2025 Topps Chrome Spongebob

[greatgradegrate]

Value prop looks pretty low, reminds me of X-Men 97 Finest but double the price. No guaranteed #'d parallel, autos 1:3 boxes*, sketches 1 per case.

This hobby is rough business rn.

*Granted the autos are way more desirable.

[premium1981]

Originally Posted by greatgradegrate

Value prop looks pretty low, reminds me of X-Men 97 Finest but double the price. No guaranteed #'d parallel, autos 1:3 boxes*, sketches 1 per case.

This hobby is rough business rn.

*Granted the autos are way more desirable.

You could be correct, but you are are basing your opinion on assumptions. We don't know what the value is yet and how well singles will sell. Or what an average box produces. I'm personally in waiting mode. I wanted to buy a good amount of it from the start, but it started higher than I thought it would and its giving me second thoughts. So I'm just going to hold off until it actually goes live before I make my final decision. My niece is a Spongebob super fan and she is really wanting to get ahold of some.

[greatgradegrate]

Originally Posted by premium1981

You could be correct, but you are are basing your opinion on assumptions. We don't know what the value is yet and how well singles will sell. Or what an average box produces. I'm personally in waiting mode. I wanted to buy a good amount of it from the start, but it started higher than I thought it would and its giving me second thoughts. So I'm just going to hold off until it actually goes live before I make my final decision. My niece is a Spongebob super fan and she is really wanting to get ahold of some.

I'm basing my assumptions on the Topps Odds page and Fanatics recent product. But yeah, ofc they're assumptions.

[finfangfan]

Earlier in the thread, people were using the recent $140 Topps Star Wars Chrome box price as a guesstimate of what SpongeBob box prices would be so $250 is a bit steeper for people who were planning on $140ish.

I think Topps has box pricing down to a science. They probably wait until the last 24 hrs to lock in prices based on traffic to their website and other metrics (traffic to other social media posts). So they drop the news… monitor the flurry of activity or lack of activity and then price the drop to EQL accordingly.

[bub838]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

Earlier in the thread, people were using the recent $140 Topps Star Wars Chrome box price as a guesstimate of what SpongeBob box prices would be so $250 is a bit steeper for people who were planning on $140ish.

I think Topps has box pricing down to a science. They probably wait until the last 24 hrs to lock in prices based on traffic to their website and other metrics (traffic to other social media posts). So they drop the news… monitor the flurry of activity or lack of activity and then price the drop to EQL accordingly.

I also like to imagine them just sitting in a conference room throwing darts at a dartboard

[jdandns]

They noticed that virtually all their releases these past few years have been selling out no matter what they priced them at.
If there's a limit, they haven't found it yet.

[eldavojohn]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

I think Topps has box pricing down to a science. They probably wait until the last 24 hrs to lock in prices based on traffic to their website and other metrics (traffic to other social media posts). So they drop the news… monitor the flurry of activity or lack of activity and then price the drop to EQL accordingly.

I don't think so ... I think instead EQL is used to obfuscate and spark FOMO on medium to large print runs that they can shunt after the fact to Fanatics website or other outlets.

I don't think there's some MI6 command center of buzz on X or anything even remotely compared to that. Recent evidence that comes to mind is The Joy of Baseball this year pretty much sold out instantly and should have at least had hobby slotted into EQL. Conversely 2025 Marvel Sapphire was not EQL (just "notify me") then it became EQL and I think the time slot even moved between the X post and the launch on the site ... this clearly should have been EQL all along regardless of chatter and if you were going to monitor chatter, you would do a better job getting the word out.

Basically they don't even know what should or shouldn't be EQL when it obviously should be and while there is evidence they can change it at the last minute, it doesn't seem to be a 50/50 product when they do that.

Bottom line: I wouldn't confuse Fanatics' ineptitude with some higher order 5D chess coming from a real time social media observation command center. It's one or two guys just giving it their best guess.

