I've had an absence from posting, and I noticed some trends while updating the deals.
2011 Topps Marquee, Minor League Heritage Edition, 2011 Sweet Spot, and 2010 Panini Totally Certified have sustained big drops in price. 2011 Triple Threads has been extremely popular and taken over the $150-200 range in baseball cards. Maybe Topps should have waited to release Triple Threads? Marquee has some weak autographs and boring patches while Triple Threads has a good amount of HOF'ers in both the triple relic hits and the new single jersey hits..
Upper Deck is struggling this year in football even though they eliminated jersey cards from Sweet Spot and pushed out the first video cards in 2011 Upper Deck. The sticker autos don't look that great and the autograph checklists are weak. I opened a box of regular Upper Deck this week since the prices have crashed to around $65 and I think that's a fair price for the product.
The 2011 Football products have been hot, with Platinum and Finest rising in price this month. Prime has stayed around the same price, and it is actually my favorite football product of the year so far. Unfortunately, the photoshop jobs on the rookies and the base set pictures are terrible. I was expecting big things from Prime after last year's amazing base set.
2010 Obak has dropped again down to $44.95 and it's a pretty good buy especially for baseball bloggers.
2008 Razor Letterman, one of the best boxes, is on sale. Lots of the players in this set made big impacts this year in the majors.
711cards.com joins the lineup this week as they are offering the lowest price on Prime. Sensei322 over at bustingpacks.com has spoken well of them, so they should be trustworthy.
New products include: 2011 Leaf Metal Draft Baseball, 2011 Topps Finest Baseball, 2011 Topps Update, and 2011 Topps Gridiron Legends.
I remember a few years ago Upper Deck would release what it considered its best high end set in late November/early December, and the card stores could market it as a great Christmas gift. I'm surprised Topps doesn't do that now. The same thing goes for releasing Update and Finest so quickly. I suppose they're trying to get the postseason interest but with so many sets at the same time, most collectors have to pick and choose.
ReplyDeleteHave you seen Update in Bay Area retail stores? The Colma Target has no sign of it.
I think a lot more collectors are the type who buy each new product each week. Maybe Topps feels that the products will lose momentum if there are big gaps. I could easily seeing people busting each week as long as the products are sharp.
ReplyDeleteI haven't been to any retail stores since update's release so I'm not sure.