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Who buys boxes of cards and why???
CamaroSS
Posts: 5 ✭
They cost a fortune, you don't ever get your money back, and if you get anything you have to grade it and that cost, but yet they keep selling? Just seems like to me someday this is coming to a halt based on cost. Thoughts!
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Hobby boxes can be nice since usually they have higher odds of big hits or guaranteed hits. Lot different than buying boxes of base sets in the past as well with serial cards, parallels, etc. As far as reselling, not my area of expertise, but would imagine the filler cards are used for repacks or sold as raw singles to set collectors to help compensate costs. Case breaks have become more popular over the years as well so all in all I don't see them ever coming to a halt.
Buy them....put them away for a few years ....then sell. Don't ever open.
Viewing this question in the lens of the poker movie 'Rounders', box breakers are like the character Lester "Worm" Murphy (Edward Norton) while collectors that buy cards that they know have stable value are more like Joey Knish (John Turturro). Box breakers throw their wad at chasing the big score. Collectors who buy quality cards with long track records of value don't usually make the big score but bang out constant profits. There are several videos of box breakers on YouTube who admit that going all-in on box breaking nearly ruined their lives and their finances. When many boxes fetch four and even five figures, it doesn't take long to mow through a pile of cash. Especially when many of these boxes yield little to no return.
There's this really weird thing, a lot of people haven't heard of it quite some time ... called 'fun'.
Who buys boxes of cards and why???
That's an easy one to answer: because there cool and I like em...
Sorry for the off topic comment @GroceryRackPack and thread hijack ...but what is the story on the awesome flannel? I have been wondering for years! I get a kick out of that AND enjoy your cards.
It's fun, fun, fun. It's only money. Cheers.
I buy and open one or two boxes of each series of Topps and Heritage baseball every year mostly as tradition. I disagree with the premise you have to “grade it”. I have never submitted a card. Whatever I get I keep good or bad. After a certain number of years I throw out the commons on Topps for space. Will eventually do the same for Heritage. The worthless star cards I enjoy looking through occasionally. Spend a few hundred dollars a year and enjoy opening. Every once in a while I get something good I enjoy having in my collection. Even a hit I don’t care about I keep. The hobby is supposed to be fun not a business. I trade paper with black and white pictures of presidents faces on it that I have duplicates of and get cardboard with color pictures of baseball players faces on it that I don’t have yet. Seems like a good deal to me.
The great thing about this hobby is that you can play anyway you want. I used to buy cases of Optic FB of all formats - hobby, retail, blasters, mega. That was a blast sorting and making sets. Those days are long over. Now I buy Leaf FB and in-store retail. If you see my 2021 Valiant FB thread, I'm still having fun.
I still buy them. I love the thrill of opening a box. I hardly ever hit on the rare, numbered cards but at the end of the day I still hit cards of star players, and they tend to add up when they retire.
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
So other people card buy single cards?
Huh, wait, what?
Successful card BST transactions with cbcnow, brogurt, gstarling, Bravesfan 007, and rajah 424.
Hiya SuperSport and welcome.
Complex question.
My first instinct was to approach this question thru the prism of 2 different optics: The "Investor" and the "Collector."
If you go to youtube and watch influencers that cover shows? The hobby appears to be on fire.
So, in order for that to happen? Someone is opening and selling to dealers to have individual cards to sell. Right?
I'm with you. All and all, many products are for buying and subsequent selling.
Having said that. There's plenty out there to open and have fun - Topps Chrome, Bowman and Heritage to name a few.
My take? If one establishes a narrow "focus" and "budget?" The hobby can be fun, fun, fun....
I vote boxes from now on should be free. You hear me fanatics!
All those rich mlb players should pay for it.
I'm starting to see softness in the modern box market. 2021 Prizm FB breaks soon and pre-sale is over $1500. Prizm is a tricky product, there are big hits but the auto checklist has a lot of scrubs. I wonder if that price will hold.
Right up until 2 years ago I could buy pretty much any box of any year of Upper Deck Series hockey and would come out a winner by grading the mint RCs at $8-15/card. It was like throwing darts blindfolded and hitting bullseye every time. I would imagine other sports shared this experience. Opening 90's junk wax even made sense at lower grading fees, that's all gone now though.
Presently you literally can't find anything resembling those odds unless you buy the current issue at MSRP, but even then the last 2 years the quality control has been so horrible by Upper Deck this isn't possible most of the time.
To answer your question, who buys boxes now? Investors looking to hold unopened and hope the value goes up, people just looking to roll the dice and have some fun hoping to hit something, or breakers who charge per spot and can make some profit that way.
I find some low price boxes with a snowball in H&ll chance of pulling a monster just to have fun ripping. 3 boxes a $30 a piece is cheap entertainment for an evening. Besides I’ve been opening football since 1966.
"I spent 50% of my money on alcohol, women, and gambling. The other half I wasted.
Opening boxes is just gambling.......has been since the mid-late 90s
Like I tell my father who loves the ponies, it’s the cost of entertainment. It’s also a lot of fun with the kids for me. Or with friends who grew up collecting in the 80s as I did. Pulling a 1985 Donruss Gooden as a 40something brings quite the thrill to a middle aged man who has not opened packs in 35 years.
John