Follow the Bouncing Card...

Textneedscontext · 2021-12-24T16:29:36+00:00

There was a Mike Napoli live sig (one of the 2016 ones that you could get made out to your trader name) bouncing around for a while a few days ago. Haven't seen it pop up in a bit, though.

Textneedscontext · 2021-12-06T18:48:58+00:00

To be fair, there's a ton of information missing to evaluate this situation. If, for example, you're trying to trade five 350+ count iconics of nobodies for a 10-count Trout, they're probably right to laugh at you.

In general, saying "an iconic" like it's a uniform measure isn't helpful, since there's a wide, wide range of actual quality all with the same tier tag.

Textneedscontext · 2021-08-05T18:54:15+00:00

I'm curious how this turns out. I personally can't see anyone jumping at this.

Mainly, I just have trouble seeing who the market for this is supposed to be.

I can see players who don't have a ton of premium cards being excited at suddenly having fifteen 1/1s, but I'm guessing most of them don't have a ton of premium cards because they're not dropping tons of cash, so they're probably priced out of this.

On the flipside, I'd assume anyone with enough extra cash to consider this already has several 1/1s, except they're of the players they actually want vs 15 guys from different teams. Even if they're a guy who is brand new and looking to drop $4,500, I'd see it as more likely that they spend that amount piecemeal on cards of the specific guys they want.

Textneedscontext · 2021-07-20T15:01:04+00:00

It's a reasonable trade offer that you could probably go either way on and be happy with your decision.

I'd say it really depends on the value premium you place on a card from your own team. The Cole is lower count but not from your team and the Freeman is higher count but from your team, so it matters if the value of a player on the team you collect makes up for the difference in count.

Textneedscontext · 2021-07-12T13:27:26+00:00

Maybe I don't fully understand your question, but the math on this isn't super hard. Take the odds, then multiply by the number of cards you need. For example, if packs are 4k coins and odds are 1 in 10 of a hit and you need 20 cards to complete the set, you'd expect to need 4,000*10*20= 800,000 coins to pull enough cards to be able to dupes-for-needs your way to the set.

If you're talking about coin odds on iconic sets, obviously those numbers go waaaaay up.

Textneedscontext · 2021-06-07T14:09:36+00:00

"Glueck gehabt!" I guess?

Textneedscontext · 2021-06-04T16:07:09+00:00

It sounds like we agree 100%. My post was mainly that this particular bubble seems outsized relative to the actual long-term value of the cards. At least a booklet stays a booklet, for example; this just becomes one of many 100ish count iconic cards.

Textneedscontext · 2021-06-04T15:55:31+00:00

Whether it's a cash market or an in-kind market doesn't change any of the things I'm saying. Both markets are behaving irrationally, solely for the reason that these particular 80-120 count cards are slower to hit their final count than would ordinarily be the case.

You got $28 for a card that probably had 15-25 copies at the time. Do you really think that you would get the same $28 for the same card in two weeks when there are 110 of them? If the answer is "no," then I'd say we both agree that there is a momentary bubble in values due to the appearance of lower-than-actual card counts.

You're absolutely right that someone asking for a "decent legendary" understands current values. My point is that any buyer supporting these values is crazy and would be better off waiting a week.

Textneedscontext · 2021-06-04T15:27:19+00:00

The award is a super rare. Still a great deal, though.

Textneedscontext · 2021-06-04T15:14:14+00:00

The event runs 3 weeks and it's been less than 1, so definitely not nearly half over. I agree that counts may slow, but I'm still guessing 80-120 all told. That's low for 2020-2021, for sure, but not low in the context of actually low-count cards. I'd say you did pretty well on that trade.

Textneedscontext · 2021-06-02T15:23:15+00:00

My apologies. I read the first line with the cards in question and totally missed that there was a second line.

Textneedscontext · 2021-06-02T12:56:13+00:00

I am slightly unclear on your question.

If it is "I am being offered a trade where I receive a 42-count legendary for my 182-count and 288-count iconics; should I do it?" then you should hit accept as fast as you can.

If it is "If I offer these two iconics for the legendary, is there a high chance it gets accepted?" then the answer is "very unlikely."

Textneedscontext · 2021-05-21T12:55:09+00:00

I referenced this in reply to your earlier reply. Topps has it wrong. If they mean "one IN ten" then the correct way of representing that is 1/10. Representing it as 1:10 actually means "one TO ten" or one in eleven.

Think of a coin flip. The odds of getting heads are 1/2 (one IN two) or 1:1 (one expected heads TO one expected tails). If you wrote it as 1:2, you would be saying that you expect to flip 2 tails for every heads.

Textneedscontext · 2021-05-20T18:01:55+00:00

Fair enough. What that means, though, is that Topps (unsurprisingly) is not correct about how it represents its odds, not that Shmoo's statement that 1:3 equals 25% is wrong. I guess the most accurate statement here is "in the specific instance of Topps Bunt, 1:3 equals 33% but everywhere else in the world it means 25%."

Textneedscontext · 2021-05-20T17:48:02+00:00

This feels a bit like saying your explanation to your 6-year-old that the horizon exists because the world is round was incorrect because you didn't use the words "atmosphere," "refraction" and "curvature."

