First Buzz: 2020-21 Panini Prizm basketball cards

[auctionjmm]

Originally Posted by mossoholic

I’m arguing from the aspect that you could have went virtually any other route in the hobby and made more money. I was real big on FOTL but that has been destroyed by 2 factors. The preorder hobby price and Panini usually putting the floor 2 times and sometimes as high as 10 times MSRP. A prime example is Contenders basketball FOTL this week. Preorder price was $900 for hobby. Now $750. Based on other 2020-21 available hobby, 19-20 Contenders, and the counterpart of 2020 Contenders football hobby basketball should be at most $500. If it was FOTL would get down to under $500 and probably 2 drops from the floor at $430ish. But because of the preorder hobby price this won’t happen because once it gets below $750 people think they are getting a deal.
That being said if you invested $162,000 on FOTL in 2020 and sold it all now I can’t imagine you could do worse than making $162,000 profit. Probably way more. Also buying up every Topps Montgomery Club release on resale the first week or two of release in 2020 you at worst would have doubled your money.

With how 2020 was in the hobby it would be pretty tough to invest $162,000 and only make $38,000 profit. As horrible of moves as I have made if I liquidated everything right now I would make more than that after taxes and fees. That’s including having tens of thousands of dollars of Chronicles basketball and Hoops Premium retail that I wouldn’t break even on.

The numbers don’t add up. It is a physical impossibility to sell and everything around selling 5,000-10,000 items on eBay, plus listing another 1,400, by yourself in less than 1,000 hours. If to picture, list, package, ship out, etc each item in 10 minutes that’s 6 items per hour. Times 1,000 hours that’s 6,000 items. I’m sure you’re way more efficient than I am but there is no way my average time of doing everything around selling 1 item only averages out to 10 minutes for 1 item.

But I guess if you think what you’re doing is your best route of making money in the hobby then good luck with your continued business. I 100% believe it would be better for all us normal people, which is about 98%, and yourself if you went another route. But it’s up to you.

Where are you coming up with your FOTL figures? FOTL wouldn't even be close to double money and that's even assuming you bought everything at the floor. There have been plenty of FOTL releases that have been losers in 2020. There is no way one could double 162k on FOTL.

And it's not physically impossible to list and ship that much. I can list 60 items per hour and ship 30 items per hour so let's say 3 total hours for every 60 cards. That's 20 items per hour, not 6.

And finally, there you go again with "If I liquidated everything I could...". If, If, If. We can all say that. Do you know how much inventory I have? It's a lot. If I liquidated everything at once I would make a lot more too. Eventually it will all be sold but the ability to carryover inventory is a nice tax benefit and I don't need to zero out my inventory at the end of the calendar year just to say I made more money. It's nice to have inventory. If product acquisition becomes tougher at least I have older product that can be sold.

[mossoholic]

Originally Posted by auctionjmm

Where are you coming up with your FOTL figures? FOTL wouldn't even be close to double money and that's even assuming you bought everything at the floor. There have been plenty of FOTL releases that have been losers in 2020. There is no way one could double 162k on FOTL.

And it's not physically impossible to list and ship that much. I can list 60 items per hour and ship 30 items per hour so let's say 3 total hours for every 60 cards. That's 20 items per hour, not 6.

And finally, there you go again with "If I liquidated everything I could...". If, If, If. We can all say that. Do you know how much inventory I have? It's a lot. If I liquidated everything at once I would make a lot more too. Eventually it will all be sold but the ability to carryover inventory is a nice tax benefit and I don't need to zero out my inventory at the end of the calendar year just to say I made more money. It's nice to have inventory. If product acquisition becomes tougher at least I have older product that can be sold.

Dude, I'm not going through 40 FOTL releases from 2020 to prove my point. There are some from 2020 selling for 7 or 8 times the sellout price. If memory serves correct there is 1 FOTL you would have lost money on in 2020. Contenders Draft Picks Football FOTL. You absolutely on average would have doubled your money. Come on you're not dumb. If you think I'm wrong you waste your time going through and breaking down every product and list it lol. Yes I know not every person is buying at the floor. Maybe there is 1 or 2 more but I think buying within 3 levels of the floor every one is still a winner. But, we both know on average it's easily double right now. Close to every football FOTL from 2020 has come close to doubling or better and many basketball FOTL releases from the first 8 months of 2020 are multiple times the sellout price.

