Exactly, that's my point. It's ridiculous to have these at 350$ on ebay although there's nothing special about them, they handle like toilet paper... While the Tendril deck by Paul is worth around 12-15$ right now despite the amazing quality and artwork. What have we come to?
First of all, you have no idea how these handle. The Blink 182 deck could be the finest deck ever made or it could handle like wet, overcooked noodles. Since you don't own one and have never seen one out of the package in person and never had the rare pleasure of handling it, you will never know. Someone might tell you what they think, but that's still not firsthand knowledge. Their opinion could be completely biased and you'd never know.
Second, "amazing quality and artwork" are NOT the only factors that determine the value of a deck. It's price will go up as they become more scarce - the Tendril deck is already sold out, so there's no more coming from the source, who's own website states he intends to make one-run decks, never to be reprinted. There's now less than 5,000 in the world - at least some of them must have been damaged or destroyed by now as people use them up (they are ephemera, after all). And they are indeed selling now for more than what they sold for at retail or on Kickstarter. But beyond all these factors, the value of the deck is determined by one factor above all else:
Any deck is worth what enough people in the market are willing to pay for it - no more, no less.If there's someone out there willing to fork over $350 to own one of these, then that's what it's worth. If no one was interested, the seller could lower the price and see if there are any takers, or keep it off the market in the hopes that future selling conditions will be better. But whatever price it sells for at a particular moment, that's what the deck is worth at that time. Markets change, people change, economic situations change, and thus prices change.
Imagine if you will the baseball card market heading into the early-middle 1990s: multiple companies had jumped on the bandwagon, all trying to entice buyers with all manner of rare and collectible versions of their cards. Things like foil printing and holograms were simply the beginning; I've seen ones with a piece of a player's uniform or a carved-out shard of wood from his bat! These cards were rare, valuable and expensive in the aftermarket.
Then there was a baseball players' union strike. About half the season was lost. The market for these things was already overheated, and the strike brought it to the point of blowing itself up. People stopped buying in the numbers they used to. It no longer mattered how rare or collectible a card was; if no one wanted to buy it, it ain't worth jack. Binder after binder of once-valuable playing cards became the next best thing to worthless. Card collectors' shops stopped buying the bulk of these cards - they'd reached a point where they already had enough of these now-worthless cards that they couldn't move with a team of horses. Today, practically all of the cards from that era are now being sold at a few pennies on the dollar compared to what they were once worth. Someone would try to sell his hard-won collection that cost thousands of dollars to obtain, and be offered tens of dollars for the whole thing. When everything becomes "rare", nothing is really rare anymore.
People are keeping their eyes wide open on the playing card market. That deck of Blink 182 cards selling for $350 today might be worth $30 in a few months. The market's getting bigger and wider, but the pool of people interested in collecting isn't really keeping pace with the expansion. That deck you bought for $40 could be worth $400 in a number of months - or just as easily, it could be worth $4. People have been talking over and over about this being a bubble, and are almost holding their breath waiting to see it burst.
Wow - enough tirade, I'm getting thirsty. So, Nathan, before you start griping again about what a deck is selling for now, take a course or two in economics...
