I've got nothing against people spending real money on cards if they have it to burn, and enjoy it.
That said, printing multi-million dollars cards out of thin air, for players at the level of Cooper Flagg means the industry is in a downright shady bubble of money laundering, wash trading, price fixing... all of the good stuff. It's practically at Bored Apes level right now. Not good.
It?s a 1 of 1 autographed card that sold at auction. I don?t see how it?s any different than a Superman comic book selling for $9M at auction in 2025 or a rare stamp selling for $8M in 2021. People are willing to pay a premium for rare collectibles. This isn?t anything new.
It's cynical, manufactured rarity for profit. They didn't make Superman #1 with the intention of selling it for millions one day -- that happened naturally as a piece of comic book history. Rare stamps aren't a deliberate business model to drive sales of postage.
Next year they will print 100 more 1-of-1 cards and something will sell for $10M.
Yes, in the grand scope of things people are free to buy whatever one-of-a-kind thing they want, for whatever they want to pay (and possibly, they'll end up turning a profit). There is, however, a world of difference between a genuinely rare artifact and card companies turning packs into glorified gambling complete with "chase" (jackpot) cards, fake grading services, auctioneers, etc, etc.
BTW, I collected cards for decades, and enjoy them. Today's industry is just the ultimate sellout, casino style evolution.
That?s fair. Im not saying it?s right, but this is how the trading card industry is now. It isn?t unique to Sports cards. Magic the gathering made a 1/1 card (The One Ring). Post Malone bought it through a private sale for $2M. Pokemon made a short print Illustrator card, about 40 of them. One sold at auction for $16.5M.
Agreed. It's all marketing, I just think it's sad that, at least to me, a wholesome hobby is now just glorified lottery tickets. I don't know if any other industry has quite leaned so hard into making it their entire business model, versus an occasional marketing campaign.
Maybe it's good that someone who loves Magic can buy that card, or a Pok?mon card, instead of fine art that they have no connection to. At least Magic was an all-time great game that people played, and Pok?mon the all-time most popular video game series that was also a card game. Sports cards are just... cards. They have no utility.
Unfortunately sports cards sold out in the 1990s with the junk wax era, and could just never put the genie back in the bottle. Up until then you could genuinely collect rookie cards, and base value on some seemingly reasonable approximation of the player become good, time passing, and a bit of relative value between a few brands. You had the aura of older cards that legitimately became rare before they became valuable to chase.
Of course it turned out to be a massive bubble where everybody printed a million copies of everything and clobbered the demand side. So the geniuses at Topps, etc thought "how can we keep printing a billion cards and selling packs in every Walmart, but ALSO be ultra-rare"? Answer: just print a ton of different individually rare cards and use it as marketing. They'll have ridiculously inflated value too, but who cares...
Anyway, rant over --- like I said no ill will towards anyone that enjoys collecting in 2026. Just a sad turn for the industry IMO.
Topic: Card collectors, help me out (Read 151840 times)