CAN WE SOLVE THIS HOBBY (SPORTS CARD) CRISIS? Video and Discussion

[BobC]

Originally Posted by JustinD

Bob, I think your last statement is really the crux of it…bigger fish to fry than something like this.

To be honest the breakers have moved on and the breaks discussed are starting to go the way of the Dodo unless it is buying positions on vintage or high end breaks.

While the team and player breaks are still heavily auctioned on eBay, it’s shrinking. The new maneuver is simply selling packs and boxes at an up charge and opening them live on TikTok. The breakers make money coming and going on that racket.

They make money selling the packs and boxes at an inflated rate to watchers, who do this because they either cannot find the product locally or often just want to show off having 400 dollars of cards ripped for a few hundred or thousand watchers for bragging rights. The breakers then make money from TikTok for the viewer counts as well…a double dip. Often these breakers charge extra for shipping any commons or just ship the hits and the rest get put somewhere.

It’s a complete gambling gambit for hits and plays into the excitement. However, no one will ever do anything about it. The breakers for sports cards and Pokémon bring 10s of thousands of viewers per hour.

You may be right Justin, I don't take part and follow breaks, and don't know about such latest Breaker trends. But what it sounds like you're describing is even less of a possibility of being a gambling operation because if the Breakers are just selling packs or boxes to someone, and then opening them for the owner online before sending the cards to them, that is really no different than you or I buying a pack/box and opening it ourselves. What you're describing is really just another form of retail sales.

And that's another part of why I don't think Breakers need fear any prosecutors will come looking for them. Aside from their being the much more important issues and cases (bigger fish) for prosecutors to worry about, if they ever did go after Breakers because of the perceived extra value in special cards randomly inserted in packs and boxes, then as I mentioned before, technically the card manufacturers and their wholesale distributors are guilty of the same gambling operation then. I can just see prosecutors trying to then explain how one group selling cards is involved in gambling, but other groups basically doing the same thing and selling the same cards are not. That sounds like nothing prosecutors would want to willingly get in the middle of.