Navigating The Crazy Sports Card World of 2021
Chef Benny
|
I’d like to start by introducing myself to everyone, my name is Ben Simon, old friend of the late great Joe Johnson and one of his first writers (or Chef Benny in my online card world, but I will get to that later). I have been tasked with explaining what’s going on these days in the crazy sports card world that I love. My background in sports spans 30+ years with different amounts of interest, time, and money invested over that span leading up to today where I am an active collector, vendor at sports card shows, selling online, selling to local card stores (LCS), and selling through FB marketplace. I’m also an active member of a Discord group for retail monitors that offers all types of services for buying hard to find items.
[brid autoplay=”true” video=”906625″ player=”26281″ title=”AdClipVT11%20Cousins%20Airing%20It%20Out” duration=”201″ description=”undefined” uploaddate=”2021-11-23″ thumbnailurl=”//cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/19439/thumb/906625_t_1637709181.png” contentUrl=”//cdn.brid.tv/live/partners/19439/sd/906625.mp4″]
With the emergence of Covid and many people at home, we saw a huge increase in sports card prices, leading to a huge increase in the price and availability of new retail product. There was thus more people “chasing” to “flip” cards. Those that strictly buy sealed product to resell are referred to as “scalpers” and looked down upon by many. However, that has always been a part of this business, it just used to be the super high-end retail, not every single box at Target or Walmart.
I agree it sucks that a kid cant just grab a box of the new football cards without going online or to a LCS and paying a decent mark up, but that’s the world we currently live in and that’s what’s driving prices on singles sky high. Now, this is a business for me, but I do try to personally give the best deals and trades to young collectors I can when possible.
Where do you find packs of cards to rip these days? Whoops, got ahead of myself.
In the sports card world products are basically divided into retail and hobby boxes. Retail “wax” (term for sealed sports cards) are Cellos (single packs of cards), fat packs (larger packs of cards that usually have a small bonus pack in them), hanger boxes (a small box with one large pack of cards in it), blaster boxes (a medium size box with a number of packs in it), mega boxes (a large box usually with better inserts in its packs) and sets that you would find at Walmart, Target, etc. if you’re lucky. Hobby boxes are what the LCS’s get exclusively and are more expensive but have much higher pull rates for expensive cards.
For basically every sport besides hockey and baseball, Panini is the company that makes everything and you can buy hobby products direct from them when a product is released. Depending on the product, though, it can be very expensive, sell out in seconds, or both. If you’re looking for retail wax, it can be found with some work. The good products sellout sometimes in minutes or seconds so you really need to be in the right place at the right time, which takes a lot of time of checking when a particular store tends to stock week after week or just dumb luck.
Target is just putting some cards back in store after switching to all online sales due to the huge lines every morning at open to check and see if they stocked over night and Walmart does a mix of both in-store and online. There are many more stores that sell sports cards but Target and Walmart are by far the largest and most consistent up here in Minnesota. In the last year, we have also seen the prices vary from store to store. For example, a blaster box from Target of a particular product might cost $25 and the same box may be $35 at Walmart.
Online wax hunting is a whole separate animal, and can be very difficult to beat the bots to the best products.
There are many options online depending on what you are looking for and what you are willing to pay. If you are looking to buy the newest retail wax online you can start by trying to guess when a specific store is going to drop to then hang out on the product page until it comes in stock. There are also a few people on Twitter or Facebook who you can follow who will give you a heads up when product is dropping in a specific store.
The main route I have personally is to be part of a Discord group for retail monitors where you get notifications on upcoming drops, real-time product drop links, options for collectors and dealers alike. There are many Discord groups to choose from depending on what you are looking for, from free groups to ones costing $50 + per month. I am in extremely well run Discord group with amazing monitors that I pay $30 a month for.
Not all Discord groups are the same since they use different monitors and even a 10 second delay in a ping can be the difference in scoring the newest cards or missing out and having to purchase for over retail if you want to rip some. If you are willing to pay over retail and just want the convenience to just order what you want, one can always find something on eBay, stockx, Facebook marketplace, etc.
Next week, I will jump into some of the hottest sport cards in this crazy world and what one or two great games or bad games can do to the value of card instantly.
Thanks for reading,
Chef Benny
