[bojesphob]

As you can tell, this is my first post on here, and I haven't had a chance to go looking through old posts to see if anybody has talked about this before, so I figured I'd just go ahead and ask this...
Anyhow, I'm an off and on collector, and have been collecting Green Bay Packers cards since I was probably 10 (... way too many years ago). I used to buy cards quite a bit, but the last few years, I haven't been buying that much. Every few months I go and buy a retail box from Target or Walmart, and maybe once a year go to a local card store and buy a box. Now, I have had some good hits for other teams (1/25 Ladanian Tomlinson patch card a few years back, JJ Watt auto rookie, among some others), but the only decent hit I've had for Green Bay in the last few years has been a 10/100 numbered Gridiron Gear Aaron Rodgers base card.

So, when my tax refunds were coming around this year, I had a little extra money, and recently found the world of breaks through a couple sellers on eBay, and decided to try it out. I did a lot of research into the breakers, and they seemed to be good, so I got into a few breaks to see if I could get anything.

The first one I got in on was a Panini Prominence full case break. I like the cards, and wanted to see what I could get out of it. Anyhow, it only had 4 base cards (although serial numbered), and I was a little disappointed. Then, I got in on a Panini Limited 10 box break, hoping for a little better luck, but ended up not even getting a base card out of it. Trying to change it up, I jumped into 3 Panini Prizm case breaks, and the first 2 didn't have anything but the base cards. Thankfully, the third break was better, having a Casey Hayward auto (#d/499), a Nick Perry auto (#d/499), a Jermichael Finley auto (02/25), and a James Starks auto (11/25). When that one broke, I was in on a Crown Royale break as well that netted me a Jermichael Finley auto (the trophy one, #d 01/25), and a base Casey Hayward auto (#d /499, I think). And those are good hits, but went back and looked at how many boxes I had been through (67) and actually counted the hits other teams had. Most had WAY more hits than that, for instance, I saw 4 Andrew Luck autos, and a Gold Luck Prizm, not to mention the other 6 Autos for the Colts. The Dolphins were even worse. I saw more Agnew autos in Prizm than I got Green Bay hits total! The only team that had a worse amount of hits was the Raiders in all of those, which I didn't see a single auto or memorabilia card out of the entire 67 boxes. I even sent Panini an email about it, just to vent a little frustration... I was cordial about it, and non-combative, but just sending it did help me feel a little better.

Am I expecting too much from these breaks? I went back and noticed that Limited and Prominence barely had any Packers hits in them to begin with, but I was very frustrated as I went 48 boxes and didn't have a single hit in them, including those two cases of Prizm. When I finally hit those autos, it was nice, but after seeing a Luck auto and Gold Prizm hit in subsequent boxes, and what those are selling for, and how many Luck hits alone I saw in all of that stuff (not to mention the RGIII's and Wilsons), it almost feels as if the Packers stuff was intentionally left out of those cases.

Now, I noticed that Topps Magic and Panini Contenders have more Packers hits in them, and I had a 6 box break last night in Contenders (got a Marc Tyler auto, so, not too bad). Tonight I'm in on another 2 boxes of Limited (to give it one more shot), and 3 case breaks of Magic, one full and one half case break of Contenders, and another 6 box break of Prizm (I can't help it, I REALLY like the Prizm cards!) to round out the weekend. Since I see a lot of people on the boards here who collect a whole heck of a lot more than I, does it seem like I'm going to be disappointed with what I get from these other breaks? I don't expect any 1/1 Rodgers autos or anything like that (there aren't any), but for those of you who've been through a lot of cards, does that seem horribly unreasonable to think that I should be getting a really, really good hit from one of these?

