Ah....$50 for the base 30 sticker (they are still stickers, right?) set on eBay must be what I'm remembering. That's the only stuff I'm interested in, don't care about chase cards or autographs or sketches really, so I guess I will wait for the secondary market.
A damned shame that Topps doesn't offer that 30 sticker set, although I suppose it would cut into and cannibalize their $150 chase-card-package option if they did.
It's hard to fathom how we went from $50 boxes stuffed with so many many beautiful die-cut stickers (and fun bonuses), to $150 for a single set of 30 not-die-cut stickers in the span of a few years. Unless Topps lost tens of thousands of dollars on the first handful of Old School series? But weren't they breaking even? Other than that, this just seems to be project managers chasing bad ideas while changing the product to meet artificial demand (sketches and the ridiculous sketch card boom) and turning something that seemed to be working into something that is near-failing. Bad design and execution chasing bad ideas. It's a shame.
I LOVE Dave's work on Old School, but I loved the Wacky Packages Old School product completely when it was Old School. If it weren't for Dave's continued exceptional work on the series, I'd see little point going forward. What they've designed around that work is so far from the core appeal (to me) and so built upon the chase of the chase (the very opposite of the foundational Old School concept) that it is no wonder it's become lean.
But, maybe that's all the collectible card hobby has going for it, at this point. At least the stickers (or sticker-like-cards) are still stunning. I'll keep around for those.