Hi and welcome to the wonderful world of card collecting.  I hope to inspire the veteran and help the novice in this article as it urks me to see the price assigned to some of these inserts.  First insertmania started with upper deck issuing autographed cards of a particular superstar in a given year inside certain packs.  This has gotten way to out of hand as companies competed against each other there are more and more inserts and quite simply the value will not be there long term except to the devoted fan of a particular player but in the open market there is no long term value like the actual rookie card of a player.  This being said if you step back and take a deep breath before buying that insert think, would I pay thousands for a short print autograph of a player that will likely devalue or pay the same thousands for a great many rookie cards of superstars. 

A bit of a history lesson should be given to quantify this previous tirade.  When upper deck first came out with a superior product the likes of which was previously unseen the unscrupulous dealer and there were many saw the opportunity to strike.  I have dealt with these dealers and had some lessons hard learned and to tell the truth for every honest dealer I found there were at least three dishonest ones.  This is not to say there aren't any honest ones out there as there is more and more honest ones dealing everyday, they have to be as word now spreads like wild fire, welcome to the internet.  I suppose this is more of a caveat emptor as it isn't really shady dealers anymore it's more that our primal greed gene kicks in and we lose control.  Let's take an example, I have seen a Sidney Crosby fabric autograph card posted for well over two thousand while I bought his rookie card for seventy five, now I understand that his rookie card isn't a short print but if I wanted to flip it I could probably almost instantly see a substantial profit from the rookie and if I could even move the specialty card it would take a long time and the profit would be very small.  I realize I haven't told you what the profit would be because nobody knows as that most prices are established by looking through guides and there is no accurate guide for the real high end specialty cards because the companies that produce them know that to establish a price relies on getting there information from independent card shops who in turn get there price from selling to the general public and the card shop knows that it would have to sit on something like this for a long time which would be wasted profit better used somewhere else.  You see that while most card shops cater to the adult market the largest part of there business is still kid generated and I don't know a lot of kids wandering the streets with a few thousand in there pants pockets. 

I don't mind the card companies producing these inserts as I think it's good for business but the lone seller is being entirely unreasonable about it.  In a perfect world it would do my heart a lot of good to witness a kid spend his allowance on one pack of cards and pull the daddy of the current collectibles as I feel this is what the market should be all about.  I have witnessed this and the look that comes over the face of a child when this happens is well quite frankly priceless.

I know this is a bit of a rant and hopefully you will glean a little help out of this when making critical decisions I mean it takes the collector to make the world go around here so make it a better world for yourself and for others and thank you for your time.