[Charismatic44th]

Was really hoping they would make a Stephen Hillenburg cut auto as the ultimate chase card

[nonsportguy]

I know stickered autos are super common but they could have at least picked some good ones to go on the superfractors.. based on the images I've seen so far the autographs are either partially off the sticker or the ink looks not as solid as a fresh marker.. I guess it is what is.. but you would think they would pick the best looking signature to go on the 1/1.. unless those ARE the best, then we're all screwed lol

[finfangfan]

Originally Posted by eldavojohn

Bottom line: I wouldn't confuse Fanatics' ineptitude with some higher order 5D chess coming from a real time social media observation command center. It's one or two guys just giving it their best guess.

Like it or not, but Fanatics will eventually ipo into a multi-billion dollar company. I would not be surprised if they are experts on pricing that will cause customers to bend not break. Even in this thread you see people saying they didn’t buy as much (ie quantity) as they were planing because the cost was higher than expected… BUT they still bought. So if their budget was $500-600, they might have planned to buy about 4 boxes at $140ish (SW price) but settled on 2 boxes at $250ish . So the high price caused them to bend but not break… they still likely spent their planned budget, but just didn’t get as much back as they were hoping. And there were still users who lost out on EQL so there was probably some room for Fanatics to price even higher and still sell out.

[KhalDrogo]

It’s 2025. If you haven’t figured out yet, $250 is not a lot of money. Especially to people who participate in the hobby. You guys are going to die when you see the pricing if they ever do Pokemon again.

[greatgradegrate]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

It’s 2025. If you haven’t figured out yet, $250 is not a lot of money. Especially to people who participate in the hobby. You guys are going to die when you see the pricing if they ever do Pokemon again.

You think there's no line that could be crossed where Big Fish gamblers alone are not enough to sustain the hobby?

I have only bought in on one SW product this year (Chrome) because I got it direct on pre-order. Fanatics has effectively lost my money that Topps had locked down previously, and while good deals on singles is keeping my interest now I have already started drifting over to other hobbys because ripping for me is a big chunk of the allure with cards.

For sure two gamblers could replace every one collector like me, but for how long?

[premium1981]

Originally Posted by greatgradegrate

For sure two gamblers could replace every one collector like me, but for how long?

You think gambling is going to stop being a thing? Never. There are certain things that never go backwards. I don't know how old you are, but gambling has always been a thing in the hobby. I gambled with buying a pack of 1991 Topps looking for Chipper Jones rookie cards as a kid. Things morph with time, and our hobby has done that with breaking. But certain lines never reverse once passed. Breaking will always be a part of the hobby for ever more unless there is some sort of legal regulation that makes it go away, and I don't think that happens any time soon.

Also to your previous point, there are far more than 2 new people in the hobby for ever person like yourself who doesn't like the change and moves on. I've said it before on the baseball boards, but every one of us on these boards could stop spending even a single penny on cards from Topps and it will change nothing. The size of the trading card markets have gotten to unfathomable heights. We all mean nothing to the overall market. Its too big. What is happening now just has to be accepted as we adapt to the change, or new hobbies must be found. I recommend just staying in budget and enjoying what you always have. You might just have to do it with fewer cards.

[greatgradegrate]

Originally Posted by premium1981

I've said it before on the baseball boards, but every one of us on these boards could stop spending even a single penny on cards from Topps and it will change nothing.

I mean, yeah, we're like .002 percent of the trading card hobby here...

But right, breaking will most likely never die. Still don't think it's a foregone conclusion that non-sports specifically continues with this growth infinitely. The pokemon/sports bros that came over to SW in the last year for example? There's no guarantee they'll stick around. Why would they if SW is not a primary interest? They'll jump onto other things like the good little fickle consumers they are.

Or not. The one thing you won't catch me doing is talking in certainties.

[KhalDrogo]

Originally Posted by greatgradegrate

You think there's no line that could be crossed where Big Fish gamblers alone are not enough to sustain the hobby?

I have only bought in on one SW product this year (Chrome) because I got it direct on pre-order. Fanatics has effectively lost my money that Topps had locked down previously, and while good deals on singles is keeping my interest now I have already started drifting over to other hobbys because ripping for me is a big chunk of the allure with cards.

For sure two gamblers could replace every one collector like me, but for how long?

You may have been priced out at $250, but that doesn’t mean every non-gambler interested in the product was also priced out.

Like I said, it’s 2025 and $250 is not a lot of money anymore. That’s a tough pill to swallow for some, but it’s the truth. I do think most products are junk at the current price points, but clearly there’s high demand for essentially everything Fanatics is making. Especially inaugural issues like this.

