When’s The Best Time to Buy Sealed Football Hobby Boxes?

By: Al Teruel from Waxstat.com

Disclaimer:

Should I buy sealed hobby box or a case of football products such as 2022 Panini Prizm Football in the off-season or during the season? If I was not watching prices of wax regularly, I would think that demand would be lower in the off-season and the prices would be lower, and the inverse would be true as demand increasing during the season and therefore prices should be higher. But because my rationale is usually off, I went into the Waxstat data engine to prove or disprove my thoughts.

Based on the information collected at Waxstat, it’s very clear that the low prices for these sealed product lines were at or near their lowest during the off-season and as of the start of the 2023 NFL season, we’re seeing as much as a +66.1% increase (2022 Panini Select Football Hobby Box) in market price.

Here’s the Waxstat data to support this where I picked a sample of 5 x 2021 and 5x 2022 Panini NFL Football product lines. I picked a common start date of April 1 of the product’s release year where all of the products were available and it was deep into the NFL off-season.

2022 Panini Select Football Hobby Box:

Avg value on 4/1/23: 623.82
Avg value on 9/25/23: 1050.98
Diff: +66.1%

2022 Panini Prizm Football Hobby Box:

Avg value on 4/1/23: 679.98
Avg value on 9/25/23: 1096.83
Diff: +61.3%

2022 Panini National Treasures Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 2766.45
Avg value on 9/25/23: 2880.97
Diff: +4.1%

2022 Panini Donruss Optic Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 602.25
Avg value on 9/25/23: 971.36
Diff: +61.3%

2022 Panini Immaculate Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 888.30
Avg value on 9/25/23: 1268.78
Diff: +42.8%

Now just to fulfill my curiosity, I wanted to know if this price increase was because of the 2022 product line and rookie class or if 2022 performed differently because it was a new release. Let’s look at the 2021 Panini Products

2021 Panini Select Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 933.31
Avg value on 9/25/23: 1163.39
Diff: +24.7%

2021 Panini Prizm Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 1177.74
Avg value on 9/25/23: 1427.72
Diff: +21.2%

2021 Panini National Treasures Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 4099.71
Avg value on 9/25/23: 4282.63
Diff: +4.5%

2021 Panini Donruss Optic Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 961.85
Avg value on 9/7/23: 1334.83
Diff: +38.8%

2021 Panini Immaculate Football Hobby Box

Avg value on 4/1/23: 1929.13
Avg value on 9/7/23: 2122.97
Diff: +10.0%

Just for fun, I reviewed the price of the S&P 500 to see how non-trading card assets performed during the same time.

S&P 500

Close on 3/31/23 (4/1/23 the market closed): 4109.31
Close on 9/25/23: 4337.44
Diff: +5.5% increase

• So based on these data points, a few things jump out:
  Investing in sealed 2021 or 2022 football sealed wax outperformed the S&P 500 in the same time period. 2021 Select Football Hobby Box increased +24.7% while 2022 Select Football Hobby Box increased +66.1% versus an increase of +5.5% in the S&P 500 from 4/1/23 – 9/25/23.
• The 2021 Panini National Treasure Football Hobby Box and 2022 National Treasures Football Hobby Box were the worst performers of my sampled products with the 2021 edition only appreciating +4.5% and the 2022 edition increasing +4.1%. They both saw positive increases, but tt seems that the market movers have priced National Treasures correctly from the get-go versus letting the open market dictate the pricing.
• Panini Select Football Hobby Box and Panini Prizm Football Hobby Box are the best performing product lines of the sampled products versus National Treasures, Donruss Optic and Immaculate of their respective 2021 and 2022 years.

There’s still a lot to be learned from the data, and we’ll need to watch this over longer periods of time. The common assumption from within #TheHobby is that much of the value is based on the rookie quarterbacks of the selected class. As I’m writing this article, here’s the breakdown of QB rating

2021 Rookie Class QBR as ranked by the qualified QBs to play in the 2023 season

Mac Jones #17 overall QBR at 54.3
Trevor Lawrence #26 overall QBR at 41.6
Zach Wilson #33 overall QBR at 27.0
Justin Fields #34 overall QBR at 21.5

2022 Rookie Class QBR as ranked by the qualified QBs to play in the 2023 season

Brock Purdy #2 overall QBR at 77.3
Desmond Ridder #28 overall QBR at 36.4
Kenny Pickett #31 overall QBR at 27.0

So what I clearly see (except for San Francisco 49er’s QB Brock Purdy) is that the start of the 2023 season has not yielded stellar stats from the 2021 and 2022 rookie QB’s which makes me think that the industry is just moving the price of the hobby boxes up with no regards to the on-field performance of the Quarterbacks. I would think that if most of the rookie QBs are performing on the bottom half of the overall QBs in the NFL, that prices would not be as high and holding as high as they are today. But all it takes is 1 player to hold up any product year, and if you are bullish on Lawrence and Purdy, then I say you should continue getting as much 2021 and 2022 football product for the long-term.

But is the price of the wax tied to the rookie’s on-field performance or are we just seeing supply and demand function in an open market? One thing to consider is the termination of contracts between Panini and The NFL Players Association. Was this the cause of the overall increase in price for hobby boxes from 2021 and 2022? Are dealers limiting the supply because of a potential end of manufacturing until Panini and the NFLPA could sort out their issues?

So getting back to my original question: should I buy football wax in the off-season or in-season? The answer is to consider buying them in the off-season. We’ll come back and see if the same is true come playoff time in January and February 2024, but it’s safe to say that you should not be stocking up on football wax during the early part of the season.