The Inkworks Well Finally Appears to Be Running Dry

More than a year after going out of business, it looks like the flood of excess autographs might finally be on the horizon. But not until Razor releases one more set chalk full of them.

2010 Razor Ink Vault will be the company's final set that focuses on Inkworks autographs. Boxes will contain four random autographs plus an unopened non-sport box. This is up one autograph per box from the first Ink Vault release.

Last year's Razor Ink Vault was my favorite product to bust. Packed with value, even when you don't get a major name, the surprise factor and the breaking of a surprise box was a lot of fun. At $50-60 it was like paying around the original cost of the box (now deflated because most were closeouts of Inkworks leftovers) but with an additional trio of autographs.

This time around the price doesn't rise but you get one more autograph at the same price.

I do have a hunch that autographs from Inkworks' final release, The Spirt, could play somewhat prominently as it was put out just before the company went under and all were redemptions. This would likely mean that there's loads of leftovers as the expiration date was not at all flexible. Add to that that the set was a massive disappointment sales-wise (largely because the movie sucked so much rather the the product, which is actually an excellent set). At least if this is the case, the autograph lineup for The Spirit isn't that bad as it includes Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie King, Paz Vega and Dan Lauria, the dad from The Wonder Years.

With the first Ink Vault and Razor Ink Archives, Razor has already flooded the non-sport market with Inkworks autographs. This has had both pros and cons. Personally, I've been able to snag lots of autographs that were out of my price range before. But for dealers who saw some prices drop more than half, I can certainly see them being a little saddened by this.

I don't fault Razor for the market flood as they weren't the ones who produced the cards in the first place. They also didn't hold such a significant amount of autographs back.  These cards were always around. So whether they hit the market all at once or the trickled out as they had before, the idea of rarity was completely manufactured. Razor has stated that this is their final "Ink" release. If they bought a big chunk of Inkworks' leftover autographs then at least now people won't have to speculate how much more is sitting out there and the market can once again balance itself out.

2010 Razor Ink Vault Sell Sheet

The Fallout of Inkworks' Vault Being Pillaged

If you're a non-sport collector, particularly autographs, you've probably noticed the chaos in the prices for almost every Inkworks card. When the company went under in the spring, Razor and a couple of other groups bought out their leftover stock and have been releasing it to the masses en mass.

Razor's approach has been to pack out the cards in two different releases: Ink Archives, which gave collectors one autograph per pack and Ink Vault, which offered three autographs and a sealed box (almost always from Inkworks). Ink Archives put almost 20,000 autographs into the marketplace while Ink Vault's 499 cases has resulted in another 29,940 Inkworks autographs (plus whatever's in the boxes) hitting a somewhat small corner of the hobby. That's almost 50,000 autographs that have already been released going into circulation in a matter of months. The result has been a flooded market, which is both good and bad.

From a collecting perspective, it's been great. In just the past two weeks I've received three cards that were always priced higher than I could afford until now. The first was a Robert "Freddy Kreuger" Englund card from a Charmed series. A few months ago it sold consistently for about $50-60. I was able to trigger a 'Buy It Now' for $30.

Next up was an autograph from an underappreciated movie, Hellboy. Lead actor Ron Perlman isn't a huge Hollywood star but the guy has had some memorable roles over the years, most recently in the awesome FX series Sons of Anarchy. In Hellboy he plays the main character. Before Inkworks went under: $50. I got it for half.

My final find was a bit of luck. It was a 'Buy It Now' that was just posted when I came across it. This one comes from the Hellboy set once again. It's of director Guillermo Del Toro who has since rocketed to fame with Pan's Labyrinth and is pegged to tackle The Hobbit if it ever gets going. Not long ago, this card sold for $100-200. This one was just $40. I did luck into an all-time low for the card I think though, as ensuing copies have crept back up into the $80-100 range. A once tough card, Ink Vault seems to be bringing a steady stream of them now.

The fact that the market being flooded with Inkworks autographs isn't the only reason prices are so soft. It also has to do with who's selling the cards. Razor's clients are mostly sports card dealers. In my experiences with both sides of the hobby, non-sport dealers are much more patient as a whole when it comes to holding onto their inventory. It's been more stable than the performance-driven sports side. As a result sports dealers look at moving their inventory as quickly as possible, which often results in undercutting the competition. Plus, if you're bread and butter normally revolves around names like Albert Pujols, Michael Jordan and Lebron James, you might not recognize the value in the director of a moderately successful film.

A lot of the cards I've been picking up have been coming from dealers who carry a lot of sports cards, which makes me believe that's their primary area of focus. Even at the deflated prices, Ink Vault is offering everyone tremendous value and a pretty easy way to make a few dollars. That is for everyone except those non-sport dealers who have been with the hobby for the long haul and have seen the value of their inventory shrink with each ensuing week.

