No more sports cards at Target
 

The inevitable has happened. Beginning today Target stores will no longer carry sports cards and Pokémon in store for the safety of their employees. Our local Target stores have already seen a fistfight and an incidence where a vendor had a tracking device found on her car. Last week in Wisconsin a man pulled a gun on four guys that jumped him in the parking lot for his cards. I figure that was almost certainly the deciding factor.

People are insane.

Much like so many other things, a few bad actors have ruined things for everyone else.

Although, in this case, it was probably quite a few bad actors.

Amazing. Used to go to Target to get 4 items every year.... a couple of packs of the current year Topps issue and then a couple of the Update packs, a couple of the new Heritage packs and a couple of the Heritage high number packs, to put with my set runs of both. Guess I am stuck with ebay....assuming I can still figure how to search for them there

Oh wow...a TRACKING DEVICE!!!

People truly ARE insane. And pathetic.

I used to buy a pack or two (or a blaster if i was feeling flush) just to see what they looked like in-hand. I remember doing that as far back as my college days in the 70s when I was way out of the hobby.

No more. I won't miss the new cards anymore than they'll miss me.

The Dylan quote in your signature is entirely appropriate for this conversation:

“People are crazy and times are strange, I used to care but things have changed -Dylan”

I only collect some Mets cards from Heritage each year, mostly team sets and a few of the extra cards that mimic the older inserts. There's enough of a challenge to keep a short wantlist going and it's kinda fun but this is my last year doing so, the lottery mentality is ridiculous. Mugging someone for cards-unreal!

That's a shame. I don't buy packs anymore, but that's how I got started in cards. My first sports cards were a pack of 1997 Topps Football bought at Target. Wonder if Wal-Mart will follow suit and give even less of an opportunity for people to get started casually.

If I had not kicked myself of the pack habit years ago (maybe 99-00), as it literally was nothing more than a gambling addiction, I would have been done this year for sure if I somehow even managed to make it the 20 some odd years.

I'm finding a number of converging factors that have sucked nearly all the fun left out of collecting. I should have started selling 6 months ago, but not organized enough and didn't want to give ebay more money either.

This is also, I think, to a certain extent the fault of the manufacturers. They have worked quite hard to create a lottery ticket mentality with new product. When every single card has a literal rainbow of parallels, signed parallels, etc., buying packs and boxes becomes just gambling. During COVID my wife and kids and I had fun grabbing packs and some blasters and, for the first time in years, putting a set together from packs. It was wildly inefficient financially, but the process was a hoot. Baseball packs usually weren't difficult to get, but football and basketball became super hard because folks were swooping in seconds after they were stocked so that they could resell them on the secondary market.

The manufacturers know all of this. And could simply ramp up production to meet demand. They won't, though, because they benefit from the perceived scarcity of their product. Panini Football or basketball cards aren't scarce at all. They are everywhere. What has happened is that by flippers buying Target and Walmart out seconds after the cards are stocked, folks perceive the product to be scarce and thus are willing to pay the higher prices. It is ludicrous. The chances of pulling a $25,000 card from one of the blasters is almost nil, but the thrill of the possibility gets people to pay $150 for that $20 blaster. Just dumb.

The folks this decision actually hurts are kids and regular folks in towns without card shops. In the 1980s cards were everywhere- at grocery stores, convenience stores, book stores and Target and Walmart. They disappeared from the gas and convenience stores in the early 1990s, and even from Target and Walmart for a while. Now they are disappearing from those two retailers. Sadly, it will greatly limit the ability of average folks to get a pack or two of cards. When you make things hard, you change folks' willingness to buy. This will limit casual folks from buying cards, which is bad for our hobby. I don't blame Walmart or Target for doing this, I blame idiots who are looking to make a quick dollar and the manufacturers who have facilitated it.

kevin

I read it also in the news this morning. Guns and tracking devices. Geez. People say the good old days weren't as good as we remember. Ha. Never saw people fighting over baseball cards. I still think they were pretty good.

Let's remind everyone it's not ALL cards.

Instead it's baseball, Football, basketball and pokemon.

You will still see Racing, Magic, etc at Target.

The point is to eliminate the cards being sold which triggered the near-fights and other events such as the gun being pulled (and from what's been reported rightly so) at the Wisconsin Target,

For the small amount of revenue cards bring in compared to other things, why subject everyone to this potentially dangerous situations.

Rich

From what I've read/heard:

• Four people assaulted someone in the Target parking lot
• The assault occurred for reasons that included sports cards
• The victim of the assault had a legally obtained firearm and valid concealed carry permit
• He produced the firearm in response to getting assaulted and defended himself without firing a shot

Media outlets fixated on the "gun in a Target parking lot" portion of this story. Yet, in my opinion, the person with the firearm did everything correctly.