3 total hours for 60 cards? Impossible. There is no possible way on your own you could open the cards from packs, sleeve and holder, take pictures, list the product, create shipping label and print out, package the product, go to the post office and ship out 20 items in an hour. That's 3 minutes to do everything involved with 1 item. Physically impossible.

I guess there is no point in arguing this any further if you're actually going to keep making some of these claims. I think there are a lot easier ways to make much more money. Personally I would go crazy selling 1000s of $0.01-$10 cards. If you think it's worth your time it's your business. I think there is probably a good reason that I don't know 1 other person in the hobby doing business the way you are currently doing it. But best of luck in your continued business.

[bloodwings19]

Originally Posted by PSA2Pac

I'd say, if the centering on that LaMelo, which is prob 60/40ish, is the only thing and the corners and surface (and edges) are straight, you still have a good shot.

Best time is to send these before they really tight on grading with the new technology. That LaMelo is closer to 70/30 than 60/40. This is my thinking, if you have a dead center card and perfect corners, I would send it later when they use the technology. I believe PSA will have a new label which means the newer the label, the more value to the card.

[codered]

Originally Posted by yaoming

So is $1350 a good price now for a hobby box?
Or will it go down further

This is great news for collectors


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It will be lower as others have said. The market for singles (as a whole) has slowed down and we are seeing prices draw back. This is one catalyst for lower box prices. The other is the increased price of grading (as well as the seemingly stricter grading standards by psa), graded psa 10 cards were somewhat baked into the price of wax. As it no longer makes sense economically to grade a large amount of low end cards, you can no longer bake the price of graded cards into the cost of a box.

The one thing to remember is we have seen a large number of new people enter the hobby in the last year. When people enter the hobby they’ll often make mistakes (like over paying for boxes/breaks) and eventually learn from those mistakes. I know when I got back into the hobby in 04 I was breaking everything, even if it was a crappy product. Eventually you learn the in’s and out’s and the hobby and smarten up. I think we are slowly starting to see that. People are eventually going to tire of losing money.

In 6-12 months from now I fully anticipate wax to be more reasonable. I’m not saying they’ll go back to pre 2020 prices because the hobby floor has been raised but we might see something like 2x mrsp (well prizm might not get that low) as opposed to 10-20x’s

[KhalDrogo]

Originally Posted by PSA2Pac

PSA allows for up to 60/40 centering on a 10, but there are countless examples of Gem Mints with horrid centering (worse than 60/40).

A PSA 10 is not a perfect card.

I'd say, if the centering on that LaMelo, which is prob 60/40ish, is the only thing and the corners and surface (and edges) are straight, you still have a good shot.

That card has ZERO shot at being a PSA 10. The Lamelo and LeBron Silvers have been graded 80 times already. No 10s. Why? Because the centering sucks. 60/40 has to come with gem mint eye appeal. None of these do. Can’t find a single copy on eBay that has gem worthy centering.

I’m sure eventually one will slip by PSA. But it won’t deserve it.

[auctionjmm]

Originally Posted by mossoholic

Dude, I'm not going through 40 FOTL releases from 2020 to prove my point. There are some from 2020 selling for 7 or 8 times the sellout price. If memory serves correct there is 1 FOTL you would have lost money on in 2020. Contenders Draft Picks Football FOTL. You absolutely on average would have doubled your money. Come on you're not dumb. If you think I'm wrong you waste your time going through and breaking down every product and list it lol. Yes I know not every person is buying at the floor. Maybe there is 1 or 2 more but I think buying within 3 levels of the floor every one is still a winner. But, we both know on average it's easily double right now. Close to every football FOTL from 2020 has come close to doubling or better and many basketball FOTL releases from the first 8 months of 2020 are multiple times the sellout price.

3 total hours for 60 cards? Impossible. There is no possible way on your own you could open the cards from packs, sleeve and holder, take pictures, list the product, create shipping label and print out, package the product, go to the post office and ship out 20 items in an hour. That's 3 minutes to do everything involved with 1 item. Physically impossible.

I guess there is no point in arguing this any further if you're actually going to keep making some of these claims. I think there are a lot easier ways to make much more money. Personally I would go crazy selling 1000s of $0.01-$10 cards. If you think it's worth your time it's your business. I think there is probably a good reason that I don't know 1 other person in the hobby doing business the way you are currently doing it. But best of luck in your continued business.

