The Players in the Sports Card Craze and How We Might Address Them

Everyone plays a role in the rush to buy sports cards. So what's the solution?

Last week, I wrote about Target's decision to suspend trading card sales for MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokemon. I've also written about how the pandemic has led to a massive interest in trading cards, which led to the incident that caused Target to pull cards from the shelves.

I've also read multiple articles by Ryan Fagan of Sporting News, who covers MLB and college hoops but is a sports card collector and has written about the craze. The past couple of weeks, he wrote about why Target suspended card sales, who is to blame for it, and what may be next for the hobby.

I want to expand on Fagan's thoughts, but have thoughts of my own, too. I've collected cards for a long time, can remember the craze back when I was in college and became immersed in the hobby, and the lessons I've learned from what happened (namely, to remember I'm on a budget and stick to it).

But let's go over the players involved in the latest sports card craze and see what may be obvious -- and what we may be missing. After all, if we don't take the time to understand the issues with the craze, the hobby could be in trouble, and those of you reading this are likely hobbyists who want it to thrive, not collapse.

The Flippers

Let's start with the main target (no pun intended) of everyone's ire: The people who raid retail shelves to buy product, then sell it on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, or another online location at a higher price, anywhere from two to four times the retail price.

Flippers aren't new to the hobby. I can remember during the junk wax era in which dealers would go to stores, buy a full box of cards that sold for 50 cents per pack, then turn around and sell them at their store at a higher price. Even if they bought them direct, they'd mark up the cards higher than the suggested retail, such as when 1990 Fleer football cards were priced at $1 per pack right out of the gate.

Then there are the flippers who will go to card stores and shows, or scout sites such as eBay, to look for ungraded cards for sale, buy them, get them graded, then re-sell them at a higher price. In other cases, they'll buy the graded cards, only to turn around and put them up for sale again within days. (This is different from hobby dealers, who will either buy cards at a below-market price for re-sale, offer a consignment option or even buy cards for their personal collections.)

The first group of flippers didn't last once more people became aware about how much product was out there. The second group is still around, but because they focus on cards that are no longer in print, and tend to focus on popular, proven players, there's not really room to complain, other than that they see the hobby as more about the money than the pure joy of opening packs and looking at cards.

But the current group of flippers is different. They see demand for sports cards rising, they go out and buy whatever they can get their hands on from the retail shelves, then mark it up and sell it to people who either can't find the product, or don't want to go to the store because of the pandemic.

It's easy to typecast all the flippers as people who are too lazy to get a job, but that's overly simplistic. Some of these people may be trying to find a job but can't, for whatever the reason may be, and see this as the only way to make money.

More importantly, others who are flipping product work full-time or part-time jobs, but they sell items on eBay and other online sites from time to time. They see the craze happening and decide they want to jump in and make easy money.

Certainly, the flippers are making it more difficult for people to find cards and enjoy the hobby. However, the flippers need to ask themselves an important question: What happens when the boom comes to an end? Because it always does.

I'm not confident it's going to end this year, and I'll get into a reason why later. But let's go over the next player who is to blame.

The Buyers

It's easy to blame the flippers for everything, but as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango. And in order for flippers to be able to sell product, somebody has to be a willing buyer.

The buyers in question are those who have been out of the hobby for some time, or are experiencing it for the first time. As Fagan explains, they were looking for something to do during the pandemic, a time in which most leisure activities weren't available.

Then they saw sports cards and either thought "this looks like fun" or sparked memories of what it was like to open packs. And those who still had jobs, particularly if they were working from home, decided that's where they'd spend the money.

For those who returned, they noticed things had change. Autographed cards were more frequent and there were better odds to get them -- even a guaranteed number in a box. Individually-numbered cards gave the allure of a card that had to be "rare" and thus more desirable. And all those event-used memorabilia cards looked pretty cool, and can you believe that you could find one per retail box?

When either they couldn't find the cards in a retail outlet, or they didn't want to go those outlets because of their worries amid the pandemic, they searched online for product and bought it. For those who got back into the hobby, they may have assumed that, this time around, the product was truly rare because you couldn't find it in stores (back in the junk wax era, cards were everywhere).

The problem these buyers have is that they aren't well informed about the hobby in general and may make assumptions about product availability. If they don't take the time to learn about the hobby and what's involved with products, they may make bad decisions.

