Quote:
Originally Posted by jhssketchcards
Just my opinion…
The last real, true superstars come out of drafts are:
Top Tier- Jokic. Luka, Tatum. Giannis
Second Tier- Edwards, Morant, Trae, Booker, Embiid, Cunningham, Banchero, Ball and several more.
It has been several drafts where we saw a player come into the league and consistently electrify the league like the Top Tier group I listed. All of the guys above Re tremendous players but being good at a sport doesn’t translate to hobby stardom.
The past 5 years we’ve seen a huge amount of cash thrown at Wemby, Holmgren, Ball, Zion, Morant etc with very little to zero return to hype prices.
I’m sure many here, including myself, can tell stories of what we spent or “invested” in young, unproven lottery picks only to have injuries, poor performance or discipline problems derail said player we targeted.
The truth is trading cards has become a stock market, and eBay is the ticker. Prices are watched daily and in a given 24-hr period we can see cards jump from the 25 cent box to $5 box in a matter of the time it takes to commute home from work. $50 cards go to $100 in a day or so. Baseball is even more demonstrative of this with games almost every night. The NBA tries desperately to cultivate and incubate the “next” guy but inevitably he either a: is a bust or b: becomes a very dependable, even All-Star player, but has zero seismic shift in the hobby. It’s interesting that the last year, as far as rookies taking a league by storm, aside from Wemby, the most exciting thing to happen to professional basketball cards is Caitlin Clark.
Are these players just not good enough? Too small a sample size? Collector ADHD?
From 2020-2024, the NFL has seen QBs like:
Burrow
Hurts
Herbert
Tua
Lawrence
Wilson
Fields
Lance
Jones
Mills
Pickett
Willis
Purdy
Stroud
Richardson
Levis
Daniels
Nix
Penix
Just to name a few. Only two on that list has been to a SB, and 1 won it. I get it that it takes time, and football is obviously different, but I use these to illustrate the vast hype money that went into and stayed with these guys, versus what their prices are now. It wasn’t ling ago Hurts was third fiddle behind Burrow and Herbert, but now he has surpassed them in some collecting circles. Think about where prices were on most of these guys compared to now. It’s crazy.
Personally I’d rather spend money on proven, sure fire players that have established hobby stardom rather than sinking money into a guy who hasn’t even made an NBA All-Star team yet. It’s the sane in each sport though. But as long as suckers are willing to fork over $$$ for guys like Cooper Flagg, it will stay the same. Problem is, we son’t know if hime will be the next Jayson Tatum, or the next Christian Laettner.
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SGA is a legit superstar and should be in the top tier. His prices have been reaching all-time highs recently and a lot of his cards have doubled/tripled in price over the last year. I think Cade Cunningham has a chance at reaching the top tier in the next year or two as well.
All the super-hyped prospects you mentioned like Wemby, Zion, Morant, Ball, Flagg, it's really difficult to see a return because their prices started out so high. To me, it's all about finding cheap, underrated prospects that fly under the radar who have a chance at developing into superstars. Guys like Giannis and Jokic were dirt cheap if you bought in their 1st/2nd/3rd year.
Overproduction of cards is also a huge factor. There's a billion Wemby rc cards on the market. I just saw a post today that Topps is releasing a new 2023-24 product with Wemby "RC" cards in 2025. I'm going to assume a good majority of it will end up being worthless junk in the future. Same thing happened in the 90s, only a few select cards/players/sets are still desirable/collectable today and the rest end up as low end or worthless junk. I think modern cards will have the same fate, if you collect the right sets of the right players then those cards will end up increasing in value in the future. What sets and which players is anyone's guess but that's what makes it fun for me.
As to what will revitalize the hobby, it looks like the sports card business is booming for the card manufacturers. Every overpriced junk set they put out is being gobbled up and opened in mass quantities. Compare the print run of 2012-2015 prizm to 2017-2025 prizm and the amount is staggering and continues to increase every year. There's more collectors now than there was 10-15 years ago. I think the hobby is doing just fine from the manufacturer's viewpoint. From a collector's viewpoint, it just means there's way more junk to sift through to find the real gems.