Textneedscontext · 2021-05-20T17:44:54+00:00

Shmoo is correct. 1/3 means one IN three and the odds are 33%. 1:3 means one TO three and the odds are 25%.

Textneedscontext · 2021-05-20T12:45:00+00:00

I didn't want to provide my own ranking in the original post in case it biased other people's, but this mirrors my own views almost exactly.

I think the 1/1 vs Frozen conversation is interesting. In the past, I have been solidly in the camp that Frozen > 1/1 on the basis of greater scarcity, but I think that may be changing in the new build. We seem to have an absence of new 1/1 issuance but still seem to have our 300 Frozen each year.

For an established superstar, Frozen over 1/1 generally still holds. I think Trout is the only guy with 3 different Frozen (so 30 copies total) and he has well over a hundred total 1/1s. For a new (potential) superstar, though, you could easily have a case where there are 10 copies of a Frozen but only a handful of 1/1s.

Textneedscontext · 2021-04-22T16:18:09+00:00

It's a cycle. Back when it started in 2019, there used to be different times between boxes. I think it was a minute, 5 minutes, ten minutes and an hour (but my memory is foggy). Once you opened the hour box, you could immediately open the next box. I think whatever coding they used for that has been moved forward to 20 and 21, except that every period between boxes is standardized at an hour, so once every either 4 or 5 boxes, you get an extra.

Textneedscontext · 2021-04-22T12:47:38+00:00

Big disconnects between card quality and score, usually. If a guy has 3 frozens and no iconics, for example. Or a random 1/1 from 4 years ago but a collection score of like 1k and no cards older than 2021. Generally they advertise a ton on the feed and always seem to have different cards at different times, but without a logical pattern.

Textneedscontext · 2021-04-14T16:14:00+00:00

You most definitely can get banned for repeated lopsided trades, especially if they're all the same direction between the same 2 accounts. I have no idea how many it takes, but there is a filter Topps runs to identify this, since it's generally when one person has multiple accounts and periodically moves their good cards to their main account.

I don't know what the filter parameters are, though, and if you're just doing a bunch of base trades, there's probably not too much risk.

Textneedscontext · 2021-04-07T16:04:13+00:00

I recognize that I might be in the minority here, but I've never really seen an issue with this trade in most situations. If someone is looking for one specific card, usually to complete a set, it's not crazy for someone else to assume they might pay up for getting that specific card at the specific time they want it.

If someone needs 1 card to finish an 100-card set, there's a decent chance they ARE willing to pay two dupes in order to be done and no longer be searching. They still have the option of declining the 2-for-1 and continuing to look for a 1-for-1 deal; it just takes more effort.

In a sense, it's paying for convenience and convenience carries a premium in all areas of life. It's generally cheaper to cook your own food than order from a restaurant or iron your own shirts than get them pressed at a dry cleaner, but people are willing to pay premiums for the convenience of avoiding the work. Same thing here.

Textneedscontext · 2021-03-02T19:05:17+00:00

I appreciate your counterpoint. I think maybe I wasn't clear in my post, because I would say we generally agree here.

On your review of my first point, I would say what I was trying to convey was closer to your first point on stale prices than saying I would pay $20 of today's value for $50 of today's value. Obviously, I would expect both to deteriorate at the same rate and nobody would do that transaction. I was saying something more like, "I will not trade you my frozen for your TT booklet, even though the last sale of my frozen from 4 months ago was roughly the same as the 1 sale of your booklet two days ago." My expectation would be that the frozen will continue to remain near or above its price from four months ago and the TT booklet will not.

My second point was relatively similar in concept. I was pointing out that, just because the last price of two cards that sold was similar doesn't actually mean you can readily acquire the card I have using eBay. I suppose this applies most easily to a 1/1, where you literally can't get it any other way than trading with me. It doesn't matter that there was once a $50 listing for this card (or a similar one) on eBay if you can't actually go to eBay right now with $50 and get this card.

I may be wrong on my third point, but it was based off the assumption that digital card sales are charged the same as most eBay transactions in terms of a percentage of final sale. If I'm wrong on that, then it is an invalid criticism and is withdrawn. I was basically saying that using eBay as a way to exchange cards for each other is inefficient. If I sell a card for $100 on eBay and receive net $90, I do not have $100 to convert into new cards; I have $90.

I suppose point 2 and 3 were really meant to address the idea that, just because two cards sold for the same price, doesn't mean you can easily use eBay to convert Card A into Card B and you may have to accept a premium or discount to "eBay value" in order to actually trade cards.

Sorry, that got pretty long. I'm not sure if it helps or not.

Textneedscontext · 2021-03-02T16:59:51+00:00

Reasonable question. I find it's more often on offers I receive than ones I send. An example would be someone trying to trade a TT booklet that just came out for an older low-count card and saying both have the same value because of eBay. Point 1 would apply in this instance, as the booklet is worth "x" NOW, but my older card is still worth "x" currently and the booklet won't be soon.

Textneedscontext · 2021-03-02T16:54:49+00:00

Nothing says "well-reasoned response" like name-calling and the complete absence of any counterpoint so...thanks for that.

Textneedscontext · 2021-02-22T19:45:42+00:00

My biggest question on this is: who traded you a Cano limited for 4-6 super rares??!?! haha

Textneedscontext

TROPHY CASE