Can someone explain to me why the Disney Topps chrome cards are selling for a crazy A

[dd316]

Originally Posted by Rictor

Numbered cards aren't hits.

They are now.

[HiltonL]

Value of a thing is determined by the belief of the holders/wanters of that thing. The easy example is cryptocurrency. It's not useful for anything other than speculation. It doesn't throw off profits, it doesn't contain other assets, it's just a thing that other people covet.

Other examples are the US dollar and stock shares. But those have built-in value because they're used in trading (commodities are often valued in US dollars, so to buy or trade those you need to convert your currency to dollars first)

Value is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a meme at first, until enough people believe in it, then others say "Joe says it's worth X so I'll pay X for that too" Numbered cards have value because traders can make the argument there's a limited amount of them, and buyers believe the limited amount constitutes value.

[fabiani12333]

Originally Posted by Rictor

Numbered cards aren't hits. No one cared about numbered Marvel cards pre-Covid. Numbered PMGs were a couple bucks each for years and years. I dumped all mine during Covid because, as a Marvel collector, they don't mean anything to me. I don't need 15 parallels of the same card. Only a handful of completist character collectors care about this stuff. Everyone else buying them are speculators that think the prices will go up in the future (they won't). It's a bubble waiting for collapse, same with Disney.

The Marvel PMGs were bought up in 2021 and 2022 and resold by flippers at obscene amounts. They've already been pumped and dumped. The bubble has long burst. Valuations have been declining ever since.

[fabiani12333]

Originally Posted by HiltonL

Value of a thing is determined by the belief of the holders/wanters of that thing. The easy example is cryptocurrency. It's not useful for anything other than speculation. It doesn't throw off profits, it doesn't contain other assets, it's just a thing that other people covet.

Other examples are the US dollar and stock shares. But those have built-in value because they're used in trading (commodities are often valued in US dollars, so to buy or trade those you need to convert your currency to dollars first)

Value is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a meme at first, until enough people believe in it, then others say "Joe says it's worth X so I'll pay X for that too" Numbered cards have value because traders can make the argument there's a limited amount of them, and buyers believe the limited amount constitutes value.

Non-sports trading cards is a very niche market. It's already been ransacked by the card flippers. They've moved onto ultra-modern Pokemon.

[Rictor]

Value is determined by supply and demand. If there's no demand, there's no value. There are plenty of rare cards that are basically worthless, including tens of thousands of 1/1 cards that no one cares about because they're of athletes/actors/characters no one has ever heard of. See the Wild Card sets where every card in the set is a 1/1 for example.

[Xiarmadillo]

Price does not equate Value

The price of something at a given time frame is just some function of recent sale(s).
The value of something is immensely personal, and may vary greatly between different people. The value may change depending on your end purpose for said thing (collect, scalp, clout etc) and may also change over time to different factors such as its own price, price of substitutes, close peer pressure, etc etc)

I will not argue with anyone on the value of these as if you feel it is reasonable (eg your value > current price) then by all means go for it. I will however present a collector's view on these and why I think the prices are far too high for what these offer (sealed or singles).

First of all distinguishing between Epack and Physical.
On Epack there is NO scalping of sealed, meaning if you buy you have to open and if you are reseller, you resell the singles. As long as epack of a said product still exist, it puts a reasonable upper bound on sealed appreciation/scalpability at that time.

In addition, there has been a huge disconnect between collectors and box breakers, end result is you can see the large swathe of extremely cheap singles available on COMC (and hence Ebay as well). Boxes have been broken for most of the content to be sold, not to be held, and there are far less people buying them as people breaking. These singles also put somewhat a upper bound on sealed, even if no more epack is available.
caveat is if there are big bounty hits, then it doesnt apply as gamblers are willing to take chance for lottery even if price of sealed is unreasonable.



This means as a collector, unless you have very narrow interest (Ie only collect certain cards from very specific set), there is a gigantic amount of choice in how to spend your money, in picking up singles. It also make general box breaking even LESS attractive.

This is of course assuming you are aware of sites like COMC.....unfortunately a large proportion of general collectors dont know or understand the site. I mean Mickey Mouse Epack took a whole 4 years (including Pandemic card BOOM) to sell out.....or maybe there just arent many Disney collectors



On to the Topps releases.
All physical, all 'direct' (assuming no nefarious heldbacks for scalping), regional release, and relatively low print run for now (Sapphire Marvel only has about 10500 boxes, Sapphire Disney only about 5400 boxes)

Original Price:
Marvel $400, for 32 cards (27-28 base, 4 numbered, possible auto)
Disney $435 for 32 cards (28 bases and 4 numbered)

Assuming no future blaster release, it puts the print run of the base at around 2,000 for Marvel, and 770 or so for Disney.

Neither use original art, and don't offer anything 'special' compared to what's out in the market. Just your chrome, x-fractorish/cracked ice cards

In my view they are already overpriced for collecting at release. (Mental arithmetic of premium sets with 2000 print run or 770 print run...there are plenty of these out there for peanuts a card even for high demand characters)
Even speaking of the sets themselves, the Sapphire Marvel set can be had for between 150-250 USD (if you discount all the low 120s from China)....that means your box EV from base is around $25-$45, so you are in essence paying like $600-700 for 4 numbered cards.....OUCH

Now with the low print run, all product physical and 'direct' from Topps (honestly I doubt they didnt pre allocate some to some big distro, especially if they were willing to buy at MSRP) it is extremely easy for groups to make a squeeze on price at release, and pump them to kingdom cum.
In addition, with high sealed price there wont be a flood of cheap singles quickly and price for big hits can be better managed to perpetuate and justify the high sealed price, to trickle thru the market over time

If your justification for these being good is the price went up after release, well good for you I am a collector not a scalper, and I buy mostly to keep. If you made money scalping sealed wish you the best going forward there will be many more opportunities.