[Brobocop]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

You may have been priced out at $250, but that doesn’t mean every non-gambler interested in the product was also priced out.

Like I said, it’s 2025 and $250 is not a lot of money anymore. That’s a tough pill to swallow for some, but it’s the truth. I do think most products are junk at the current price points, but clearly there’s high demand for essentially everything Fanatics is making. Especially inaugural issues like this.

I agree with your point about $250, it's a lot of money but at the same time, it's not what it once was, especially pre-COVID days. I think that's where a lot of us are at. We know that pre-COVID, you could walk into a LCS with $500 and come out with 5+ boxes of cards. Now, you walk in with $500 and you walk out with 1-2 boxes.

At the same time, maybe the ceiling on what you can sell cards at has risen, but the floor has stayed roughly the same for most products. That's where my mind has gone. If I spent $100 on a box of Prizm back in the day and got skunked, I'd be okay with that. Now, you spend $500 on a box of Prizm and get skunked, that just hurts 5x more.

[finfangfan]

Generally, the nonsports hobby used to be pretty cheap to buy wax. The gamble was pretty low risk when preorder box prices for stuff like the first Marvel Anime (which hit start of COVID) were $92. Now everything seems to be priced for the lottery hit, which is great as long as you pull a lottery hit. But stings way more than the old days if you get skunked because your initial outlay is like 2-3x per box vs pre-Covid preorder pricing.

[orion9578]

Originally Posted by premium1981

You think gambling is going to stop being a thing? Never. There are certain things that never go backwards. I don't know how old you are, but gambling has always been a thing in the hobby. I gambled with buying a pack of 1991 Topps looking for Chipper Jones rookie cards as a kid. Things morph with time, and our hobby has done that with breaking. But certain lines never reverse once passed. Breaking will always be a part of the hobby for ever more unless there is some sort of legal regulation that makes it go away, and I don't think that happens any time soon.

Also to your previous point, there are far more than 2 new people in the hobby for ever person like yourself who doesn't like the change and moves on. I've said it before on the baseball boards, but every one of us on these boards could stop spending even a single penny on cards from Topps and it will change nothing. The size of the trading card markets have gotten to unfathomable heights. We all mean nothing to the overall market. Its too big. What is happening now just has to be accepted as we adapt to the change, or new hobbies must be found. I recommend just staying in budget and enjoying what you always have. You might just have to do it with fewer cards.

Sure, it can go away...in this instance. While opening wax IS 100% gambling, it's also 100% NOT traditional gambling, i.e. table games, sports betting etc. There has to be a collector base at the end of the game to buy the hits you're gambling on. So, when people like me... and in your response, the whole of Blowout go away...yeah, it'll have a massive effect on wax gambling. Without the true collectors to buy your hits, you end up gambling on something that has no value to most of the world(cards).

I think that's most of the "game" nowadays. There's a lot of people flipping cards to other people hoping to flip the same cards etc., all trying to find that collector at the end of the rainbow. For now, that seems to still be there...I know that's basically ALL of my buying, currently. I'll let others spend thousands of dollars to get hundreds or less in cards...and I'll buy the singles I want to either keep or know I can flip myself.

In the end though, this whole house of cards...pun intended, utterly folds without people like myself and the people on these boards.

[eldavojohn]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

Like it or not, but Fanatics will eventually ipo into a multi-billion dollar company.

Um, okay, I really don't care about that nor do I understand what that has with having pricing "down to a science". I only took umbrage with you painting a picture of someone at Topps carefully A/B testing and looking at data to come up with the perfect pricing and usage of EQL. I guess we just have a different concept of what "science" is.

In related news I tried to buy the Shoebox Treasures launch today and it sold out instantly and was not EQL. I wanted one box and got none. My budget remains in my wallet.

Originally Posted by finfangfan

I would not be surprised if they are experts on pricing that will cause customers to bend not break. Even in this thread you see people saying they didn’t buy as much (ie quantity) as they were planing because the cost was higher than expected… BUT they still bought. So if their budget was $500-600, they might have planned to buy about 4 boxes at $140ish (SW price) but settled on 2 boxes at $250ish . So the high price caused them to bend but not break… they still likely spent their planned budget, but just didn’t get as much back as they were hoping. And there were still users who lost out on EQL so there was probably some room for Fanatics to price even higher and still sell out.

