New and Shiny - Market Manipulation

[packs]

The last comment on that thread is the most telling and probably explains a lot of what is being seen as shady. If you buy a case of product you only need to open the first or second boxes of the product to predict where the hits are.

Example: if I bought a case of 2022 Bowman Draft Jumbo I would only need to open the first box to know where every autograph in every other box in the case is. For example, if I open the first box of the case and the autos are in the third pack of each row, I could then theoretically only open those packs in every other box and sell all the rest of the unopened Jumbo packs to collectors under the guise that they "might" be the pack with the autograph, knowing the whole time they won't be.

If you're ordering multiple cases of product they tend to be packed the same way. You'll know with reasonable accuracy that the case hit will be in the 4th box down (making that up) of every case ordered.

Breakers know this too if they're serious case buyers. I will open up a channel to watch a break and the breaker will pull the 2 packs (for example) they know have the autos in them from the stack before even opening the first pack. Because they know where they'll be based on the first box of that case.

Breakers also become familiar with collation. I've watched a ton of videos where the breaker starts freaking out because of the sequence of the first three cards or whatever knowing what is coming. You see it a lot with the 86 Fleer basketball packs. If you see Clark Kellogg in your pack, you've got a good chance of seeing Michael too.

[Carter08]

The thing I didn’t realize is that the super rare 1 of 1s aren’t typically lucky finds in a pack somewhere. The come from buying super expensive steel boxes with 3 cards in them in total. And that’s where people hope to hit the 1 of 1 of Luka as opposed to Rudy Gobert. What’s crazy to me is calling something 1 of 1 because it’s red but you also have a 1 of 1 that is a different color, and then another color, and then another color. I don’t get modern. I barely get vintage lol.

[Exhibitman]

They call it collecting the rainbow. It can get very frustrating when they get to the 1/3, 1/2 and 1/1 cards, for obvious reasons.

[G1911]

The odds that, for specific example, Backyard Breaks pulls what they pull without being fed product from Panini is somewhere around 0%. Some of these influencers just defy the massive odds again and again and get loaded box after loaded box (not just the box with an X type hit, but the big name everyone is trying to pull types). Panini has clearly been marking boxes in some product with the good cards, probably Topps too.

A lot of modern looks great, but there’s a ton of corruption, backroom feeding of hits, and some huge hits straight up never even being packed out at all (like the 3 1/1 Ford’s in Star Wars Stellar a couple years ago - $10K a box and the biggest hits evidently weren’t even packed).

I’m surprised some people still want to believe so much that they throw away math and reason and keep playing this blatantly rigged game and screaming that everything is just fine.

There’s still a ton of fun in modern hobby land if you’re enjoying base and sets and the plethora of design options. Chasing the top .1% of stuff is a rigged game.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

There are some inferential mathematical studies of the success rates of certain 'social influencer' breakers at finding significant insert cards that conclude that the likelihood of them actually finding the cards they found at random is practically zero.... we as collectors are asking questions that I never, ever thought I would consider when I started collecting Topps cards in the last Ice Age. Used to pick up a pack every morning on my way to school in Bedrock.

Originally Posted by packs

The last comment on that thread is the most telling and probably explains a lot of what is being seen as shady. If you buy a case of product you only need to open the first or second boxes of the product to predict where the hits are.

I don't think that the issue is with breakers making hits. They order enough cases to hit impressive inserts. But when one breaker (Backyard Breaks) hits two or three of the most expensive cards of the most significant players in a single year, out of different product, it becomes apparent that they are being fed the best cases. Because statistically, they should have one or zero in a year.

I would think that Fanatics could further heighten demand by making these cards available to the general public. The reason being, I would never enter a break. And because I know I will never hit the best 1/1 because the system is rigged, I choose not to buy boxes. I will buy singles of what I want only.

[packs]

For a breaker to get marked cases the relationship would be breaker spends X money with the manufacturer, so the manufacturer tosses them a bone, right? And the way the breaker benefits from this is a wider audience competing for spots and bidding more for them on their channel, I guess.

But the costs per spot in breaks for products are more or less universal. A specific breaker isn't going to get more per spot for their break than someone else breaking the same product. Or at least that hasn't been my experience and I watch these breaks all the time.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by packs

For a breaker to get marked cases the relationship would be breaker spends X money with the manufacturer, so the manufacturer tosses them a bone, right? And the way the breaker benefits from this is a wider audience competing for spots and bidding more for them on their channel, I guess.

But the costs per spot in breaks for products are more or less universal. A specific breaker isn't going to get more per spot for their break than someone else breaking the same product. Or at least that hasn't been my experience and I watch these breaks all the time.

Or it’s just buddies giving the good stuff to buddies. Panini corporate might not be doing it as actual business practice and standard policy. That it’s happening seems mathematically undeniable, but the mechanics of the perpetrators doing the rigging aren’t known.

[packs]

Originally Posted by G1911

Or it’s just buddies giving the good stuff to buddies. Panini corporate might not be doing it as actual business practice and standard policy. That it’s happening seems mathematically undeniable, but the mechanics of the perpetrators doing the rigging aren’t known.

A situation like that I can buy into. But the idea that a manufacturer would have this built into their business as standard operating procedures is not.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by packs

A situation like that I can buy into. But the idea that a manufacturer would have this built into their business as standard operating procedures is not.

I’ve seen way too much incredibly shady stuff being done by corporations in my life to have any faith that they would be above this or smarter than this. If I had to wager though, buddies helping buddies is what I would bet is going on, but we don’t have direct evidence of the backend mechanics, just that the astounding hits certain breakers get is impossible to achieve naturally without being fed the true hit cases. Somebody in distribution for some reason is ensuring that the good stuff goes to certain people. Backyard being exhibit A here lately. We can see the fire, but who is starting it with what fire starting device we can’t see as of present.