When the Sports Card Craze Goes Too Far

People have become so obsessed over sports cards that four men were willing to assault another man over them.

Back in 1982, a company called Coleco licensed the rights to a line of dolls created by Xavier Roberts, which were dubbed Cabbage Patch Kids. The dolls went on to become the hottest toy to hit the market for Christmas.

Popular toys selling out isn't unusual -- the Etch-a-Sketch was a big hit in 1960 and Star Wars action figures in 1977 and 1978 didn't last long on shelves. What made the Cabbage Patch Kids craze unusual was the way consumers reacted in their quests to obtain the dolls after a mass marketing campaign in 1983.

People camped overnight in parking lots of stores, mobbed through doors and tore apart displays. Scalpers took the $25 dolls, marked them up for $150 and happily sold them to desperate parents.

Worst of all came the reports of people getting into physical altercations over the dolls, such as a report from Texas of a woman gripping onto a doll even as another person's purse strap was wrapped around her throat.

It was not only an era in which every toy manufacturer saw exactly how to launch a marketing campaign for a toy and ensure strong sales -- but as Stephanie Buck wrote in her piece for Timeline.com, "The Cabbage Patch phenomenon finally exposed the envious underbelly of the American adult."

The same could be said for the recent phenomenon that the sports card industry has experienced. As I've written before, the COVID-19 pandemic played a major role in the recent boom for sports cards, with people looking for something to do to pass the time while being mostly confined to their homes.

But it led to a massive amount of people rushing to Walmart and Target to buy up all the retail sports card products on the shelves, then selling them on the secondary market at a higher price.

It's the Cabbage Patch phenomenon all over again, and last week, it reached the point that at least a couple of people were willing to get into a physical fight over who should be allowed to purchase trading cards.

In Brookfield, Wis., a man who had purchased trading cards at Target was assaulted by four other men, apparently because they wanted the cards the first man had purchased.

It led to the first man, who had a concealed carry permit, pulling his gun to get the others to back off, followed by the Target store and two neighboring buildings being locked down, while police investigated.

The follow-up to this is that Target decided to stop selling MLB, NFL, NBA and Pokemon cards for the time being. In other words, four men who allowed their envious underbellies to be exposed have resulted in a major chain store deciding to just stop selling the product in demand.

In an interview with Beckett.com, Panini America's D.J. Kazmierczak described this as a "short-term cooling off period" to allow Target to figure out how to better handle trading card sales.

Kazmierczak pointed out that Target had set certain times at which cards would be sold, but people just lined up at the stores, even camping overnight, to ensure they'd be the first ones to get the cards.

Meanwhile, Walmart employed a different strategy, varying the times at which the distributors would stock cards, even having them come in overnight, and prevent people from figuring out the schedules.

I've been as frustrated as anyone else with the people who raid the retail shelves, buy up everything, then flip it to other people at marked-up prices.

I also understand that the secondary market is going to do what it does, as much as I would like to see people do a better job of informing themselves about the realities of sports cards.

But when a craze hits the point that people are willing to physically attack others, it's time for people to start asking themselves what exactly they have become.

Was it really worth it to push over other people just to get a Cabbage Patch Kid? Is it really necessary to assault a man in a parking lot over a box of trading cards? Do people bother to ask themselves why they become so obsessed over a consumer product?

Again, I have no idea how long this sports card craze will last. Some have predicted this will be another junk wax era, while Kazmierczak thinks it will be a softening of the market, rather than a crash.

My opinion is that the product in more recent years will fall back to earth, which may cause the people snatching up all the retail product to ask themselves if this is an ideal way to make money. However, I believe product that has been historically popular and wasn't produced in massive quantities will stay at the high prices they've reached.

Regardless of what happens, when people become so obsessed over a product that they are willing to assault one another just to make sure they get that product, we all need to ask ourselves if it's really worth it -- and that we should do a better job of not letting our envious underbellies get exposed.