That is a fair point about early FOTL releases, but keep in mind even Prizm basketball was $800-1000/box at that time. Retail blasters were $35-40. I'm just not a fan of using hindsight to point out all the ways one could have made money. You and I would have bought every case of Prizm we could in February/March last year if we knew what they would be worth today.

What incentive would I have to lie about the time I spend on cards? You may not know anyone personally who sells this way, but this forum used to be dominated by them. Every thread would be about breaking and selling. We used to do case count polls. This was a huge forum for that, but it became too competitive and undercutting drove a lot of them away. I stayed long enough to see the competition drop to almost nothing which is why I've kept going. But even without breaking, the concept of bulk resellers of singles isn't new. Burbank Sportscards specializes in it. They've become a go-to spot for a lot of collectors and yeah they may get some $1.00 orders which could be annoying, but it's part of their model.

But to explain the time component further, you can accomplish a lot when you list and ship in bulk. For example, if I have a few hundred cards from the same product I can scan 9 at a time on auto-crop and use the same eBay template for each one which requires that I only change the player, team name, and card number. I can do a single listing in 20-30 seconds this way. For shipping I print 30 labels at a time and use self-adhesive labels. I ship in a top loader and team bag. There are guys who spend 5 minutes taping cardboard to cards or wrapping them in bubble wrap, etc. I've found that to be unnecessary. Just sleeve, loader, team bag, and drop in mailer. You also have to consider the number of buyers who purchase more than one card in an order. A 100 card auction for me might only require 35 packages. One guy buys 5, another buys 3, etc. I have a few repeat customers who buy 50-100 cards at a time. Those are my favorite orders because they can be done in no time. I treat it like an assembly line (and actually worked on one briefly before I started grad school). If you've ever bought a gift set around the holidays, I can tell you those are assembled in 10 seconds or less. Efficient listing/shipping practices shouldn't be beyond your comprehension. Guys like Brentandbecca do it even faster than me (although he has a bulk card scanner that can do hundreds of cards automatically).

Opening cards is quick. I don't even look at base cards. I pull the insert/hit parallel from the middle of the pack and move onto the next pack. A jumbo case takes 20-30 minutes. Regular hobby case is closer to an hour. There are two post offices on the way to and from work. I swing by, run inside, drop a load of packages on the counter, and walk out. It's 2 minutes out of my day to make a drop.

Sorting and listing sets or player lots obviously takes MUCH more time, but if we are talking about the totality of time spent running a business, you can afford to have areas that take longer than others if you can do certain tasks more quickly.

The bottom line is that I work full time and cards is a side gig for me. I simply do not spend the time that you think I do on it. It doesn't exist for me. If you want to scoff at 38k as being a waste of time and insist that there are better ways to make money, then show us the way. With the way you talk, you should be retired and rolling in money right now. Show us how it's done.

[mc1]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

That card has ZERO shot at being a PSA 10. The Lamelo and LeBron Silvers have been graded 80 times already. No 10s. Why? Because the centering sucks. 60/40 has to come with gem mint eye appeal. None of these do. Can’t find a single copy on eBay that has gem worthy centering.

I’m sure eventually one will slip by PSA. But it won’t deserve it.

They also look at surface, corners and edges. You cant say theres no 10s ONLY because the centering is off. I havent opened any prizm so I dont know if surface and edges are killing these cards.

[wxguy44]

Walmart megas finally came in!



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[TimBuckTwo]

Originally Posted by wxguy44

Walmart megas finally came in!



Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

Wow. Any idea what the loadout per store was?

[wxguy44]

Originally Posted by TimBuckTwo

Wow. Any idea what the loadout per store was?

I think I saw somewhere on social media that close to 4k total units loaded onto Walmart.com? I could be wrong

[TimBuckTwo]

Originally Posted by wxguy44

I think I saw somewhere on social media that close to 4k total units loaded onto Walmart.com? I could be wrong

LOL. Oh I thought you got them at the brick and mortar.

[wxguy44]

Originally Posted by TimBuckTwo

LOL. Oh I thought you got them at the brick and mortar.

LMAO, no way that would happen in my area. A select few have that on lockdown, from what I understand.

[PostBaloney]

Worst ROI, most overpriced release of 2021, full of garbage tier vets. Change my mind.
Prices down 40% on hobby boxes in a span of 2 months, has any other set dropped so much that quickly?

