Rantings and Ravings of a Set Builder

In a perfect world, my wife would be a sports fan. It is not a perfect world and my wife is more a hockey fan than any other sport. Well I’m not into hockey cards, but I thought it would be fun to collect them with my wife. So what I decided to do was to try and find a hcokey set to collect. One with no short print rookie cards. I know what you’re thinking . . . good luck. True enough that of the 10 major hockey releases from last year, only one has what I would call a perfect set. One where you can get veterans and rookies and there are no short prints.

Over the past few days, I have been going over all the releases for baseball football and hockey. What I’ve noticed is that only the entry level sets allow the collector to pursue a set without short print cards. To illustrate what I mean, let’s take a look at the Topps baseball set from this year. It has everything you expect to find in a set, veterans, rookies, leaders, the works. What’s wrong with that? Nothing! It’s the way a set should be.

Let’s face it, Topps, Upper Deck, Donruss, Beckett, et al . . . they all want you to believe that their product is an investment. So the best investments (so we’ve been told) is the rookie card, so why not short the market of these cards and make people buy more boxes/cases in order to complete sets. Here’s the thing though, cards are not and should not considered to be investments. At a minimum 95% of the product you buy (either retail or hobby) will not even be worth the amount paid for the pack/box/case. So what drives us to continually try to beat the odds?

If you have purchased a box of Upper Deck Series 2, you’ll notice when you get your big hits, that it will mostly be rookies and USA baseball cards (amatuers no less). This is because the companies have numbers they want to hit and it is far cheaper to put in these cards than it is to put in autographs of established players and superstars. Yet we continue to buy them box after box. Could you imagine plunking down 60 bucks on a box of Bowman and pulling autographs of scouts? Are you kidding me? That’s not a gimmick, that’s just plain cheesy. Why the heck would I want an autograph of a scout?

Of course my favorite autograph card has to be the Rip Master and his Rip Bimbos. What the heck is that all about? I don’t see much investment potential in that. I just makes me sick to see all the money that is spent on inferior product. It’s why I have stopped buying retail or hobby and moved straight to eBay for my autograph and game used cards. It’s been said over and over in the othe baseball card blogs, how the gimmicks are killing the industry. I have an idea for UD and Topps, just put out a gimmick set and get it over with. I mean you already have wacky packs, so why not a complete gimmick set. That way you can keep it out of the product we all love so much.

In the end I don’t care how many subsets a set has because chances are I don’t want them. All I want out of my set are the vets, the rooks, the leaders, managers, and award winners. That’s it, keep your refractors and chrome cards, your gold, black, purple, blue, copper, pink and plaid parallels, and just give me a set with no gimmicks. Hey and while you’re at it, list it for a fair price. After all it is just cardboard and ink we are buying. I hope none my readers out there take these sets seriously, and collect cards for the sake of collecting not for the sake of making a buck, because that my friends is almost impossible to do.