Before Christmas I was charged with
buying a few of the Christmas presents for some of the in-laws who were coming
in town to spend the holiday with us. One of the purchases I was to make was a
football card of Peyton Manning in his new Broncos uniform. As a former
collector I was pleased with this opportunity because it gave me a chance to
visit AAA collectibles in Matthews, NC. I had driven by this store hundreds of times
and now I had a reason to stop. Once inside, I asked
the nice lady for the card that I’d been sent to procure, but she didn’t have
any in the case; so she spent well over ten minutes looking through boxes and
found a couple cards that were exactly what I was looking for. How nice!
As we were about to check out, my son noticed
a box of racing cards in the back corner of a showcase. We asked to see them
and my son found a Kyle Busch card; he obviously wanted to purchase it, so
I held my nose and asked the lady “how much for the M&M guy?” She quickly
returned with, “10 cents.” Oh, wow. Ok son,
see what else you can find! Well, he
pulled a few Dale Earnhardt Jrs., a Jimmy Johnson, an M&M car card, and I
pulled an old Mark Martin. I think we paid two dollars for all the cards and
some protective sleeves.
When I got home, I didn’t think
much of these cards; we just put them on our Nascar shelf to look over at a
later time. After Santa put a few Nascar card packs in I and my son’s stocking
(wink-wink), I wondered if these were worth anything. To my shock and surprise,
the cards are worth hardly anything at all. The Mark Martin I had grabbed
happened to be a 1988 Maxx card, which apparently was one of the earliest sets
of Nascar Cards. So, what’s it worth? A few dollars. REALLY? The legendary Mark
Martin’s rookie is only a few bucks? Wow. At first, you may think that this
frustrated me, but in reality, I found it quite refreshing. It's something I can actually afford to collect! After even more
investigation on ebay, I found that, at the time of my research, there were
only 5 cards over the $50 mark, and most were signed with pieces of sheet metal
and fire suits included in the card. I found that there were relatively no
cards from pre-2006 that were over $20.
While I think it’s pretty cool, this
isn’t a good sign for Nascar's marketing. Even as a Nascar Newb I know that most
Nascar fans collect autographed cars and the more fanatical even collect
used sheet metal, but you’d think that the younger fans would have to start
somewhere with their limited budget. Why
aren’t they starting with cards? Well, one pack of Press Pack cards is $2.50,
for 5-8 cards.
First, that seems high. When I
collected cards in the late 80’s a pack of 17 cards was fifty cents. Even with
inflation, that pack would only be .97 cents today. Secondly, the demand simply isn’t high enough
to justify the gamble. When I go online
and find many of my Nascar hero’s autographed and other specialty cards under
$6.00 with shipping (all pictured here were under that mark), why would I pay
for a $2.50 pack of 5 cards when I can purchase that ultra-elusive card on ebay
for just double the price?
Lastly, the big picture isn’t about
economics, it’s about Nascar’s inability to look at their long-term goals.
These sorts of memorabilia are not about making a quick buck, but rather, are
about fostering a culture of Nascar. If you can get kids interested in Nascar
by something as cheap as a piece of cardboard, why not use it as an advertising
tool? Sell them as cheaply as possible so that kids and their parents buy boxes
of the cards just to make sets, and sure, throw in a couple autographs for
kicks. We’ll leave the sheet metal to
the rich and famous.
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