X-raying unopened packs

[Steve_NY]

Yes but how does this development affect the pack breakers? The ramifications imply that at some point in time the technology will be there to see every card in a pack. What a scary thought.

Going forward can’t the card companies use the same blocking technique that you can buy to protect your credit cards from being picked up in an airport. Can’t they block the xrays from seeing what’s in a pack by building that protection into all of the wrappers? That will probably increase prices but could alleviate the issues going forward.

[cubman1941]

Originally Posted by Steve_NY

Yes but how does this development affect the pack breakers? The ramifications imply that at some point in time the technology will be there to see every card in a pack. What a scary thought.

Going forward can’t the card companies use the same blocking technique that you can buy to protect your credit cards from being picked up in an airport. Can’t they block the xrays from seeing what’s in a pack by building that protection into all of the wrappers? That will probably increase prices but could alleviate the issues going forward.

They probably could but would they care? I don't think so. Increased prices might encourage them if they could do it cheaply enough so their profits would increase.

[packs]

The hit in modern packs is usually in the middle of the pack. I don't think this technology will ever help anyone who isn't opening a pack with only one card inside. Or who is more interesting in seeing cards other than the top and bottom card.

[steve B]

Pre-2000 while I was working in hydraulics we had a customer who made truck sized scanning devices for governments/airports/military.

The owner of our company visited them to drop some stuff off, and got a short tour of their shop including a smaller xray backscatter scanner.
It was clear enough to read magazine covers inside a briefcase. And that was their old prototype machine.

Another 24+ years of work on that could probably do a lot more.
One archaeology outfit has read text that was written on metal foil that was too fragile to unwrap.

A card pack would be pretty easy.

[conor912]

Based on what people are asking for unopened packs, they are already assuming the best card in the set is in it.

[packs]

It seems like the kind of thing that would be prohibitively expensive. Even if you could see through the packs, you'd still be tasked with buying enough product that you have a pack worth opening.

[bnorth]

Originally Posted by packs

It seems like the kind of thing that would be prohibitively expensive. Even if you could see through the packs, you'd still be tasked with buying enough product that you have a pack worth opening.

Or you could just resell the unopened packs with nothing great inside them so there is very little expense in scanning/x-raying truck loads of unopened material. The new big hits go for beyond silly money.

Get the guys from MIT who can already do this to let you "borrow" their equipment for a few months and great thing could happen.