I can give a chance. Don’t like the latest DLP offering? That’s okay, there are a lot of other products out there that have the chance to be what you are looking for. With exclusivity on a player, or even now a sport, all of that goes away and that fucking sucks. Here is my previous post on it.

As we speak Baskeball has an exclusive company with Panini, and the MLBPA is looking towards Topps as its singular provider. When I see that, all I can think about is how badly I feel for those people who love collecting those sports. What sucks even more is that the people who collect exclusives from each company like Jordan, Jeter, Kobe, Grif, and LeBron, don’t have anything they can do any more. You basically fuck them out of their favorite player's stuff. If you look at those names, you can imagine how many people are going to have a problem with that. It brings in another question though, what happens when Topps products blow donkey balls one year for baseball, or what happens if Panini doesn’t live up to what they promise? Where else do you go? Unlicensed products will be made, but all that will trigger is lawsuit after lawsuit for the people who get screwed on the fact that UD Basketball could probably outsell Panini, even without a license.

For the collectors, exclusivity will not bring back 1990, or even 2000. It wont work like that. The only thing exclusivity will bring is problems with the collector base. People will get frustrated when topps produces somehthing they don’t like because they will have to wait until the next topps product to come out for vindication. What happens if that second product doesn’t live up to expectations? You keep waiting. Then, with exclusivity, Topps may not need to produce as many sets as they had to in the previous market to stay competitive. You would think they would focus on things more now that they have free reign to do as they please, but that doesn’t happen. It happens all the time: a company comes into a better situation, and makes a whole bunch of extra money. Instead of putting that extra money into making products better, they just pocket it. Im not saying that is what will happen, but you have to imagine that a lack of competition will turn things in the wrong direction.

People talk about exclusivity as good model because of what happened with UD and hockey cards. Well, see, when you have 1/8 as many collectors as baseball cards do, there isnt as much demand for variety. Hockey cards never reached the level that the big three sports did in competition, so it wasn’t a big deal to most people who only lost 1 or 2 major products from the calendar. Its much different with Baseball and Basketball, especially when the company that takes over is NOT one of the two biggest producers in the key market. With Baseball, there are quite a few people, myself included, that wont touch baseball cards anymore with Topps as a primary provider. Those are usually the people who collect many sports instead of just baseball, so higher end stuff is more important to them. When Topps Sterling and Triple Threads become the only option, things will get dicey for me and those people. I know I am not alone in that feeling.

Im not sure why the NBA and the MLBPA are playing with fire, or at least what seems like fire to me. Hopefully it works out, I really do hope that it does, but the little voice inside my head has been trained for disappointment.

Breaking the Bank On Something Other Than Cards

Ladies and gents, its official, today my fiancee and I booked the place for our wedding in November. I know this has nothing to do with this blog, but this epic event in my life has brought about a number of observations about the hobby and its relation to my future wife. Cmon people, I know you have this problem too.

As it stands right now, my girlfriend (I hate the word fiancee) HATES when I spend money on cards. When I say "hates," I mean she will tear off my pinky if she hears that I did tap the bank account for anything. According to our agreement, the only time I can spend money is when I have sold something on eBay to counteract it, or if I "disguise" it as another "necessary expense."

Basically when it comes down to it, women don’t like any hobby where you have to spend money on something other than them (Mario, be quiet). That’s not to say my girlfriend doesn’t love sports, though. I lucked out there. For example, when she was thinking of a way for our families to meet a few years ago, she chose a Twins game to do it. Everyone had fun and it wasnt as bad as I imagined in my head. In fact, for my birthday during the first year we were dating, she bought me 1st baseline tickets to the Twins and Red Sox game. It was completely unexpected and completely awesome. Of course, she picks her favorite players by how "hot" they are, so naturally, Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer are her favorites. This is pretty good in the long run, because both of those guys are favorites of mine as well. Plus, I can watch the games on TV without objection because she is usually watching too.

A good biproduct of this is that in the past, she has actually allowed purchases of some cards because I said they could be "hers." This meant that she could tell people that she owns them if they ever question me about them. In all reality, they just sit on the display next to mine, and until now, no one has asked whose they are. Yeah, relationships can be a tough nut to crack. Personally, I think its too much of a double standard, because when we spent money to get her new designer purse, she didn’t say boo. Figures.

I even tried to explain my cards as an investment for us in the future. I knew this wasn’t the case because A) the cards I have would never be sold, B) they would never gain THAT much value, and C) Investing in cards is stupid. She literally steamrolled my plan for relationship hobby domination in 30 seconds. She knew exactly what was up, especially when she knew what would be coming up on our bank statement on a bi-weekly basis.

For those of you making the whip noise in your head, that’s fine. I understand that I may not have the "hand" in the relationship when it comes to spending money on stupid "investments." Yet, despite my lack of funds to spend on cards, I DO have plenty to put down a deposit on a beautiful mansion for our wedding, something MUCH more important than any auto could ever be. So HA!