Counterpoint: the best result of analyzing pricing has nothing to do with whatever a given customer's budget is and instead should be about maximizing revenue from the market -- selling your complete product run at the highest value at the first point of sale. If it sells out and any sales are made on the secondary above MSRP, you have failed.

Building any narrative that is supposed to encompass both a 10 year old with his allowance money and also a hedge fund manager spending hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on cards is absolutely silly and a fool's errand.

[finfangfan]

Originally Posted by eldavojohn

Um, okay, I really don't care about that nor do I understand what that has with having pricing "down to a science". I only took umbrage with you painting a picture of someone at Topps carefully A/B testing and looking at data to come up with the perfect pricing and usage of EQL. I guess we just have a different concept of what "science" is.

I mentioned the size of Fanatics to counter your “one or two guys guessing” on pricing. Believe it or not Fanatics is pretty tech savvy and uses analytics to price stuff. You can Google it if you don’t trust me…

[crdbored]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

I mentioned the size of Fanatics to counter your “one or two guys guessing” on pricing. Believe it or not Fanatics is pretty tech savvy and uses analytics to price stuff. You can Google it if you don’t trust me…

Someone at Fanatics has 130point as their home screen.

[eldavojohn]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

I mentioned the size of Fanatics to counter your “one or two guys guessing” on pricing. Believe it or not Fanatics is pretty tech savvy and uses analytics to price stuff. You can Google it if you don’t trust me…

Well you've convinced me. All I have have are my own lying eyes and nearly every single dang release since they bought Topps. But that corpospeak blurb knocked some sense into me. Thanks.

[finfangfan]

Originally Posted by eldavojohn

Well you've convinced me. All I have have are my own lying eyes and nearly every single dang release since they bought Topps. But that corpospeak blurb knocked some sense into me. Thanks.

Your argument would make sense if the products Topps is releasing lately were bombing. They are all pretty much doing well and each new release seems to have an online line waiting on release. You can attribute it to one or two guys guessing correctly each time… I guess. But I’m not sure why you wouldn’t think a company would use analytics for pricing in the year 2025. Especially a company as large as Fanatics.

Upper Deck on the other hand probably IS people throwing darts at the dart board. And they are struggling lately compared to Topps.

[eldavojohn]

Originally Posted by finfangfan

Your argument would make sense if the products Topps is releasing lately were bombing. They are all pretty much doing well and each new release seems to have an online line waiting on release. You can attribute it to one or two guys guessing correctly each time… I guess. But I’m not sure why you wouldn’t think a company would use analytics for pricing in the year 2025. Especially a company as large as Fanatics.

Upper Deck on the other hand probably IS people throwing darts at the dart board. And they are struggling lately compared to Topps.

It is my interpretation that when I'm ready to buy a box for $100 and Topps sells it on their site for $50 and it sells out before I can even load the page and they have a tool called EQL that they sometimes use and don't use it and that just happened to happen to me 55 minutes ago from right now that they don't know what is going on. Still. If that was a one off or whatever, okay. I would like to buy one of those boxes and people are asking for $120-$150 on ebay. They aren't selling. Yet. It reeks of ineptitude. But gemini told you that the same crap every retailer claims is going on at Fanatics. Well, okay, all I have are my first person experiences.

My argument isn't that Topps/Fanatics is erroring the other way and pricing at "$1 billion per box on this thing we've made 7 trillion of". That's not my criticism of their pricing strategies. It's that they don't know how to price for the product to live for even 45 seconds of availability. That, to me, is simply a blatent tell tale sign of ignorance. You might say "well, it's because they promoted the heck out of the product" but I didn't see any social media ads about Shoebox Treasures and here I am wanting it so ... what's going on? I guess they're pricing geniuses I can't even understand.

[finfangfan]

At any rate… SpongeBob sold well at $250 a box… which was higher than many here predicted given the recent SW $140 a box… so whatever pricing model Topps used… the one or two guys guessing model you propose or data analytics…. It seems to be working. Topps is on a roll!