Over the last six months, Upper Deck has tried everything to stay relevant in the sports they cover with the sets on the calendar. Although layoffs continue and the company is being sued by themselves, the products have performed above expectations. Expectations have been low to start with, but if you were around at the National, I heard more about All Time Greats than I did about the licensed National Treasures. Gregg from Upper Deck even went as far as saying All Time Greats was not the top of the mountain this year, which I know many of you would be shocked to know what could be better.
Regardless, when looking at sets like ATG and the recent release of 2011 Sweet Spot football, the question remains if Upper Deck can keep the lights on with carving out the niche they have seemingly exploded within over 2010-2011. When you start to review the successful design and content of a super high end basketball product, its tough to do it without Michael Jordan and Lebron James. That is the bottom line, and Upper Deck is well aware of how valuable their exclusive contracts with both really are. It also helps that the main portion of the set is on card, and looks like a high end card should look, unlike its counterparts in National Treasures.
Here are some ridiculous examples of what I mean:
2010-11 Michael Jordan All Time Greats Auto 1/1
2010-11 All Time Greats 9 Player Auto Booklet
2010-11 All Time Greats Grant Hill Auto 1/1
In Sweet Spot, I am not a fan of the design at all, but that all seems to be relative. When you see that a base auto of a career backup quarterback in the NFL can sell for what it did, people don’t seem to care. Funny enough, most likely due to availability, the helmet cards are outselling the cards from Elite on a pretty dramatic level, but when no one is really breaking it like they are breaking Elite, it makes sense. Available supply will always drive value in a lot of cases, and when DA and a small handful of internet retailers are the only ones that have the product for sale, there wont be as many boxes that get broken. There just arent as many card shops left to support a strong presence without people like Blowout selling the crap out of your product. It needs to be everywhere, and I have a feeling that is why the cards are blowing up.
Here is what I mean:
2011 Sweet Spot Cam Newton Helmet Auto
2011 Sweet Spot Jake Locker/Drew Bledsoe Dual Helmet Auto
2011 Sweet Spot Christian Ponder Helmet Auto
I don’t think I saw Sweet Spot cards anywhere in Chicago, but I did see how ATG basketball was the talk of the show for collectors that fall within the target market for the NBA. Basically, Upper Deck had shaped the market to be geared so much towards high end products during their run, that it is close to impossible to release stuff successfully like Panini has done. If you don’t believe me, go read what people are saying on the boards. I see more “WE WANT UD BACK” than anything, and I believe it has a lot to do with the typical Panini format that they apply to 15/16 products released during the year. UD was successful at making great looking cards that collectors loved, which was gravy when added to the mix with Kobe, Durant, Jordan and Lebron. They had it all, and now that collectors are faced with another super high end product, with half the hits coming in the form of crap jersey cards that arent worth anything, they are gravitating toward products like ATG.
Sweet Spot will be lost in the shuffle of tremendously designed products like Inception this week, so these ridiculous values may be temporary. As more NFL friendly products hit, these will drop like they did last year. Who knows if UD can continue to compete, but as long as collectors embrace products with college branding, UD will stick around.
we aren’t going anywhere young man! Upper Deck will last forever! Next year I have this cool product called The Departed! you will love it 🙂
Inception and the Departed were awesome. You may hate DiCaprio, but when you pair him with directors that know what the hell they are doing, he does well.
In my humble opinion The Departed was much better then Inception
They were both great, and maybe if you had called ATG “the Departed” it would have sold that much more! Not actually that bad of an idea if I do say so myself.
Why’s everybody gotta hate on Pryor? Career backup and he didn’t even get drafted yet? I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he’s a better pro than your boy Ponder. That kid’s got bust written all over him.
I love UDs college branded stuff. The football products have been great so far, even the low end UD football is fun to collect. I was very disappointed they cancelled 2011 UD basketball, UDs all we got for college branded stuff so I hope they find room to include all the rookies in their other basketball products.
Upper Deck products are doing great in my store. My customers want more of everything Upper Deck. We are on our fourth case of All Time Greats. With Jordan Autos falling 1 per 6 boxes, my customers are willing to pay the price. Did you notice that Dave and Adam’s is out of ATG? And, what was the last Upper Deck product to retail for below factory direct cost? Looks like Upper Deck is right in their sales/distribution policies.
Although my overall sales have done consistently well all year, all 2011 football products are down about 20% from last year. I believe it is due to a rookie class which lags behind last year’s rookies. Once the season stars and a few rookies do something great, people will be busting more packs.