The Dangers of Scarcity

At a local card show recently I was speaking with a guy in the industry that I’ve known for more than 30 years — a dealer who makes his living traveling to card show after card show buying, selling and trading everything from the new stuff to the old — and has for many years.

He mentioned something to me that blew my mind, something made me take a step back.

“You know, John,” he said, holding up a slabbed version of a ultra-modern basketball card. “You know there are more than 300 different Victor Webanyama rookie cards?”

I didn’t believe him at first, but after browsing over an entire showcase he had set up containing nothing but graded Wemby rookies — each one different — it sunk in.

“And, about the same amount of Connor Bedards, too.” He added.

It’s frightening, honestly.

I was around for the great crash of the 90s in the hobby, and the reason, largely anyhow, was overproduction. Except then, it was overproduction of one product after another. This time, it’s a saturation of one player after another.

You don’t have to have a minor in Economics to see there is looming trouble here — a real supply-and-demand gorilla in the room that no one wants to talk about.

With so many rookie card varieties of the same player, how can any actually hold value, much less appreciate over time.

Having three or four from different manufactures can work, there is a definite legit scarcity factor at play there.

My favorite baseball player of all time, for example, Tony Gwynn, essentially has a Topps, Fleer and Donruss rookie card — that’s it. None of them are numbered or green or pink or gold or anything like that. It’s just a rookie card, plain and simple.

“You know,” my friend said. “I sold one of these Wemby’s a few weeks ago and guess what? I didn’t go out and buy more Wemby’s. I went out and bought five Joe Montana rookie cards. Can you believe that? One Wemby, a guy who has played one season, is worth five times as much as a Joe Montana, arguably the best QB of all time. It’s off the rails.”

It is.

People love prospecting, which is fine, so do I, and that’s always been some part of the hobby. The problem is, though, they fear the dreaded FOMO even more.

So, they spend crazy amounts of money on unproven players terrified that if they don’t they’ll be the one that missed out — and manufacturers have figured this out.

Their answer to that — create scarcity with inserts, parallels, autos and memorabilia.

This is cool, and was cool, for a good while.

I remember Upper Deck creating series numbered cards in football product, I think it was numbered to 3500 on some — and people were crazy to get those cards back then. Nowadays, a card numbered to 3500 is essentially a common.

You can see what’s happening, what the problem is, card manufacturers got greedy and decided to make scarcity the norm, so they did.

Packs are loaded with cards that are supposed to be scarce.

What this has done is make base cards worthless, and all but a few very low numbered cards so common that they are no longer that unique or rare.

When there’s a dozen versions of a Wemby /99, does that make cards /99 really that scarce?

Nope.

So, where does this all lead?

If you’re asking me — I think it eventually leads to a very scary marketplace for these ultra-modern-era cards. With the few exceptions of some 1/1 (which there are always many versions of those as well, so their scarcity is diminished there, too.) the market will be flooded and after a year or two of hype driving a players pricing — it’s tanks and many people are left underwater with a Zion case full of “rare” cards.

I can’t tell you how many Zion Williamson rookies I still have… see my point?

What needs to happen?

Manufacturers have to reign themselves in — which they won’t do because this monster is their creation and they actually love this hype-fueled fantasy land scarcity. This, combined with an entire breaking industry that feeds into the same greed pool and you have the recipe for high-priced wax justified by the possibility of a “rare” card and a customer base terrified of missing out on that card.

So, what can we do?

Simple. Stop buying into this crap. Look at the vintage market more seriously if your a collector. Target cards from the game’s greats, not the game’s hyped.

Or, flip, flip and flip some more!

Just focus real hard on the market and try to time it right. If you can — you’re golden.

I, actually dig doing this myself, even though vintage is my heart within the hobby, I love the excitement that comes with all of the flipping and prospecting and risk of making a deal.

Or, you can always venture out of the sports card world into TCGs and non-sport stuff.

I’ve done some of this over the years and it’s actually a lot of fun, and much different that sports. There are still similar issues with some of this stuff, sure, but it’s not a prevalent or volatile as sports cards.

I still enjoy it to this day, although it only makes up a small percentage of my business.

Whatever you decide, please be aware of the potential storm clouds that loom on the horizon in the hobby. Now, by no means am I saying this is destined to happen, because it’s not. But it is something we should all be thinking about and at the very least diversify your portfolio of cards.