posted on December 11, 2002 05:59:15 PM new
There are currently 813 ebay auction for Magic the Gathering electronic playing cards ( mtgo in a title search only ).
There are 4,160 ebay auctions with etopps in the title only.
This is the very beginning of these new cards and already they have exploded on the aucyion scene. How long before regular cards are not prized near as much as they are now?
posted on December 11, 2002 07:05:43 PM new
Tooltimes we no longer sell any new cards on ebay. The only cards that you can make a good profit with are vintage cards. We sell our graded stuff on yahoo with great success. The new stuff you mentioned is already saturated on ebay. I bet there is not many at yahoo.
BTW I made a mistake on the date 2004 is a bit off lol.
posted on December 11, 2002 07:43:38 PM new
The history of sportscards is one of control of the manufactures and incredible greed. Greed only matched by the likes of Bill Gates and Meg Whitman.
In the begining it was very easy to collect sportscards. Every year you tried to put together the sets from inexpensive packs or you bought the factory set at the end of the year. Then the greed started in earnest. Many new manufactures started selling cards and had huge production runs. Those cards had little investment value because of the high production. Enter the insert cards and autograpghed cards. Soon these were "the" cards to collect. More greed surfaces when dealers figure out that "graded or rated" cards would jack up prices. Even though almost every card made in the last few years was a "10" due to improved manufacturing processes the buyers laid out a lot of money to get a graded card. A racket! This grading process bypassed the manufacturers and they had to get revenge. Every year they made sets with an equal number of cards and their insert card racket. Why not make some cards a very limited edition? Especially the unknown rookie cards! Why let the dealers even have them? Deal them buggers right out of the card game and sell directly to the buyers! That is what is happening right now. It will take a few years to almost totally eliminate those annoying middlemen but the process is underway. The cards are not really nothing more than stock certificates now and nobody actually has physical possesion of a stock certificate unless they want to pay extra for the service. The price of the individual etopps cards move up and down every day and not monthly like it used to be with the arrival of the monthly Beckett Price Guide. Hot damn! I can own a hot rookie etopps card or IBM stock? IBM stock is too boring. Talk about gambling on the market.
I say sell all of the old cardboard cards now while you can! ( do I sound like Elmer Gantry yelling at all of the siners in a revival tent? )
posted on December 17, 2002 07:56:53 PM new
Tooltimes,
eTopps is hot right now, but only because the print runs have been limited up to now resulting in significant price increases for the first year cards.
I just don't see Topps resisting the urge to print higher numbers because of the current demand. As soon as that happens and a few cards go down in price rather than up, eTopps will lose its luster.
posted on December 17, 2002 08:00:26 PM new
Also I don't think the manufacturers were the only greedy ones. It's hard to blame them for printing the cards if someone was willing to buy them. Not too many companies turn away business. How many of those who complain about the overproduction bought cases and cases of cards thinking they would finance college for the kids or provide a cushy retirement?
posted on December 17, 2002 10:54:26 PM new
If Topps resists the urge to make too many of the eTopps cards it can topple ( no pun indended ) or greatly reduce the sales of the cardboard version of the industry.
The same thing is happening with Magic the Gathering cards. The company that produces the cards has found a gold mine in the form of electronic cards and packs. A few years ago there was only 15%-25% of the US homes with computers and those computers were expensive. That has all changed now and high speed internet access is rapidly overtaking the dialups.
The card shops and most internet card sellers ( there are many ecard sellers already ) will still continue to sell the old style 'real' cards but with time they will greatly fade in numbers. Much like real books are starting to fade away and greatly decrease in value as ebooks become more and more mainstream.
The electronic computer revolution is changing many aspects of society and playing cards are getting to be one of the changes.
