Like many collectors and sellers, we have become entranced by Upper Deck's Exquisite Collection, and we focus our personal collecting primarily in the Exquisites market.  We love the product, collect the product and sell the product.  BUT, we have reason to be wary of the 06-07 NBA Exquisite Collection that Upper Deck will release in the Spring of 07.  Here are some reasons for a little bit of caution.

     Over the last three years, Upper Deck's NBA Exquisite Collection has driven the high-end basketball card market to new heights.  The 03-04 set has achieved atronomical secondary market prices - Lebron's autographed rookie card, limited to a print run of /99, commands $12,000+ sometimes.  The Wade rookie commands $6500+.  The 04-05 set commands somewhat lower premiums, but Dwight Howard's auto rookie /99 commands between 2500 and 3500 at times, and some of the other inserts command more than $1500, espcially the dual autos, and the Jordan and Lebron auto issues.  The 05-06 set is spectacular - there are new Scripted Swatches, the ever popular rookie patch autos, and many more visually stunning cards, Larry Bird offerings, auto'd Kareem cards, Celtics greats, etc. . . The Chris Paul /99 auto rookie commands over $2500 and several of the other auto rookies command $500, $1000 and even $1500. 

     BUT, beware the 06-07 Exquisite Collection.  Like this past year, we expect that early sales will be high.  The product is attractive, exciting and unmatched!  We worry though, that the early sales will be inflated by an overly optimistic secondary market.  Unless Upper Deck does something very special with this up-coming issue, the secondary market long range performance of the 06-07 set may be disappointing.  Why??  Because the values of the 03-04, 04-05 and 05-06 sets have been driven by a number of premium rookie cards - especially the 03-04 and 05-06 sets.  The 06-07 set will, no doubt, offer a short print auto'd /99 Adam Morrison, who is an early shoe-in for ROY honors.  His rookie card will sell high on the secondary market, and some others will do well at first, but this is a weaker rookie class than we've seen in the last three years, and the star potential among the rookies that UD is likely to offer in the 06-07 Exquisite Collection is lower than that offered by Lerbon, Wade, Howard, Paul, Livington, Diaw, JR Smith, Anthony, and so on. 

     We LOVE the Exquisite Collection, and we are not condemning the 06-07 NBA issue, but we do urge more caution to speculators with this coming edition due to the heavy rookie card influence on the overall product pricing.  Hope this gave you something to think about.  Don't shy away from the new Exquisite offering, but do think about the long term outlook for this particular rookie class.

     We have focused our collecting and our inventory on the Exquisite market, and we are a little nervous about this year's NBA rookie class.  We are sharing this info in the hopes that (1) you won't find yourself burned by high early secondary market prices for cards that stabilize at 50% lower prices two months after the set issues, and (2) the Exquisite market won't suffer much from overly optimistic expectations of the 06-07 NBA product.