It's no different from any other product on the market. But we have to remember that, while we may do our homework when we buy a new car because that's a major investment, we should do the same when buying a new TV, even if that's cheaper than a new car. And the same goes with trading cards, even if marked-up pack remains cheaper than most TVs.

The Card Companies

Let's go back to the junk wax era. The problem the companies had at the time was that they simply kept producing more and more sets, to the point the market couldn't handle it.

Hobby dealers would order product that had collectors excited, but then the product would fill up retail shelves everywhere, which left a bad taste in dealers' mouths.

The card companies tried to find ways to keep collectors hooked by rolling out more "chase cards" which looked different from the base set. In some cases, they were inserting autographed cards, though they were a tough pull at the time, because of the ratio of the autographed cards compared to the base cards produced.

Over time, though, card companies fell by the wayside. At one point, you had seven major producers: Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score, Upper Deck, Impel (the company behind NBA Hoops and Skybox), Pacific and Pro Set, plus multiple smaller companies such as Playoff, Classic/Score Board and Press Pass.

When the market collapsed, the number of companies began to shrink. Among the larger companies, Pro Set went out of business, Score (renamed Pinnacle) bought out Donruss, Fleer bought out Impel, Pinnacle went bankrupt and was bought out by Playoff, Fleer went bankrupt and was bought out by Upper Deck, and Pacific shuttered its doors.

Eventually, Panini bought out Playoff and we were left with three companies: Panini, Topps and Upper Deck. Over time, sports leagues and players associations decided to sign exclusive contracts with one company to limit the amount of product out there.

It's easy to blame the companies holding a monopoly over a particular sport, but letting other companies in isn't going to solve the problem. After all, if a Panini Prizm basketball fat pack sells for four times as much the retail price on eBay, the same thing will happen with a Topps Chrome fat pack if they are produced for basketball. Because both sets include individually-numbered parallels with a shiny, rainbow reflection that looks so cool.

One reason why it may make sense to limit licenses to one company is this: Players can only sign so many autographed cards (or stickers to put on cards as the case may be) and there's only so many jerseys to go around (especially when players like to swap jerseys after games), so limiting a license to one company solves that problem.

But here's a point we may not be asking: Why is it necessary to ensure every single set has autographed and memorabilia cards inserted into packs, or that half the products need to have one of those cards per retail box?

Let's go to the photo I used in the header and look at it again.

Notice the Joe Montana autographed card. That was one I pulled from a pack of 1991 Upper Deck football. I liked collecting the cards but mostly forgot about the 2,500 signed cards inserted into packs, because chances were I'd never pull one.

Long story short: I pulled one from a pack I got in a hobby store and was ecstatic. I'll tell more about that day in a future post, but I can tell you the wrapper pictured was from that pack I pulled the card, and the paper attached was a list of cards I needed for a set, so I kept both to remember the day.

In today's environment, autographed cards are available in just about every product, even the low-end products that one would think should be available for kids. If you put autographed cards into Topps Opening Day baseball -- even if the odds are long of getting one and it's not likely to be a top player -- somebody, somewhere, is going to hype up the chance at that golden ticket.

And now for the follow-up question: Why must we have multiple parallels and individually-numbered cards in every single trading card product?

Let's go back to the header again. There are two numbered cards for Lamar Jackson and Justin Herbert. I pulled these cards from packs of Panini football stickers released last year.

That's right: They are even putting individually-numbered cards into packs of stickers, a product that certainly is aimed at kids. And, yes, I bought the stickers, but I wanted packs to open and that's all there was to buy at the time.

But if we're sticking individually-numbered cards into packs of stickers, we have gone overboard. And when flippers know that such cards exist in those packs, of course they'll buy them and hype them up. And the buyers who don't know any better will pay the money.

And that is really where the companies are to blame -- they haven't drawn a line on chase cards. But that brings us to the next player.

The Veteran Hobbyists

I know what you're thinking: Those of you who have been in the hobby for a long time didn't ask for flippers to hoard product and uninformed buyers to pay outrageous prices. However, we need to remember that those of us who have been in the hobby for a while may have lost sight about what's important.

The simple truth is this: If collectors didn't spend all their time posting information about box breaks, putting YouTube videos up about a case break, and bragging about how lucky they were to get this or that card, we wouldn't be sending the message to new collectors, and the flippers who benefit from them, about how the hobby is all about finding that big hit.

