I don't keep up with the "industry trends" of the hobby but for me the new normal is cards not being on shelves.
Or so I had thought until I saw this the other day when I stopped by the card aisle in Target for the first time this year. Nicely stocked and with some of the new products. There wasn't even a sign saying two per customer or something.
I was curious why these weren't being scooped by flippers or whoever was hoarding them in 2020. I assume it has something to do with life slowly returning back to some semblance of pre-COVID with sporting events being open again and the collecting hobby coming back down to normal levels.
Another thing might be the prices. See the Topps Chrome Update blaster on the bottom left? That's $49.99 per. Nearly $50 for 40 total cards. See the Topps Chrome Update hangers on the top left? Those are $24.99 per. Nearly $25 for 20 total cards.
This hobby's obsession with Chrome just reminds me of that SpongeBob SquarePants joke where Squidward asks SpongeBob why everything is chrome and SpongeBob says "everything is Chrome in the future".
The Series 1 flagship blasters were still $19.99 though, like pre-COVID times. I don't know if Heritage or any of the non-baseball stuff around jumped in price because I didn't care to look.
And despite me pointing out the prices, I did scoop up some of the TCU boxes. No I'm not going to open them myself or flip them, these can serve as excellent gifts for my collecting friends in Japan.
The only thing I did buy for myself was a blaster of 2022 Series One. Normally I wouldn't bother with this set as it wasn't in my wheelhouse even when I was a much more active collector. But I wanted to pull the poster-boy Shohei Ohtani. Ohtani's great and the current face of Major League Baseball, and in my mind just pulling a base card of his from a set that has him on it (shown prominently as both a pitcher and hitter) would be fun.
The fact that this post is nothing but pictures of boxes instead of the cards within should signal to all of you that this did not go according to plan.
I didn't pull any Ohtani's.
What did I actually pull? In a word, trash. Or at least I thought it was trash. I think most of you will disagree, hence why I've already distributed the contents to other collectors who might find gold where I only see ugly gray.
Still, it was nice to open a pack of baseball cards for the first time in a while. It won't be a regular occurrence since there's new Luis Torrens cards on my radar (fuck you Topps Chrome Update Sapphire, go straight to hell), but y'know play ball. Or something I don't know.
As always thanks for stopping by and take care.