Friday, November 23, 2012

Talk about a variant markup...

Most card sets (sports/Americana/comics/competitive) have variants within the sets. Whether it be the sparkle refractors of Topps Series 1/2/U, the border variants of Topps chrome, or foils in Magic: the Gathering.
What if the prices for these cards were drastically different?


Say: $2.99                   or           $59.99

"That's crazy!" I hear you say.
For these David Freese cards, yes, that's an overly dramatic price increase. (No offense to the 2011 NLCS/WS MVP)

Now for something completely different:


          $2.99                   vs.             $59.99
(I know the pictures don't show it, but the one on the right is REALLY shiny.)

This card is classified as a "rare" from the 7th core set of Magic. There were 110 rares (1:1) in the set with 36 packs per box, foils were packed out at 1:3 odds, and to be honest I don't know the foil rare odds. (Only that they weren't very favorable!)
This was the first set to feature "alternate-bordered" foils, so to speak. There are other cards in sets that posses this quirk that have a much higher price tag on the foils than the regulars, though it's only been a recent development.
Case in point: I purchased my foil copy of this card 2 years ago for $14.99, so I call that a win.
I'll get more into why I made that purchase later on...

I know the odds are in no way comparable, but I guess it's the perspective I wanted to offer. It's not too terribly hard to build team sets with the different parallels in Topps 1-U, but that's half the fun, right? Getting to collect what you want to collect and having fun doing it. There are so many things to collect out there and so many ways to do it (thanks to the internet), I'd love to hear from you about the things you like to collect.
This is what this blog is about, in a nut shell.
Have fun out there folks and keep on cracking, pulling, trading, and whatever else you need to do to get ehat you want in your possession!


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