Dear Topps: Slow Down. Please.

I started collecting Topps Slam cards just a few days ago, and it has been fun to collect the digital cards, make trades, and most importantly enjoy sharing the experience with my wrestling fanatic son.  We've spent hours trading cards and looking at each other's collections as I've taught him how to measure the value of different variants and how to weigh the fairness of a trade.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid this new hobby will have a short shelf life for both of us.

I'm also an NFL and MLB fan, so I downloaded the Huddle and Bunt apps on the next day.  I picked an MLB player, Jake Arrieta, and scrolled down the list; there were more than 100 variations of his cards in the Bunt set.  That wasn't a typo.  More than 100.  That's obscene/absurd/ridiculous/infuriating (pick any or all) and impossible to collect them all without spending thousands of dollars on coins.

One of the initial appeals of the WWE Slam cards was its simplicity.  There were five color variations of each base card and a few types of inserts.  Over the last few days, I've seen that Topps is going to grab as much money as they can during this first week, but I think they're overestimating how long wrestling fans will be willing to shell out a bunch of money.

Each day this first week, they've added a new Charisma or Aerialist card, but they've also added two "autograph" cards over the last two days.  Yesterday, it was Dean Ambrose.  I got a notification while I was in line at city hall, and when I checked for pack availability a half-hour later, they were long gone.  Today, they released Daniel Bryan.  I looked at the pack cost, 10,000 coins, and decided to open a few despite the odds being against my pulling the Daniel Bryan autograph.  What I received was one green card and a whole bunch of white duplicates.  If I wanted to increase my odds from 1:50 to 1:5, I could shell out 100,000 coins.  That means to give yourself a very good chance of getting the card, you'd have to spend 500,000 coins (you can buy 450,000 for $49.99 and another 70,000 for $9.99).  If this was a once-per-year event, I could understand, but Topps released the Bryan autograph on the day after they released Ambrose.  What makes this even harder to swallow is that I can get a signed 8x10 photo of Daniel Bryan for $20.00.

Like most dads, I'm a sucker, so I spent some money to pull the Daniel Bryan card.  I traded it to my son for the steep price of...a teal Shinsuke Nakamura card.  But this was a one-time deal that came with some strings attached:

1. No trading the card.
2. If he decides to quit playing, he has to trade it back to me.
3. Never again.  This was a one-time thing, but I'm done spending money on coins for either of us.  If he wants to buy coins, he'll have to spend his own money on them.

In addition to the problem I have with the autograph cards and increasing number of inserts, I'm disappointed that they keep giving away the Week 1 cards for free.  These are cards that have been available in packs that cost 15,000 coins, and now that we've spent money putting together a complete set so my son can get the Ultimate Warrior award card this week, I learn that they're giving away seven of the set's 20 cards!  I don't want to count how many valuable orange cards I had to trade away to help him complete his set only to see many of those Week 1 given away (or scheduled to be given away) for nothing.

As a kid, I was a huge fan of baseball and football cards.  These days, I try steering my son away from collecting trading cards because the packs are much more expensive, there are fewer cards in each pack, and there are so many inserts and variations that the whole hobby has become a train-wreck full of greed and severely lacking in fun.  It's clearly a business, and that's fine for businesspeople, but there is little room left for hobbyists.

It's obvious that Topps continued this trend with the Huddle and Bunt sets.  I wish I could beg them not to ruin the Slam set, but it looks to be inevitable.

As for my future with the Topps Slam set, it's time to focus on my own collection.  I have completed the white set, and I have a decent number of greens, teals, and now 21 orange legends.  I have three black legend cards so far.  Everyone else can go nuts over the inserts; I'm a base set kind of guy anyway.