We have all noticed delays in card releases this year, but more in the past 6 months than before. This has applied to sports cards, non-sports cards, and toys. There is currently a shipping strike both on the East Coast in the US and in Canada which is the cause for many of the delays. We just got over a strike on the West Coast of the US just a month or so ago.
Once Trump is put into office in January and he installs the tariffs on China and Mexico, we can anticipate that this will be an even bigger issue next year. You can expect increases in prices on cards and toys because most are made in either Mexico or China and shipped to the US. You can expect delays in shipping with strikes happening throughout the US in the shipping industry.
We have already had both private and public distribution services stop selling items to the public because the shipping dates continue to get delayed. For instance, this year, the Transformers 40th Anniversary cards are being released, set for October 14th. They saw continued delays, every week they pushed it back a week, and this continued until December 4th. The reason was that the product was tied up in overseas shipping and was not making it to major distributors. Large distributors such as Dave & Adam's stopped selling the product because they could no longer guarantee the release date and their customer service was being inundated with calls wondering when these were finally going to be released.
The hobby is going to go through some changes in 2025. Please have patience, a majority of it is out of the seller's control. Research your prices and shop wisely as we expect to see a lot of price gouging out there, especially on eBay and Amazon.