SI article on cards

[swarmee]

Gadot was in a couple of Fast and the Furious movies and then got her big break as Wonder Woman in the DC movies.

As said, the "base doesn't ship" refers to breakers only sending the insert and autographed cards, not the base cards that people used to make complete sets with. Just goes to the whole gambling aspect of case breaking, and I've been active in both vintage and modern breaking by buying spots.

Upper Deck ePack takes that even further letting you open up cases, boxes, or packs of cards online. The majority of the cards you're buying are digital pictures, but you get the inserts and autographed/memorabilia cards if you pay to have them shipped to you. Or you can trade them online or send them to COMC to sell without much of a cost.

The Panini Blockchain thing is even a bridge farther than that, where Panini is selling high end cards directly through their site (without being packed out) and giving the buyer a digital and physical copy of the card. The buyer can then sell the digital copy and keep the real one, or vice versa. The confusing part is that most buyers of the digital card probably think they're getting the real one as well. The site is not very clear that you're only buying pixels, and we all know that many eBay/online purchasers don't read the descriptions of what they're purchasing.

[chalupacollects]

Personally breaking is just another form of gambling and if you don't know the breakers rep you can seriously get screwed. Many stories of breakers swapping out cards - yes live on video no less...non shippers and "lost packages."

On the positive side they bring new eyes to the hobby and keep the manufacturers producing new product..

On the negative side they do end up grabbing allocations away from LCS's and other buyers down the line. Thus making buying newer more desirable products more expensive for everyone...

The real winners are the manufacturers...

And for those who don't know who Gal Gadot is - shame! lol