A question about cases

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fly4apuckguy

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Hey all, sorry if this has been discussed multiple times or is common knowledge, but I am admittedly pretty uneducated about a lot of these topics right now. Plus I live in the middle of nowhere and have no connections or LCS nearby to talk with other hobby enthusiasts.

I want to get back into the hobby now that my kids are grown and I am getting close to retirement, but I am finding a lot has changed in the past decade since I was most active.

It is difficult to buy hobby boxes of cards where I live. I am in a small town in Saskatchewan and quite a distance from any shops. Every time I go to order something online it is sold out. When I do get to a city the LCS is also sold out. So now I am forced to go to eBay and pay inflated prices for the boxes I want. I can see the market is a bit crazy right now and I am not a fan of all this chasing.

To avoid the hassle, rather than picking boxes here and there I would like to get into buying cases of products I like from someone in Canada, and from my research I guess pre-ordering is the way go. There again, I went to a reputable Canadian dealer and they are already out of cases of everything for 2020-21.

Can anyone offer me some advice on how to get into this seemingly impenetrable circle of knowledge/purchasing I seem to find myself on the outside of right now? Where and how do you pre-order cases in Canada? Is it less expensive to do it this way?

Thank you in advance for your advice. I really appreciate it.
 
I am not the best one to answer but I can say I have noticed that with the 20-21 product and that fact that Lafreniere is in there, it seems to be "sold out" until after the release when it becomes available again at an inflated price. This happened in 2015-16 (McDavid) and 2016-17 (Matthews).

Now, it is hard to blame the folks along this Canadian supply chain. In Canada all of the LCS locations have to purchase from the distributers, the distributers have to purchase all of the products from UD regardless if they want them or not (is my understanding). So if the distributers are stuck with product from a cold year (let's use 2017-18 as an example) then they have to lower the prices on those products to move them and jack up the prices on the new hot products to compensate.

This then translates to the LCS paying more for the product from the distributer and passing those costs to the buyers.

Might explain why it is hard to find this years product.
 
Unfortunately, Canadian hobby stores have the WORST e-commerce I have seen when it comes to sports cards. The main issue is, stores will post listings before they know their stock. So it shows up as sold out. Then when you enter e-mail notification, it doesn't really work. The following are stores I have ordered with and gotten stock on time etc with no problems BUT the site updates, communication and what not are not great. Examples:

401games:
https://store.401games.ca/collections/sports-card-pre-orders

Last week, Skybox showed up as $0, 0 stock, sold out. I entered in my e-mail to be notified, now it's sold out with no e-mail.

Breakaway:
https://breakawaysc.com/product-category/store/sports/hockey/hockey-boxes/pre-order/

Last month they had Skybox for $150 and it sold out. Now they changed it 0 $0. I'm guessing more stock and markup is coming

Cardboard Memories:
https://www.cardboardmemories.ca/collections/sports-card-featured-collection

Cup and Skybox have price and 0 stock there but they haven't actually sold any yet.


There's some other stores too but I haven't used them since the hobby explosion of 2020 so I will not endorse. Not that the stores above are much of an endorsement but at the very least you will not get scammed. Whether or not you catch them with stock is the main problem.
 
Something like Miraj Trading or Breakaway are probably the best places for sealed cases... but good luck getting stock right now.
 
fly4apuckguy, I'd try every business on here: http://www.upperdeck.com/Business-To-Business/UDA-Internet-Retailer-Locator.aspx that's in Canada.

I've had personal and very positive experience on the breaks and box purchase side with Breakaway (Chuck is great to deal with), Out of the Box (Jimmy and Dan are also great to deal with) and CloutsNChara (Dan and Geoff are great too and I've done the most with these guys).

I don't know well any of the other AIRs and haven't bought any sealed product in size from Canada which brings me to a related point - I know you want to buy within Canada but a big thing that's changed since you were last buying is also cross border transactions - in general, you won't be able to buy sealed product from any US shops until a year after release.

On timing, I'd suggest following posts on HI (number9 seems to have a great line into posting release info as soon as its available) and/or on cardboardconnection.com or other website for when cards are announced/released.

In my experience, the best time to get in pre-orders is as soon as the products are announced. And I'm sure this goes without saying but if you develop a rapport with one of these shops, that'll help quite a bit in getting the products you want.

Final point is that LCSs/AIRs etc. are all getting "allocated" by distributors (Universal in Canada and Southern Hobby/GTS in the US). This means that for "hot" products, LCS and AIRs are getting fewer than their requested amount of product, prices only being set right at release and it's allocated seemingly totally in the discretion of the distributors with prices fluctuating pretty constantly meaning that the LCS/AIR puts in an order for 10 master cases and may only get 4 (or fewer).

It's a really weird time in cards IMO, in part because distributors and manufacturers are trying to capture some of the post release spike in pricing instead of the just the margins between the price they are paying the manufacturer and the cost they are charging to the hobby shops.

Hope that helps!
 
I would like to mention that for the remainder of this season, most (if not all) hockey products are being “pre-allocated” to hobby shops.

This means we’re not able to submit a pre-order for a product - the distributors will let us know what our allocations are.

And before anyone starts dumping on them, keep in mind the demand for sports cards is unprecedented this year. And from what I’m being told, the p/o numbers they’re getting are ‘through the roof’.

With this in mind, we will not be offering any pre-sales for the rest of the 20/21 season but will absolutely have all products available on release day.

Hopefully things will get back to ‘normal’ when the 21/22 products roll out.
 
I can safely say that getting product is next to impossible. Unless you are blessed as one of the chosen spenders at an LCS, you may as well be chopped liver. I've said this in another thread but my money will go to ePack unless I can find older wax at future shows or what not. There are a few folks stateside who are kind to me and have been able to sell me wax but the exchange is killing me but they don't play the preferential treatment game with me.

You can't even go to Walmart bec people are paying the store folks a stipend to tip off when a product is being stocked.

Sorry this doesn't answer your question but clearly is a sore point with me.

So to answer your question, if you are wiling to wait the 90 days or whatever, deal with the stores in USA who will help you out.
 

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