The Ultramodern Scarcity Paradox

In the universe of collecting, the term scarcity manifests itself in two generally-accepted forms: organic/true scarcity — in which the tides of time (e.g., putting stickers in sticker books) have defined the condition population and overall population of a card or sticker — and manufactured scarcity — in which card manufacturers such as Topps and Panini have produced serialized cards that define the scarcity of a collectible.

It is undeniable that the supply of ultramodern soccer cards has increased over the past decade. Not only has the number of products increased, but too has increased the number of parallels available in each set - the lowest (highest?) parallel provided in 2017-18 UCL Topps Chrome was to 250 while in contrast the lowest (highest?) parallel available in 2022-23 UCL Topps Chrome was to /399.

With such a large push towards manufactured scarcity, how could there possibly exist organic/true scarcity in ultramodern wax?

FACTOR 1: THE ULTRAMODERN RELEASE SCHEDULE

There is too much product being released at the same time. The Soccer Card Collecting Community may never agree on what constitutes too much product or too little product during a calendar year, but you may be able to extend an olive branch across the table to agree that the logjam of summer releases from Topps and Panini leaves many chase cards or case hits sitting dormant in unopened cases. Take the July 10th, 2024 to August 21st, 2024 Soccer Release Schedule for example — Select EPL will be available in abundance to rip at local card shops and breaker sites starting on July 10th. For two weeks, there will be a steady flow of Select EPL and only Select EPL cards being packed, listed, and sold for collectors to stash away. Come July 24th, however, local card shops and breaker sites will receive tens upon hundreds of cases of both 2023-24 Prizm Copa America and UCL Chrome (all three formats) that they will need to break and move before the next product in 2023-24 Panini Impeccable gets shipped, and the cycle continues.

But what does this mean for those initial Select EPL singles?

The once steady flow suddenly halts! The initial wave of case hits and low-numbered parallels have been scooped up and now the only net-new singles that hit the market are from the one-off case breaks or personal box rips. Pictured are the case hit team badges from 2022-23 Select EPL - out of a total of 20 unique badges on the checklist there are only 15 total — 10 unique — available for sale on US Ebay. Those wanting to create a complete set of these badges are at the mercy of other collectors trickling their cards into sales avenues or entering the now-sparse case breaks chasing a single card.

FACTOR 2: WAX PRICES DON’T REFLECT DEMAND

The genesis of this blog really stems from my experience with set collecting 2021-22 Topps Chrome Women’s Champions League. When I initially set out to create a PSA 10 Gold set of the Arsenal Women, I figured that the set being one of the first ultramodern sets for Women meant that there was enough demand to circulate the higher (lower?) parallels. With Topps Gold parallels numbered to 50 as opposed to the Panini 10, the journey was intended to be a passive journey that I could finish off with ease.

It took two years to complete the set.

Breaks dried up as fast as they came, and soon, what was left on eBay was really all there was to scrounge for outside of asking other collectors if they’d be willing to part with pieces of their collection (that most had no intended on moving). Women’s soccer cards have been an interesting, niche case study in understanding how wax prices move with the singles market because as we have slowly inched further from the release date of the product, singles have gone down but wax prices have gone up! Pictured are both the asking price for a case of the product from Steel City Collectibles and for PSA 10 Golds of some of the biggest chases in the product (namely Sam Kerr and Alexia Putellas). A Gold PSA 10 Kerr most recently sold for $225 while a Gold PSA 10 Putellas most recently sold for $350, yet the case price remains at $3,000.

If you were a set collector looking to complete even an ungraded gold set, taking matters into your own hands doesn’t make fiscal sense because box prices don’t reflect single prices. As a result, as with the 2022-23 Select EPL Team badges, set collecting becomes nigh improbable unless you have a head start in collecting the set upon release. These two products aren’t the only victims of the Ultramodern Scarcity Paradox — Chronicles, Mosaic, and other “non-Tier-one” products face similar collecting fates.

HOW DOES ULTRAMODERN SCARCITY MANIFEST ITSELF?

Re: 2021-22 Topps Chrome Women’s Champions League — ultramodern scarcity manifests itself in low grading populations. Quality control on Women’s Chrome is generally considered very good by Topps standards, as evident in 20 out of the possible 50 TOTAL Vivianne Miedema Gold Refractors gemming.

In contrast, only 4 TOTAL Jen Beattie Gold Refractors have been submitted for grading with PSA, all of which have gemmed. You’ll see this submission pattern numerous times across not only this set, but also other ultramodern sets, in which parallels of the set ‘chases’ will have high submission rates whilst other players of the same parallel will have significantly lower submission rates. This is most definitely partially due to demand at product release and as players (rookies) develop, but can also be attributed to increasing prices in wax not making unpulled cards fiscally accessible after initial demand subsides. 2020-21 Topps Merlin Chrome is another great example of this phenomenon as there are lots of ‘promising rookies’ in the set.

While Jude Bellingham was one of the hottest names to chase when the product was first released, his cards greatly picked up the most steam between his transfer to Real Madrid and the subsequent games/tournaments afterwards (present-day). However, there was a point in time prior to his transfer in which cards of Napoli Striker Victor Osimhen were all the rage following a legendary Scudetto win and deep run into the Champion’s League. With no other “Tier-one” rookies other than Merlin, people scrambled to buy his Merlin rookies. The problem was that the value of the wax was still propped up by the initial rookie chases (e.g., Pedri, Jamal Musiala, Ryan Gravenberch) that coupled with a cooled demand of the older ultramodern product (paradox!), the money wasn’t there for investors, flippers, collectors, etc. to warrant opening up fresh boxes of the product in order to chase him. What was left was cards that were previously pulled with values unbeknownst to the original holders, who after learning of their windfall submitted to grading for their personal collection or sold on.

WHY DOES THIS MATTER?

There is probably a platoon of other factors that I’ve missed or not considered when breaking down Ultramodern Scarcity, but the bottom line is that I truly believe that it’s stunting the casual soccer viewer’s interest in soccer cards, most notably with set collectors. Set collecting is a cornerstone of the hobby and is the most direct way to build a collection - you find a card or set that you like and you collect all parallels or all players within that set. For someone knee-deep in the hobby or has been collecting for a while, two years to build a set is a drop in the bucket. However, for someone who just wants to dip their toes into the water, two years may seem like a daunting investment of both money and time.

For those who mainly focus on prospecting and flipping, ultramodern scarcity has too had collateral damage on your markets as well. It’s not economical to zig in products when other people zag because by the time a hidden gem of a rookie with their only rookie being in one set finally blossoms, the product that they’re in is either too expensive or not accessible through breaks, singles, rips, etc. to have accumulated a big enough stockpile unless you were prospecting them straight from release day. You are now probably more susceptible to getting burned on a prospect that never pans out!

That’s not to say that we need to make set collecting or prospecting easy — the best part of set collecting is the relieving gratification of taking the picture of everything together. The best part of prospecting is seeing your investment bang in some goals in a big tournament. These avenues simply just need to be more accessible to the new/average collector.

Do I have the kill-shot solution? I’m not nearly smart enough for that. But hopefully one of you do!

source: momolascards on Instagram