I read through almost that entire 210 page thread. I get it people are trying to make a profit flipping, but the stuff talked about in that thread just upsets me as a collector. I mean people stalking the distributors from location to location and people paying off employees to get backroom access. The absolute glee displayed in that thread when they clear out all the products so no one else gets anything, just rubs me wrong. I haven't seen sports cards at Walmart or Target in forever. What I have seen at Walmart is they appear to be converting the sports card area to others items. The area at Target doesn't even have the gravity hanger boxes anymore. It is always empty including no Pokemon cards. When I went to my local sports card shop last time, they were actually selling retail products, which to me is not cool.
The way I see it is retail was the entry point for most kids who, either do not have a local card shop to frequent or if they do, can't afford hobby packs. What is basically happening is a whole group of young collectors are being excluded from the hobby by greedy people hording product for sale on Ebay.
I know I sound like the old guy shaking his fist, but I started collecting right before the junk wax era hit. (like 89-90). I remember all the hand-wringing by the card companies in the 90's-00's wanting to get kids involved in the hobby. So you had products like UD Collector's Choice and Hoops as products that were geared towards kids. Right now, can anyone name a product a younger collector can buy? Heck I have money and I cringe when i see the price of cards. I get some of it is as a result of the pandemic, but I can really see Panini seeing this huge demand right now and then next year they really let the presses roll and boom, it is 1990 all over again. The problem is they are the only game in town, whereas in the past we had Upper Deck, Topps, and Skybox to choose from.
Secretly I will not shed a tear if the whole thing comes crashing down and card prices come back down to earth. I know it is evil and I own it, but I hope all these people hording retail products now, get absolutely stuck selling them for pennies on the dollar when the bottom falls out. You can already see glimpses of it in the breaks happening on Ebay-especially in products like Hoops. There are many breaks for hangers and blasters for the less popular teams that either receive zero bids or 2.99 type bids..
I will get off my soapbox. Maybe go take a nap and read a book about submarines....
yep getting old
That’s the one! 
I might do some shopping Thursday night and if there are some insane people already there, I just won't bother. 
