The Great Debate

With all of the other vintage-esque products out in the months since Gypsy Queen release one has to begin to wonder how long prices will stay high. Goodwin Champions was pretty solid and Allen & Ginter always has a huge fan base. Was Gypsy Queen just something to get those type of collectors by or is it going to be something that lasts like T-206 of the early 2000′s?

Blowout Cards has a box listed at $197. Dave and Adams Card World has them at $219. WOWZA. You get two autographs (allegedly) and two game used per box. The bulk of the autograph checklist sells for less than $10. Yes you can hit a Sandy Koufax but you’re far more likely to hit a Marlon Byrd. However, you can’t complain about not getting big hits every time you open a box it’s just that you should probably not waste your time with products costing you $200 that could easily result in less secondary value than most of the $75 products out there.

Don’t get me wrong I like the look of Gypsy Queen and a few of those hand painted patch cards were very cool (some were terrible looking as well) but, and it is a big BUT, it still was not worth the dough you have to shell out for a box. 2 boxes of A&G or one box of GQ? No brainer don’t you think? Prices have nowhere to go but down if you really consider the Gypsy Queen situation and it is even more of a wonder that prices have stayed so high given the fact that there are missing hits everywhere you turn. No matter what forum you’re perusing or blog you’re reading there are stories of missing hits or the most epic example suffered by @brentandbecca on twitter. They buy cases in bulk and bust them to sell immediately on ebay. Well they missed an insane amount of hits from their bulk order and missed out on the early high prices all singles realize when they first hit the market. Basically they got screwed….bad. We are talking a few thousand dollars more than likely. To make matters worse while others have been getting their missing hit orders filled they have been waiting on their 80+ hits to be sent. Here is hoping they get a few Koufax autos thrown at them to compensate. They are a major buyer that Topps left out in the cold on this one. I hope Topps does right by them. It would make a major splash in the area of customer care and service if they handled this better than their typical redemption and replacement process handling.

As for the hits when you actually pull them imagine pulling a Jackie Robinson bat card. Not only would I immediately wonder what it was worth but I would also want to put it in my personal collection forever. Then you hop on ebay and find out that their are so many of them that your new gem will pull you $15=20. I wish I was kidding. Once again this is nothing against the product itself but is just another example of why GQ has no business being $200 per box.

Allen & Ginter is coming soon and I’m excited.  Topps designs these products well as the box prices and ebay sales illustrate with great support. Maybe I’m an A&G homer but I don’t really think so. I bust two boxes of it and move on. It’s fun should GQ ever see reasonable box prices I’d give it a shot as well.

So I guess the gist of what I’m getting at here is why the hell is GQ wax so pricey? Is it in short supply? It continues to defy the logic that nearly all other products see a drop in demand from. We’ll just have to continue to monitor the situation and see if the economists out there can explain this phenomenon.