How many factory sets do we need?
So the other night I had to run to Target to pickup some medicine for my wife. The medicine is next to the card aisle so of course I took a peek to see if there was anything worth buying.
I didn’t find anything on this trip, but I did notice that there are FOUR different Topps baseball factory sets currently on the shelf, and I believe there may even be a few other variations at different retailers.
We have the basic Topps set, the All Star version with exclusive cards, the set with a special Ken Griffey Jr Chrome card, and the one with the Ken Griffey Jr. Medallion card.
Now I know for a fact that the demand for complete factory sets can’t be such to merit no less than four types for retailers. In fact, I bet if any of you readers went to Target and checked the shelves, there would be between eight and 15 sets marked $49.99 or $59.99. They aren’t moving. They are like giant eye sores for the card aisle.
On a somewhat related note, have you thought about the logistics of blasters versus complete sets?
The sets shown in the picture above feature 700 cards. Topps blasters ($19.99) feature 10 packs of 8 cards, with an average of an insert per pack. So you get 80 cards per blaster, and with inserts and parallel you can count on about 65 actual base cards for a set. To boot, these Topps blasters are void of hits. So what’s the point of buying the blasters?
People collect in different ways, I know this to be true. Not everything we collectors do makes sense. But I found this specific comparison to be interesting.
I mean if you were buying 2015 Topps Ser. 2 blasters in hopes of pulling a Kris Bryant rookie card, you essentially could have had the Bryant and the other 699 cards in the base set for the price of two and a half blasters.
Things seem kind of silly in that context.
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