How many of you in the hobby still try to build a complete set these days? It may be true that it's harder to do that with certain products, but it's something that hobbyists used to do a lot, and many of them did it in the junk wax era.

While it's nice to pull harder-to-find cards from packs, sometimes that "hard to find" card isn't one that's numbered to just 50 copies, but that one common card you never seem to pull from a pack to finish a base set.

Then you would spend your time visiting hobby dealers or attending card shows and asking one person after another to help you find this elusive card that nobody else cares about, but it's the one card you need to finish a set. You'd then run across that one dealer who happened to have it, and you were happy.

And back in the junk war era, finding an autographed card was truly a treat. Again, let's revisit the photo in the header.

I've already talked about the Joe Montana card. There's another autographed card, that of Ezekiel Elliott, numbered one out of 10. I pulled that from a retail blaster of 2019 Donruss -- so, yes, it's certainly possible to pull a card like that from a retail pack.

But despite that card being numbered one out of 10, the euphoria of pulling it wasn't quite the same as the day I pulled the Montana. I attribute that to the retail blaster in question promising one autographed card. In other words, I expected a signed card -- it wasn't like the Montana pull in which I didn't expect it to happen, ever.

In other words, what we hobbyists are missing is what is truly the unexpected. We don't think we'll ever get a big pull like that, but when we do, we truly remember that day. But with far more products with guaranteed autographs or other such cards in a box, it tends to all blend together and we don't remember those days as well, because we expect those hits to come.

This is where we hobbyists have failed. We sometimes forget the hobby is supposed to be fun (I'm guilty of this as anyone else) and we may have forgotten that the thrill of the chase can be as much as about finding that one card of some player who nobody cares about, but allows us to finish a set.

Most of all, we may be so caught up in the hype around big pulls that they don't really come off as something truly special. And when we get caught up in the hype, someone can come along and take advantage, which is exactly what the flippers have done.

The Retail Stores

While stores such as Target and Walmart share in the blame, they are actually lowest on the list. Their main issue, as Fagan pointed out, is that retail stores are often behind the curve when it comes to product sales.

Retail stores tend to be reactive rather than proactive -- especially because they can't predict trends. They may have an idea about what might be a popular product, but more often than not, they are guessing.

When sports cards flew off the shelves after years of slowly trickling out of the stores, they were caught off guard. Then came people who harassed employees about availability of cards and when they were going to be in stock. Considering the stress employees had to deal with during the pandemic (and we can go on all day about that), it didn't help to add the stress of customers demanding trading cards.

Walmart tried one solution, and that was to randomize when cards were stocked in stores. It didn't completely solve the problem, but it may have reduced situations in which people parked out in lots, waiting for stores to open.

Target, though, had stores that set specific times for people to come in and buy cards, but all that led to was people sitting outside stores waiting for that time to happen. Limiting the amount of cards they could purchase didn't always work, because the most ardent flippers would keep going into the stores to buy more, or even pay other people to buy cards for them.

Panini is trying to get cards out to more retail outlets, but the flippers are heading to those outlets, too, to buy up product. That puts even more outlets into the dilemma of figuring out how to limit purchases and make sure everyone has a chance to buy something.

And now I come back to the part about why I'm not confident that the craze is going to end: I've previously written about quarterback Trevor Lawrence hitting the NFL scene and collectors certain to go crazy for his cards.

But it's bigger than that: Lawrence is joined by Justin Fields, Trey Lance, Zach Wilson and Mac Jones, who will all have tons of hype surrounding them and lots of people who want to get their cards, in hopes that one of them will become like Patrick Mahomes, whose rookie cards came out in 2017 and now sell for three to four figures.

It's not hard to figure out that, whatever solution Target implements, or whatever Walmart does in the future, people will be looking to beat the system. Though Walmart's system reduced people camping out in parking lots, that doesn't mean it eliminated the practice.

Panini has already decided to raise the price of retail products, something it hasn't done for a number of years. But the 2021 rookie QB class may mean it doesn't matter -- people get so caught up in the hype there, they decide that Panini Prizm football fat packs that retail for $20 now, but are flipped for $80, are still worth the higher price.

What Can Be Done?