It's in situations like these where I'm glad I'm not a dealer. I know I'd have a tough time marking a once $200 card that I pulled from a $60 box of cards down to $50 just so I can move it. Even moving $10 cards down to $5 is tough when margins weren't great even when the hobby was rolling at full steam. If sports collectors are worried about the number of dealers in their neck of the woods, non-sport collectors should be petrified. When times were good there were only a handful of dealers to pick from. I suspect the fallout from Inkworks' closing is going to make that handful even smaller when you consider the double-whammy of fewer products being released and the severely lowered value coming from almost 50,000 autographs coming into the hobby all at once.

Box Break: Razor Ink Vault (Part 1)

The demise of Inkworks has meant deals (or softer prices, depending on how you look at it) for collectors as their excess stock hits the market. A couple of dealers on eBay have a lot of the stock as well as Razor, who bought up a bunch of autographs and, guessing from their Ink Vault release, a lot of unopened material as well.

Ink Vault marks Razor's second release heavily featuring Inkworks autographs. The first, Ink Archives, offered collectors one random autograph per pack in an encapsulated holder. As tempting as it was, I stayed away largely because of the $15-20 price tag per pack and some uncertainty over the level of autographs found inside, especially after it was discovered a partner of Razor's was selling singles of some of the best cards Inkworks made over the years.

Ink Archives went over well and Razor upped the ante with Ink Vault, which offers a box-within-a-box gimmick. First off, each sealed box contains three random Inkworks autographs placed in a top loader with a Razor seal. The box also contains an unopened non-sport box, most likely of which will contain further "hits." At first I figured this would be a way to get rid of a lot of junk and even at $50 per box, it would be something of a letdown.

But then I started looking at the breaks. The boxes, which I figured would be mostly old Inkworks retail boxes like Tomb Raider and Godzilla turned out to be fairly solid. Razor also emphasized that not all of the boxes were from Inkworks. I've seen others such as Batman Archives from Rittenhouse and Star Wars and Indiana Jones boxes from Topps.

As for the autographs, the breaks seemed to be yielding better results than Ink Archives. Of the three autographs, there appeared to be at least one that I wouldn't lump in as a "common." Combine the good liklihood of a solid box and at least one autograph worth getting excited about and I decided to give a box a try.

Here's what I landed:

First the autographs:

Alien vs. Predator

A6. Ian Whyte as Scar (the Predator)

This is a set I've been planning on tackling. I love the Alien series (although I do not acknowledge the existance of Alien Resurrection) and there's not a lot of pricey cards in the set. I'm very pleased with this one.

Small Soldiers

S4. Stan Winston

Outside of Ray Harryhausen, Winston was probably one of the best known special effects artists in history. He sadly passed away in June, 2008. I already had a Winston autograph from Terminator 3 but I like this one much better. Plus I already have the Kirsten Dunst from the set so I might have to track down the couple of others that I'm missing one day.

 

 Smallville: Season Three

A17. Camille Mitchell as Sheriff Nancy Adams

I made it through half a season of Smallville and couldn't take any more. Of the three autographs in the box, this one definitely goes onto the trade list if anybody is interested. 

With those three autographs, I'd be fairly happy. But there's still the box inside the box. So no matter what it is, I consider it a bonus in this case. And it's a good thing too because here's my box:

 The Seeker: The Dark is Rising

There is one card in this set that I want but the rest I would love to avoid as much as possible. The box does promise an additional autograph (no redemptions here) and a Pieceworks costume card.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my Razor Ink Vault box break. 

Is Inkworks More Valuable Dead Than Alive?

It's been a few weeks now since non-sport manufacturer Inkworks announced they were "ceasing regular operations." Stopping short of going out of business, right now they're not in the card-making business as of right now.

The amount of attention the company's demise garnered got me wondering if they've become like a great artist becoming more well known in death than when they were around. A lot of this pondering stems from Razor announcing they'd bought a lot of Inkworks' autograph leftovers and are releasing about 18,000 of them in a grab-bag product entitled Ink Archives. What this did was show the sports market what non-sport collectors have known for a decade: there's plenty of variety of autographs available at reasonable prices - at least unless you're a hot actress like Angelina Jolie. Razor's market is traditionally the sports crowd so with their marketing efforts, Ink Archives immediately became a crossover release that caters to both the sports and the non-sport niches. By crossing over, the Inkworks name has now been exposed to more collectors and, I'd argue, is more recognizable to the card-collecting public.

Then there was the controversy uncovered a couple weeks after the solicitations for Ink Archives where a company owned by Razor owner Brian Gray was selling several Inkworks autographs via eBay. True or not, this revelation led to much speculation over whether or not Ink Archives was as random as advertised or if most of the "hot" autographs had been cherry picked to be sold separately. Gray responded swiftly by pulling all of the auctions and said that those listed had never been part of the consideration for Ink Archives. Throughout all these stories and allegations, the Inkworks name is being tossed around more, which should make their name and products even more recognizable.

So what if Inkworks were able to make a hobby comeback later this year, next year or some point down the road? Will they have a bigger fanbase because of the attention they've gotten since they stopped making cards?