What have I missed?

With baseball season now over – and the Yankees season having ended a few weeks earlier – I’ve admittedly slowed down on card collecting.  It’s certainly not due to lack of interest, rather it’s the annual occurrence of feeling worn down from the better part of a year reading, collecting, watching, and listening to all things baseball.

I was discussing the state of the industry with a fellow blogger (this guy) the other day when I started longing for something exciting to reinvigorate the hobby.  I’m not talking about refractors or bigger swatches, no, but rather 1990s Pacific levels of excitement.

I want innovation, like how crazy die-cut cards seemed when they debuted.  Or cards in a can.  Or even the protective layers of film over Topps Finest.  Something, anything, to pump new life in to the hobby.

Anyhow, the discussion turned towards upcoming releases that may be fun to check out.  We went back and forth about how Topps’ flagship products are the only sets with variety (OK, I did all the insisting that flagship sets are best), and moved on to Topps Heritage, and blah blah blah.  It piqued my curiosity enough that I went to BlowoutCards.com to see what early pricing looked like on ’11 Heritage.

And then my jaw hit the floor.

I couldn’t find anything on Heritage, but I did notice that 2010 Topps 206 is now $35 a box.  ’10 Topps Chrome and ’10 Topps Update are only $37.  2010 Topps Pro Debut Series 2 is only $33.

Uhhhh…. weren’t prices skyrocketing just a few months ago?  What happened?  Granted, not ALL boxes are priced at rock bottom prices, but these are absurd.  Or maybe they WERE absurd, and now they’re more in  line with what they should’ve been all along?  Has the Strasburg bubble popped, leaving retailers with cases of unsellable products that they no doubt over-ordered?

From what I’ve seen, the quality of the hits in these boxes are no worse than they’ve ever been, and while quality control may be lacking lately it didn’t stop people from going crazy over 2010 Bowman.

The winners in all of this?  The consumers.  Finally.