What’s Hot: Father’s Day, Finest Fill Collectors’ Bill

I got my gentle reminder to get off my cardboard selling backside and compile the June edition of What’s Hot. While it hasn’t been all roses in the past few weeks, the reported demise of 2018 MLB offerings is not exactly the truth. I will admit that I was enjoying the continued thanks to Shohei Ohtani. While at the time I am writing this, we are still waiting for his potentially final verdict for this season, each day without an answer makes me have flashbacks to 2010 with a certain Washington Nationals pitcher. That injury literally put card stores out of business and those who remained suffered mightily as the late season releases continued to land and the buyers for said product were about as plentiful as people who want to invite OJ Simpson up to their hotel room while in possession of many of his awards.

I mean right now, the NBA and NHL have been retired for the year, we still have a couple of months until the NFL starts playing for real and while each of those leagues still have products hitting hobby shops, this is the time for baseball to shine and for the boys of summer to make all those many Topps offerings must see cardboard. If the last two releases are any indication, collectors should anticipate more competitive initial offerings, but might not want to wait too long for that LCS visit.

So, what’s selling well at the hobby shop level? Let’s take a quick peek.

1) 2018 Panini Father’s Day Packs – Sure this isn’t a traditional release that is offered by the pack or by the box, unless you’re a scummy card shop that isn’t a big fan of following rules or “doing the right thing”. Once again, hobby shops were invited to rebuy products with the understanding that they would receive two-card bonus packs to divvy out. I started offering up my packs on Friday the 15th and over the course of the next three days, we sold five digits worth of the products customers had to purchase to get those free packs with the exclusive cards inside. Sure we would have sold more Panini products if we could have started this promotion earlier, but with results like that, I’ll “suffer” with what happened.

There was one major change this year in that Panini consolidated the promotion and eliminated the NFL-only packs we had come to expect in years past. Fortunately with the interest in MLB players, my NFL collectors did not seem to flee. When my first run of packs offered up two Gleyber Torres autographed cards on the first day and day two started with a Neymar Jr signed card, there was plenty of buzz to go around. Father’s Day isn’t over here. I still am sitting on a few hundred FD packs and am looking forward to helping more of my collectors pull some monsters themselves this week.

2) 2018 Topps Finest MLB – Finest was the first product to hit after news of Othani’s elbow injury and I was a bit concerned. While Finest didn’t have the legs that say Bowman did, my MLB shredders more than welcomed Finest and its one auto per mini box. Each mini box also seems to offer an individually numbered card or two with a chance of Superfractors of course. Also unlike Bowman, the Ohtani Superfractor hit on the first day instead of taking close to a month to emerge.

Of course Finest offers more than signed cards of one specific Japanese hitter/ pitcher, there are also signed cards available of Alex Verdugo, Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken Jr, Jim Thome, Kris Bryant, Mariano Rivera, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and many more. Box sales have continued to remain strong in the second week of its release and no matter the news on Ohtani, I am optimistic that will continue.

3) 2017/18 Panini Dominion NBA – I have a favorable place in my heart for the Dominion brand since I own a card store in Colorado and the last time we saw Dominion, it featured the rookie card of #1 draft pick Nathan MacKinnon from the Avalanche. I went deep with the new NBA version in part of previous success and the exciting rookie class we have enjoyed selling cards of since Contenders Draft hit last year. With three autographs, one relic and one Metal Rookie Card for $300 or so, each box has not been a true winner, but enough of them have yielded solid results and we’ve plowed through numerous cases..

Hoop heads quickly became familiar with that NHL fans learned half a decade or so ago: Dominion has legs, and it isn’t afraid to use them. Most of the current year rookies get the autographed card treatment with autographed relic cards possible as well. As for the veterans, names like Nikola Jokic (slight Colorado bias), Giannis Antetokounmpo (yes I cut and pasted that), Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Shaquille O’Neal, Chauncey Billups, Tracy McGrady and many more picked up their pens to contribute. Even with the season now over and this being a first year release, I see big things for Dominion down the road. It has more than made up for my 2017/18 Panini Essentials NBA sales as seemingly nobody has found that one to be either essential or palatable.

4) 2018 Topps Series 2 MLB – Since hitting this past Wednesday, my shop has moved 1.5 cases of regular and close to six cases of jumbos. I understand that might not be a lot compared to other shops, Brent & Becca or some other online breakers, but considering that I was fairly concerned about this one, I’m not complaining. I chose to price my boxes and cases well below where I anticipated doing so and so far the results have been rather favorable.

Collectors have shared with me that they had been getting frustrated with where prices on new MLB releases had been going and that my new pricing structure was getting them excited again about busting boxes. Many shared that they went deeper as a result. Back are the silver bonus packs which if you have not heard, will also be back for the Update series. As I shared, most of my collectors are opting for the jumbos which offer them an autograph, relic and manufactured relic along with the two bonus packs per box. Props to Topps for adding some luster to Update with more silver packs and I can’t wait to enjoy the same success with the final base Topps offering of the year.

5) 2 017/18 SP Authentic NHL – Contrary to popular belief, I do not feel obliged to find one release from each manufacturer each month. Since UD hasn’t released an NHL product in over a month, there hasn’t been a hockey product to knock SPA off the Hot List. Collectors seem to be drawn to the more affordable price per box we saw established last season and the one autographed patch card per mini box still seems to be registering.

Checking eBay, only 8 of the 97 Connor McDavid buyback Young Guns autographed cards offered have sold with only one moving for less than 3k. There is only one currently listed so it would seem that 70 or 80+ of these monsters have yet to land—certainly an incentive for box buyers.

Looking ahead to what might be hot in the next offering, we’re anticipating products like Topps Inception MLB, Topps Stadium Club MLB, Topps Museum MLB (Please card gods, allow these three to be as well received as the two on the list above), Panini Elite NFL {which, like every other NFL release, will apparently be allocated), Topps Factory Sets (I don’t see the sets actually making the hot list, but one never knows), Panini Spectra NBA, Cryptozoic Rick And Morty {fine, more deflection) or Panini Gold Standard NFL.

Make sure you take the time to visit your LCS and see if they have any Father’s Day packs left as well as any of the releases shared in this month’s effort and thanks for giving this a read. See you next month from Colorado’s Best Card Shop, Mike’s Stadium Sportscards.

Mike Fruitman owns Mike’s Stadium Sportscards in Aurora, CO. His column focuses on what products are selling best in hobby shops. He’s got thousands of cards for sale on COMC.com under the ID cardmn5150. Enjoy new arrivals and big hits from Mike’s on Twitter. Mike’s is always looking for more friends on Facebook and you can email him at [email protected]