Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Boston is Strong but the Profits are Stronger

I expected to be super pumped for today. It's the final release of one of Topps best designs in years. Sadly, I'm really not that pumped. Maybe I'm a little burned out by the design, maybe I'm just burned out by Puigmania. Rumor has it there are TEN Puig cards in Update and that's just base and inserts. There are also several base variations. This is what annoys me about the card market. When will we learn that the more something is printed, the lower the value is? Instead collectors will buy these up and flood Ebay with Pweeg (ugh, the name even sounds annoying) crap and people will overpay for it. I don't dislike Yasiel, I'm just tired of having him shoved down my throat by card companies.

At least this card variation exists.
What irks me the most is Topps eagerness to profit off of tragedy and goodwill of charity. Every year we get more and more "Breast Cancer Awareness" pink parallels and camo parallels. These help Topps sell cards but do nothing for breast cancer or the military. Instead people pay big money for the parallels thinking it makes them a good person. Newsflash, if you want to be a good person then send that same money to a charity, not some neckbeard online! 

Thankfully for Topps they have found one more tragedy to capitalize on, the Boston Marathon bombing. We saw this card appear as a rare variation card in 2013 Topps Series 2 and Topps Chrome.

Not Pictured: Word bubble with caption "This is our F***ING CITY"

Collectors proceeded to pay up to $50 for it. A case can be made that this really isn't that offensive. It was a memorable moment in the season and baseball cards are meant to, if nothing else, capture baseball memories. Cool cool, I can see that point. Topps threw that to the wind when it decided to introduce these to Topps Update.


The "BOSTON STRONG" parallels were unannounced (for good reason) and are #'d to 50. It's assumed that only Boston players are featured on the card. So there we go, a few collectors will likely spend hundreds of dollars to complete this set and box breakers will rush to the store to rip packs in hopes of finding one to sell. Topps makes more $$$ and the tragedy is reduced to a sales gimmick. 

Topps can right this wrong by announcing that these cards are part of a fundraising measure to support the victims, the Red Cross, or something similar. If Topps' intent was to just bring awareness to the tragedy, then don't make it a highly sought after collectors item, make it a card that every child who opens a pack of baseball cards can proudly own. 

Three people died on April 15th, 2013 and 264 others were injured. They didn't die so greedy companies could use the tragedy to turn profits. I'm a proud conservative capitalist, but there are certain times where morality trumps money. 


2 comments:

  1. Preach, brother. Gimmicks like this have turned the term "capitalist" into a four-letter word, and it is an absolute travesty that they are taking advantage of this situation.

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