Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Are Buy Backs Worth it?



When a company buys original cards to be included in a new product as a Buy Back should that increase the value of the card (not including autographed versions)? Does the addition of a stamp or gold foil used by many companies to indicate buy backs make a card more collectible than its original version?

With Topps recently releasing the Topps 75th Anniversary set which includes Buy Backs from many Topps products over the last 75 years we are seeing a large increase of buy back cards from the 1960s-1980s on the market.

I got caught up in the bidding for a 1966 Batman card and ended up picking up this card for roughly the price of what the original version sells for minus the “Topps 75th” gold foil stamp. I unfortunately did not notice that the card was seriously miss-cut (95/5).

2 comments:

  1. To me the new stamp is a negative. What value does it add? I guess it authenticates the card but at the expense of defacing it. Unless the card was so rare as to be unavailable or exorbitantly priced I'd rather just find an unstamped original

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  2. I agree that the addition of the stamp is a big negative. Personally I don't open enough packs that have the buy backs to worry too much about getting any, it is from group breaks and other collectors that I will have to worry about getting the dang things.

    I'd rather the companies buy back the cards and not to anything extra to them. The only "extra" thing I would like to see if they had to do anything is to have the player featured on the card autograph it if they are still living and able to sign stuff.

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