New to the hobby - have a question

zechariah215

Hello there! So I've moved from buying memorabilia to buying sports cards and had a question for the group if I may.

I'm going to use Score 89 football for this example.

I can buy individual packs of cards for lets say $25 per pack, or a box for $1100. I can site this example for 89 upperdeck baseball as well. What advantage, if any, do I have spending more for a box of cards vs packs? More probability of "Hits" perhaps?

I can buy 36 packs at a lower price than a box price would be.

I'm looking to buy some boxes just to get started and want to try to make a more informed decision.

I apologize in advance for the "noobness" of the question, appreciate your time and look forward to reading more here.

Thank you

DeutscherGeist

The problem with individual packs is that they might have been left overs from a search conducted from several boxes. I am not talking about packs being opened and searched (that is another problem). For example, depending on card manufacturer, there are ways to determine, while the pack is sealed, to see at least some of the contents, like the back or front card of the pack. An individual could have gone through cases of cards scanning each pack for whatever is visible and setting the "good" packs aside. The rest of those packs will then be sold online as sealed packs, which they are, or placed back into the corresponding box with other packs that did not pass the initial scan and sold as a full box of packs.

So, while the packs themselves have not been searched, they have been initially gone through some screening process where the Barry Sanders card on the top or bottom deck was seen and taken out of the bunch. There may still be that Barry Sanders in between cards that cannot be seen without opening the pack, the point is that individual loose packs have slightly worse odds than packs coming from a factory sealed box.

Also, depending on manufacturer, some card packs have predictable sequences. For example, if you can determine the number of the bottom card, you can know the other cards in there based on the fixed collation the manufacturer used to ensure good mixture. Cards are not always inserted into packs at random because that would cause a lot of duplicate cards just from one box. That would be bad for the set builders.

It is best to get a factory sealed box for the year and make of cards you like. There are more nuances to what I described, but this is a good first lesson.

zechariah215

Great info, and makes a lot of sense. Thank you!