Show #156 Group Breaker Crystal Ball + Topps Hires + More

The Golden Age of being a group breaker is about to end.

I’m not saying group breaking is going away, actually it will become apart of the sports card collecting fabric even more as we move on … but that will make it harder to become a breaker yourself.

Don’t worry though, “Golden Ages” exist in all kinds of businesses, just feel glad you were around (and possibly) profited when the money was easy. In a few years you all will look back and remember how easy it was to be a breaker, and how much easier it was to make a profit.

Here are the things I think that will cut into breaker profits over the next 5 years.

1 – Red Tape. Things like allocations, Upper Deck selling only to Hobby Shops, Panini & Topps deciding to charge more to breakers, or only sell to certain ones are all example of current ‘red tape’ and this list will only grow further as we move on into the future.

2 – Margins go down. These are going to continue to be eaten away – mainly by the red tape issues you have to deal with above.

3 – Blowout, DA and now Beckett are group breaking. They have marketing channels that dwarf all other breakers combined. They have the ability to make it difficult for the average breaker to get product at a price low enough to offer to customers.

4 – The trend is for many breakers to open a hobby shop, or buy expensive real estate at the National or Industry Summit. Those are added costs, and further make the cost to do business almost impossible for the ‘little guy’ to compete with.

5 – Panini, Topps, Upper Deck … ect could start partnering – or cause group breakers to be ‘authorized’ in the future, which would be further red tape and make it difficult for a new breaker.

Finally we talk about a recent hiring at Topps, and we discuss this months product in the 1st segment.

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