This is pitch perfect - I feel like I could have written it myself. Thank you.

For myself, and probably a fair amount of others, it was cards that actually got me interested in the sports and not the other way around. In the spring of '78 I learned all the teams and the players before I'd ever watched a game.

What we're seeing was inevitable, and it's terrible. I'd love to know what is being said in the company board-rooms about this - because you know they're talking about it.

A few years back, after the glut of the 90s and 00s, sports dialed back on the licenses and that helped restore some sanity to things. Wonder if there's a chance the current situation will make manufacturers rethink anything about distribution. If two giants like Target and Wal-Mart cease selling, they'll probably need to.

If I'm not mistaken, I believe the halt is temporary. Open ended, but temporary at least for now.

Someone else said a Target employee told them it was permanent on sports cards. Can't blame them. People have been acting stupid on this for a while now. It was only a matter of time.

Apparently he cut in line which is what started the fight. Not justification for jumping the guy. I think we don’t have all the facts on this one yet.

Wait, are you implying the Media twisted a story to push an agenda? LOL

No LCS in my town, WalMart is the only option. I haven't seen cards on the shelves since the 2020 complete sets came out, luckily I grabbed one of those. But I don't collect modern. Anything I buy anymore I can't find locally. Ebay's search change is my biggest problem right now.

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Chalk another loss up to lame adults. I feel bad for kids now. Hardly anything fun is left.

These people are why we can't have nice things. They exist everywhere.

They tried this starting in the mid-80s and you see what happened - the junk wax era. Seems like the manufacturers can't figure out a stable production/price level. Either too little and the secondary market goes wild or too much production and the cards are worthless. Certainly in the long run the hobby doesn't want the only cards that are worth keeping be the chase cards and all the rest are practically worthless - seems like that is where we are now. And even then, many of those chase cards will fall off in value over time as today's hot prospect goes the way of Joe Charboneau. I'm not sure we will ever see anything resembling stability in the hobby regarding modern cards anymore - it's too much of a lottery, win big or lose. And I don't see how that is good in the long run. But hey, what do I know? I didn't buy Apple or Tesla.

I'm just glad no fights broke out while buying toilet paper at Target last year. I assume Target would've stopped selling that too.

It's not just "kids" it's people like me who drop into Walmart every couple of months and then look at the card section because spending a $20 bill is a lot less painful then spending the $100+ a new hobby box usually costs nowadays.

It's also people like me who get "hurt" by these changes.

Rich

No offense but boxes of cards at Target are there for kids. If you want the hobby to thrive adults need to step aside.

There are plenty of people out there (I have 4 LCS within 30 minutes of me and enough shows) that don't have those options and like to buy cards at retail for that purpose. They also may not want to spend the $80-100 for boxes through the mail.,

It's not just for the kids, what those places really should be are entrees to the collecting world not only for kids but also for people returning.

In other words, don't make assumptions which are not true

Rich

The prices are cheaper so kids can buy them. Or so parents can buy them for their kids. That's why they're usually stocked near the toy section next to fidget spinners and the like.

Are "fidget spinners" still popular? Serious question. It seems like they hit the shelves years ago.

Sporting News Article on this subject
 

Both Target and Wal-Mart around here have them in their own section up front just to one side of the registers. Since the 90's....

Wasn't trying to offend you. Just pointing out the marketing. By me they're left near WWE action figures and mixed in amongst Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards. I guess there's an adult market for them too.

Back in the old days, when my local Target carried sports cards, they had two displays:

1. A dedicated setion near the front registers with sports cards, Pokemon, Magic, etc.
2. Roughly 20' of shelf space in one of the toy aisles

Ah, the good old days. Sometimes, it feels like they were just last week...

Most of the stores here in Central Texas moved all of their cards and card supplies to the back of the store in their "collectibles" section. Target has had one for a long while and now Walmart is starting to follow. It's where all the bobble heads and higher end action figures are also. A lot of it is entertainment related.

Funny there are two new card shops in my area, both are chockfull of the coaster boxes that meijer sells (no target by me).

A different issue and something you are seeing at those stores, is they are not always able to get hobby product from distributors or order direct as there are more stores now than in a long time.

For some of those card stores, and I know at least one who overpays to get somewhat reasonably priced packs into his store, getting those cards may be the only way to get packs into their customers hands. Don't assume they are making the full $20 to full retail profit. Some may be, most are not.

Rich

Target is a sacred space