Nonsense Newsletter: No. 35: We go Downtown with John Dudey, talk about the NHL's first round, Mike takes questions on YouTube and more.
Sponsored by SGC Cards gosgc.com
For hockey guys such as myself, NHL draft week is exciting, people! We get into that in this week’s edition. We also delve into the depths of Panini’s popular Downtown inserts, and Mike Gio answers your questions on YouTube! Can you think of a better way to spend a Friday! I can’t (but, honestly, I don’t get out much). Still, sit back, grab your favorite beverage, and enjoy this week’s edition of SCN Newsletter, people!
Contributor: John McTaggart
Let’s face it — drafts are fun.
And for hockey lovers such as myself, the NHL draft is exceptionally exciting.
It’s early Friday morning and I, like many others, was up late last night watching the first round of the 2022 NHL Draft.
Now, good news about all of this is that we all get a chance to get a first look at some of the league’s future superstars.
A few years back, we watched guys such as Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Nathan MacKinnon get their names called.
And although these players came into the NHL with a lot of hype, none of us really knew at the time they’d blossom into the players they are right now in the league.
The bad news about the NHL draft — it’s more like a baseball draft now than an NBA or NFL draft.
The overwhelming majority of these players will spend time in college, in the OHL or WHL or on professional teams in Sweden, and on other squads around the world, before they ever suit up for a regular-season game in the NHL.
It’s the nature of the game now.
Gone are the days, for the most part, when these guys would get drafted and then get to work in the league right away.
Player development is central to the NHL draft today, and player development takes time.
There are exceptions, of course, but as a general rule, most of the players drafted this week will not make an impact, or even make the team, in the upcoming season.
Contributor: John Dudley
Much like The Simpsons, I’m talking Downtown this week, Panini’s mega-popular Downtown insert set that is. For good measure, I’ll throw in Topps’ Homefield Advantage cards in the discussion as they are one of my absolute favorite new sets even if they are blatant knockoffs of the Downtown concept. Since this is ostensibly a numbers column, I’ll take a look at some of the biggest sellers in the Downturn universe with the Top 5 Downtown cards.
What Are Downtown Cards?
Inserts are a mixed bag. Some are worthless and almost insulting (Topps’ Through the Years deserves public shaming at every chance) and others are hobby gold. Inserts have had a storied run in the hobby. They’ve been both coveted and mocked, but now for an insert set to truly stand out today, it needs two things going for it. First, it needs to be scarce. Most of the sought-after inserts fall at the rate of one per case or rarer. Second, the set must look cool to a significant portion of collectors (the collectorate? Can I make that stick?). The inserts need a good design to be attractive of course, but they also need to be instantly recognizable.
Downtowns and Homefield Advantage cards hit both of those marks easily. Both sets pick a player from each team and use a variety of images specific to the team’s location in the design. Washington? While there are variations depending on what set the card came from, the standard look for Downtowns and Home Field Advantage cards is a full body shot of a player with local flair surrounding them on a holographic foil background. While some tweaks have been made here and there, outside of the background, the set looks consistent year in and year out.
Quick Hits
Pop Culture News- Star Wars Sapphire is strong with the Force. Box prices have hit $1000 (they were $200 on release) and show little sign of slowing down. Unlike many products, multiple cards in the base set are sought after. Commons are selling for around $10. Interestingly, there is little consensus on what a character’s best card is. A mix of the card name, card number, and image quality all go into figuring out which is “the” card to get of your favorite.
NFT News- NFTs are still in their infancy. This article looks at the future of the Sports Memorabilia market (which includes cards and NFTs in their analysis). The big news is they expect massive growth for sports NFTs estimating the market at 92 billion in ten years. Also, the great news is that they project 20% annual growth for the Sports Memorabilia market in general.
Grading News- Gemrate.com released its June grading report. The site reports and tracks grading volume for the major companies. Highlights include an 18% drop for BGS after clearing their backlog. We’ll see if that’s a blip or a long-term trend. It’s actually much worse if one takes out TCGs (Pokemon). Most categories saw 30%-50% drops. The drop cannot simply be attributed to PSA reopening lower levels as SGC and CSG both saw nice growth, CSG actually beat BGS by 12,000 cards for June moving it clearly into the third-place seat for volume. SGC remains on pace to grade over a million cards this year and PSA remains on pace to grade over 10,000,000.
Card Shop Live has a major vintage event happening next week. If you haven’t already, download the app to be the first to get the news (hint… it includes a pretty rare Mantle card).
Download it here 👇🏻👇🏾👇👇🏻👇🏾👇
Events
The guys will be back with their normal Tuesday and Thursday pod talking releases, baseball, and offseason NBA/NFL.
Mike and Jesse will be back discussing the all things The National in the coming shows.
Make sure to follow all social media to stay up to date.
The Sports Card Nonsense newsletters reflect the opinions of only the authors and contributors. They are for informational purposes only and are not a recommendation for purchases or of an investment strategy or to buy or sell any assets.