Modern Case Breaking Craziness
 

I watched a break last night of a box of 2020-21 Flawless Basketball. 10 cards. House lists the box for $13,999. One dude bought the box. Guy got 10 cards worth maybe $700. And that could be generous.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE WHO TAKE A FLYER LIKE THAT??????

Recent lottery winners? Crypto millionaires? Drug fueled maniacs? Without being in any way disrespectful, someone with a serious mental incapacity but lots of money and a gambling problem?

I am a bit of gambler and risk taker by nature, and have participated in breaks at times, but sometimes you have to step back and reconsider. I'd be despondent blowing that kind of money with basically nothing to show for it. For that kind of money he could have bough a real nice heavily desired card and sat on it. Or a car.

It’s gamblers. My friends who were previously only sports gamblers shifted into cards during the pandemic and have put insane amounts of cash into breaks.


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I took a small risk on 2 breaks this past year. Both single player breaks and both I bought one name in. They were unlicensed baseball so not the most costly. I got neither of the players I bought in either break. Probably $50 straight into a black hole.

You can imagine a 100-200 card checklist for a premium product starts to stack up $ pretty fast. Usually $500ish for the box and then sold to people I would say at an average of $20-$50 per player. Lets say the low end for both. 100 player list and and $20 a card
=$2000 for a $500 box. For top tier products (modern football/basketball mainly) you can multiply that number many many times over. At the peak of the boom I have no doubt these “flawless” and “immaculate” breaks were making well over $10,000 a case for opening up 50 or so cards.

Anyway, The breaker sent me a message a few weeks later with a copy/paste style response saying something like “We see you bought into a few breaks and didn’t get anything! That is unfortunate, sorry it can happen. We hope to see your name in the future”

Never again. And it seems like many people are in the same boat as seemingly breaking loses popularity by the day.

I watch a break or two on YouTube because apparently I have too much time on my hands. I appreciate the feigned enthusiasm when the big card turns out to be a Jalen Reaghor auto.

Somehow this seems not on the level. Sort of like a modern day ‘The Sting’ with the card producers being the mob bosses in this instance.

I also have that way too much time problem.

I have only seen a few. There was a couple that if the breaker had any slight of hand experience card(s) got switched out. Camera was too close and hands darted around way too much going in and out of view. I doubt that is the norm though.

I thought about buying into a case break, baseball, of a standard product like Chrome. It would have been for a team - Cincinnati Reds. But then I had the exact same thought as OP, that for the same money I could buy a single nice card that I actually want.

I don't have the stomach for gambling. I don't buy lottery tickets, or scratch tickets, and don't go to casinos. I stopped buying boxes... nearing twenty years now. Reds players rarely amount to anything, so prices remain fairly inexpensive. Jonathan India prices are still relatively cheap when compared to Jarred Kelenic, and India had the better year. The Reds player whose prices remain surprising is Jose Barrero. I think flippers are hoping his story is not yet told. But he couldn't beat Kyle Farmer for the starting SS job, so I'm not convinced.

Vintage Reds prices like the BRM are also relatively accessible, until you get into niche products like Kahn's, but then compared to the Yankees it's not so bad.

Back to the original topic, though. I think for a team collector like me, a case break is an alright idea. But I don't want to return to the days where I had 4000 count boxes of worthless cards that no one else cared about. So ultimately that's why I never purchased a break.

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I must admit I don't get it at all. I love cards and sports, but I'd much rather gamble on an actual sporting event, which for me is much more fun to watch than a streaming video of someone opening a box.

This is it 100%, breaking is only gamblers. As long as you understand that it's as logical as the Powerball.

You can say that sports gambling is more fun, and I would agree and probably use my Caesars App a tad too much. However, the payoff on a good hit is 30gs+ with the break, there is nothing with that return on a sports bet for the same investment. They are just chasing that huge hit and losing 90% of the time.