Got hosed opening 2 boxes of FOTL at release and haven't bought any basketball boxes since

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

That card has ZERO shot at being a PSA 10. The Lamelo and LeBron Silvers have been graded 80 times already. No 10s. Why? Because the centering sucks. 60/40 has to come with gem mint eye appeal. None of these do. Can’t find a single copy on eBay that has gem worthy centering.

I’m sure eventually one will slip by PSA. But it won’t deserve it.

Wow, there really are no 10's yet. This is actually hilarious.

[k13]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

That card has ZERO shot at being a PSA 10. The Lamelo and LeBron Silvers have been graded 80 times already. No 10s. Why? Because the centering sucks. 60/40 has to come with gem mint eye appeal. None of these do. Can’t find a single copy on eBay that has gem worthy centering.

I’m sure eventually one will slip by PSA. But it won’t deserve it.

PSA does not care about centering.

They are controlling the population even more now and giving out 9's.

[brock]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

Wow, there really are no 10's yet. This is actually hilarious.

There is morbid comedy here... One should not laugh when another loses their shirt, but buying overpriced wax from a bad class... and then it being (for now) impossible to even score a 10 on the top (non-numbered) card... is welp... HILARIOUS!

Panini looking to kill the Golden Goose in record time. Seriously, how could they not manage this better? Leaving OEM meat on the bone can drive a market for decades. Nike has done it very well for 20+ years... Panini got hot and did everything they could to kill the Golden Goose in less than 1 draft class. Bravo!

[bustsomewax]

Quick question, are the Fanatics Green Ice Base printed to around 75-96 copies? This is the math I ran going off the checklist. I opened two blasters, one had both an Auto and Relic, thus the reason for the spread.

Anyone else calculate this already? Thanks.

[PSA2Pac]

Originally Posted by KhalDrogo

That card has ZERO shot at being a PSA 10. The Lamelo and LeBron Silvers have been graded 80 times already. No 10s. Why? Because the centering sucks. 60/40 has to come with gem mint eye appeal. None of these do. Can’t find a single copy on eBay that has gem worthy centering.

I’m sure eventually one will slip by PSA. But it won’t deserve it.

Is every example solely because of the centering though? I agree that the centering has been horrid. The silvers (no Lamelo's) I've pulled are all cut weird.

I've just looked at too many off-centered Gem Mints to ever let a little off-centering deter me from sending a card in (provided the rest of the card is a dimepiece)

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

Wow, there really are no 10's yet. This is actually hilarious.

lol damn I had no clue

Originally Posted by brock

Panini got hot and did everything they could to kill the Golden Goose in less than 1 draft class. Bravo!

Done-ini?

[Stackfan]

I hit a Lamelo Silver, Orange Cracked, and green... and at best one was 60/40. It seems like certain parallels are centered; while others not.

[k13]

At $300 per grade...psa is probably actually looking at the card more than 10 seconds so they end up finding more flaws.

[jprk31]

I hope they will have Mega Box at Target on friday. Would love to open a box.

[pac213up]

Originally Posted by mossoholic

3 total hours for 60 cards? Impossible. There is no possible way on your own you could open the cards from packs, sleeve and holder, take pictures, list the product, create shipping label and print out, package the product, go to the post office and ship out 20 items in an hour. That's 3 minutes to do everything involved with 1 item. Physically impossible.

I think you would be surprised how fast the process is when you break, list, and ship in bulk. His strategy is tried and true over many, many years and is what this forum was once all about.

[bigjbasketball]

Is anyone seeing new Target signs that sports cards will no longer be sold starting on May 14? I’ve seen a bunch of pictures posted online, but it may just be select locations now, not a nationwide thing. I have not checked my Target yet but I’d be curious to see if anyone is seeing them at their local Target.

EDIT - nvm I see a whole thread on this already, I’ll comment there instead of adding that same discussion to this thread.

[cspaced25]

Flashed in stock on Walmart at 3, 315. Don't know why I bother on Walmart's site. You have zero chance. Soon as you refresh and try doing anything, they're gone.

[wxguy44]

Originally Posted by cspaced25

Flashed in stock on Walmart at 3, 315. Don't know why I bother on Walmart's site. You have zero chance. Soon as you refresh and try doing anything, they're gone.

what came in stock? I didn't see anyone I follow on social media post anything