Now there are ALOT of people out there that collect things that have no idea about what is actually available. Many of them have some old cards hanging around from the 90s and when their social media chatter goes off on some new release, they go about looking for ways to get said product. They make no attempt to evaluate options and just assume market is fair. Id wager there are many of those people opening these, outside of the influencers, breakers and degenerate gamblers

I also do not entertain the circular logic if box price is high, the singles must be high and vice versa, as you can go back and forth reflexively and justify boxes being worth millions and singles a percentage of that too.

This is going to be the future of Marvel new release going forward, Anything with good prerelease chatter will be scalped. If you are actual box breaker I hope you are good at scripting. Even as a singles buyer that net spend 5 digit yearly, I dont forsee myself buying many if any from Topps (as non justifiably expensive sealed will just create similar singles). Fortunately there are many many options available in backlog to collect from COMC that probably can last me a couple years work

[DynaEtch]

Enjoying the side discussion on general market values of cards.

Fabiani asked a fair question, why are people paying untold amounts for Donald Duck cards.

I would counter…essentially the same or similar thing could be said about almost anything in the card hobby. “Why are thousands being paid for cards of superheroes in tights or capes?” (i.e. marvel cards, like a Spidey PMG going for over 100k). So this is not necessary unique to Disney. Cards don’t do anything, like a video game that can be played, they are just collected or flipped (ok maybe displayed, but that goes with collecting).

So the short answer to why people are paying hundreds or thousands for a Donald Duck chrome card is…because other people are, and it has a market value. People pay this much because they think the card is “worth that much”, they are buying a perception. My thoughts on this are strongly aligned with what Hilton said above. It doesnt always have to be for this reason though…I can give (an admittedly rare example) where I would pay far more than any reasonable estimation of market value: error cards. I have paid irrational amounts, $1k, for marvel error cards in the past which I’m fairly confident wouldn’t sell for more than $150-200 at auction. So I am not buying these because of the perception of value, but rather because I really want them for the collection and the seller happens to have control of the market since they’re basically 1/1 cards (or close).

But if the main reason Donald Duck cards go for such much is because other people will pay that amount or close (and I think this is the case with Disney Chrome), it still begs the question of why others are paying high amounts, or why the market as a whole is…it has to start somewhere.

The answer is probably because it’s a mainstream Topps Chrome release, which the usual crowd will hone in on and target, and Disney happens to be a globally popular brand (even if most Disney collectors don’t care about cards). The actual content can almost be a pawn here. It has the recipe for valuations…a top character to chase in Mickey (the Jordan or Spider-Man, if you will), some upper tier characters like Donald Duck. The important thing is not so much who it is, just that’s there’s a hierarchy the market agrees on. It’s also the first Topps Disney chrome set. I believe sometimes with a set like this, some speculators even try to make sure singles prices stay high to justify the high wax prices/gambling that comes with it. Or the high wax prices influences singles prices staying high, take your pick.

[HiltonL]

re: irrational amounts

We all have our favorites. It just sucks that marketplaces reward "security by obscurity" which means if you publicly say you love J. Jonah Jameson cards, then people will rush forward with JJJ cards to sell. However if you secretly love JJJ, you can have your pick of the marketplace, but nobody to bring it to you on a platter. You have to find them.

[DynaEtch]

Originally Posted by HiltonL

re: irrational amounts

We all have our favorites. It just sucks that marketplaces reward "security by obscurity" which means if you publicly say you love J. Jonah Jameson cards, then people will rush forward with JJJ cards to sell. However if you secretly love JJJ, you can have your pick of the marketplace, but nobody to bring it to you on a platter. You have to find them.

This is true. In my example, in some ways posting my fascination with errors is probably not the wisest thing in terms of future buying, but then again these forums aren’t exactly the most trafficked thing seen by average ebay sellers either.

To your point though, I’m pretty sure the market prices of Silver Surfer hits are as high as they are due to a select small group of prominent supercollectors of him. To give another example from baseball…Jose Canseco cards. People know there’s major collectors of them out there, so ask higher prices.

[crdbored]

Originally Posted by fabiani12333

Non-sports trading cards is a very niche market. It's already been ransacked by the card flippers. They've moved onto ultra-modern Pokemon.

This right here. Just look at the "Moonbreon" with a psa 10 pop of almost 15k is selling at $2,500+ lol

[hexthem4n]

I'm working on a complete set of base refractors in PSA 10 for my kiddos. It's a nice set.

[sketchopolix]

Originally Posted by hexthem4n

I'm working on a complete set of base refractors in PSA 10 for my kiddos. It's a nice set.

You do realize that the majority of people here do not believe Disney card collectors exist. Are you a unicorn?

[Pacmeyer]

Originally Posted by sketchopolix

You do realize that the majority of people here do not believe Disney card collectors exist.

Collectors who like the Disney cards themselves ~5%
Collectors who think everything touched by Disney will turn to gold ~95%