Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600

Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600
Track walk at Charlotte Motor Speedway Coca-Cola 600

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Give me the old cardboard race cards, we'll leave the sheet metal to the rich and famous


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.