Let's start with the hobbyists who have been around for a long time. It may be difficult to complete sets in today's environment, but it's not impossible. I managed to complete a set of 2020 Score football, and I hadn't completed a set of Score football for a long time.

Pick a set from years past, even if it's one from the junk wax era, or a set from more recent years that doesn't have high-priced rookie cards, and focus on building that. Maybe you have cards you bought in the past but have holes to fill in the sets. Experience that joy again and it might get others to think about doing the same.

Then, be sure to make it known to the card companies that a set-builders product is something you really want. That, in turn, should convince card companies to give that a shot. And if they do, be sure to support the product any way you can.

Staying on the subject of the card companies, I’ll offer a couple of suggestions. First, dial back on the desire to put autographs, memorabilia and individually-numbered cards into every single product. Whatever is considered to be the lowest-end product, stick to a base set with rookies that aren't short printed, and maybe throw in one chase set or two, but keep those chase set at a small number of cards with odds of no less than one every six packs. Such products are less likely to be attractive to flippers and the buyers who only seek the golden tickets.

Second, it's probably time to limit the high-end products to hobby stores only. If Panini Prizm and Topps Chrome are limited to hobby dealers, the flippers will be out of luck, and the buyers will have to seek out the hobby stores to get the product. You might be able to offer different tiers of boxes through hobby stores, but may have to price the lowest tier at, say, $50 to $100 to discourage flippers.

Third, keep in mind that raising the price of product might not slow the train down -- but if it does, be prepared to drop the price so it's at a more reasonable level and collectors who are soured by those rising prices may be more inclined to stick around. With that said, I understand the prices will have to be higher than in the past -- those $20 blasters have sold at that price for many years, so if they have to stay at $25 to $30, I understand.

Fourth, if you believe there needs to be something in a retail blaster box to get people to buy it, let's go back to that header photo again.

Notice the Andrew Luck card -- that was a bonus in blaster boxes of 2015 Score football. The rubbery helmet on the card isn't the same as a piece of a jersey, but it still might be a fun card for kids to collect, or for those who like to collect cards of a favorite player.

But for the flippers and the buyers who want golden tickets, that's not going to be as appealing. Therefore, it might dissuade flippers from scooping the product off shelves and the buyers who are looking for that elusive hit, but still give casual collectors something they might enjoy.

For the retail stores, there shouldn't be set times that people get to buy cards because that doesn't solve the problem. A better idea might be this: Keep the product in the stock room, then put out some product at random times throughout the day, but do it only once per day. That may discourage more people from hanging around the store or in the parking lot, and certainly will avoid the long lines at a store on a particular day.

However, if people loiter in the stores or the parking lots for hours on end, remember that most parking lots are private property, not public, and you have every right to ask somebody to leave if they camp out overnight. It may not be a pleasant thing to do, but do it if you must.

Going back to hobbyists, remember that it's important that collectors are informed about what's out there and what to understand about the hobby. And that brings me to the buyers who got back into the hobby: Take the time to do research so you'll understand what you are getting into and can make better decisions about what to buy and what to avoid.

There are private groups of collectors who gather on Facebook and other outlets who are mostly helping each other to find cards they want or offer items for sale at reasonable prices. You may want to get to a local hobby shop, if one is near you, to ask questions about any groups they know about.

Finally, I'll address the flippers: At some point, the boom is going to end. While I don't expect a drop like in the junk wax era, I expect that more recent product is going to run out of steam once people decide they have to cut back on spending, particularly with the pandemic nearing its end and plenty of buyers wanting to spend their money on leisure activities now available again.

I'm not going to call any flipper a person too lazy to get a job. I am, however, going to say this to the flippers: You have fallen into the trap of thinking short term, not long term, and letting greed and envy get the better of you. You aren't the only ones with these problems -- we've all fallen into these traps.

It's important to ask yourself this: How much longer do you think this will last? Are you prepared for the day in which the bottom falls out? And regardless of your job situation, will you learn your lesson about not falling into the trap of short-term thinking, while greed and envy get the better of you?

In fact, the questions for flippers are questions we should all answer. Sports card collecting is supposed to be a hobby, but all of us involved have become too fixated on what a card is worth, rather than what makes the hobby fun.

If everything becomes about the money, it's that much harder to find enjoyment in something.