Quote:
Originally Posted by rwperu34
If the premium is too high, eventually the gamblers get fed up and/or run out of money. Keep in mind through April, 2021 the price of wax was rising quickly, but so too was the price of singles. Since then every segment of the singles market has been crushed, but wax has held strong or continued up.
Group breaking has definitely changed the game and the gamblers premium is going to be higher than it was say 10 years ago, but the current markup is just not sustainable in the long run.
Will you ever get another box of TC at a reasonable price? I think the answer to that is maybe. It depends on how aggressive Topps is with print run.
I would change card companies to distributors, but I think this is the jist of it. Somewhere down the road there is going to be more product printed than the market can handle. At that point, prices will drop. Then if you combine that with a drop in demand (desire might be a better word), it can really plunge.
There might be an intermediate stage where product sits in the warehouse for awhile. Eventually that warehouse is going to fill up and sellers will be forced to sell, either to clear space for new product or to raise cash for new product. I don't really know where we are in that cycle, but I'll say this; I would not want to be holding a large stash of 2022 TC on preorder right now.
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I argue this is already the case with prices on the resale market steadily dropping over the past year. The impact on unopened product is a delayed effect due to distributors and flippers controlling its supply and being more resistant to market change. But eventually the market will decide the value of unopened product.
The unique thing about product supply in the trading card hobby is that an increase in overall supply does not translate into an increase in overall value -- it is a dilution of value. We saw this during the junk era. Big hits like superfractors, /5 red refractors, /10 autos don't increase in number when overall supply increases -- only junk base, common parallels, common inserts and low value autographs.
So with an increase in supply, value only becomes harder to obtain. This is especially true for box breaks which entices gamblers with a chance of winning a big hit or a reasonable chance of making a chunk of money back.