I'm not going to stop collecting if I don't get anything, I've got stuff from the late 80's that I got when I was a kid still, and have a decent, but not huge, collection going. I was hoping that breaks like this would help me save money, get some good cards, and not have the added clutter of teams I don't follow laying around... Now, I may go back to just buying stuff off of eBay piecemeal if the breaks continue to not work out, but I like opening packs or watching them being opened, hoping against hope that there's going to be a quad Packers auto, or a 1/1 Packers insert, or something along those lines... Has anybody else had a bad run like that? Does it get better, or, more often than not, do you end up being disappointed with what the breaks gain you? Did I pick the wrong products to get into? Just thought I'd pick a few brains and see what others who open boxes/cases think.

Wow... that ended up being 100x longer than I meant it to be lol

[soccerscrub]

Personally, I wouldn't do one of those breaks off the bay ever. You never know when you are going to get ripped off. You would have been better off using all the money you spent on those breaks to buy your own boxes and/or cases of cards. At least you would have gotten all the hits and you could have traded for the cards you want. Or, you could have just spent the money and purchased the individual cards you want instead of hoping you'll get a card. Just my $.02

[aviat0rshades]

I think the major problem for you in this case is that the Packers didn't have a lot marketable rookies this year. All these products are all rookie driven now. So unless you have a really marketable offensive guy, your team isn't going to have much. That was my issue with the Seahawks for awhile. Then...we go out and get this third round QB and I can barely afford to get his cards. Haha. I've been in a few group breaks, but never through ebay, just a few set up with friends that I trust. Good luck!

[branesergen]

+1 on what both of these guys have said. The thing with boxes is they are a gamble and 9 times out of 10 you're going to lose. If you like breaking packs then stick to your own and sell or trade what you dont want for cards you do want. Boxes are like lottery tickets. Everyone buys atleast 1 hoping for the big hit but mostly its just a waste of a dollar.

[bojesphob]

Soccerscrub: I definitely am trying to avoid breakers that aren't reputable. I'm pretty good at vetting sellers on eBay, and I've not been concerned with what I've seen of them so far. They open the sealed case box, pull the boxes out of the case on camera, open the boxes on camera, keep the packs in camera while they open them, and show the cards as they leaf through them without taking them out of camera. They open them live (I've chatted with them as they open), and they pull some unbelievable cards overall, so I don't get the feeling that they're doing anything shady, otherwise they wouldn't have any good cards... at least that's what I would assume, and I'm not the only one buying the breaks.

And, thankfully, even with this new stuff, I've barely spent enough to buy 1 box of Prizm. So, the fact that I've received 6 autos (already got them in the mail), that's better luck than I've had with buying normal boxes. The cards that I would REALLY like tend to cost way more than that even. One of the guys that did one of the Prizm breaks apparently felt sorry for me when I said how bad the other breaks I had were and sent me a Rodgers/DeSean Jackson Black Materials jersey card (#d 99) and two other no name hits from other sets, which I wouldn't expect someone who's trying to rip people off to do.

Anyhow, if these other breaks don't go well, then, yeah, I'll go back to just buying stuff through eBay or getting boxes from my local store (though, he rarely has football stuff...). I just figured I'd get some thoughts from other people on the subject, I like getting as much information about things when I try to make decisions on stuff.

And, is there a lot of call for trading? I've tried selling the cards I have for other teams on eBay, and find that even with above average cards, and me having a 100% 260+ positive feedback rating doesn't seem to help sell them, and they end up selling for cheap. I guess trying to unload 400-600 cards at a time doesn't help, but I'm trying to get rid of stuff as what extra I have takes up way too much room.

aviat0rshades: I hadn't really thought about the fact that their rookies were all late 1st round on. One of the bad things about liking a team that has had late first round picks consistently for quite a while. You probably have quite a bit of Russel Wilson's stuff, but I've got a box of Seahawks cards that probably has 600 cards total with a couple of base Wilson cards if you'd be interested and had any Packers cards you'd be interested in getting rid of LOL

[bojesphob]

So, panini and topps both have some issues with duplicating their autographs in cases. thankfully with panini, it was in my favor, but topps magic was pretty bad. I was able to get 7 autos, and 9 hits total from contenders, 4 of the autos being Marc Tyler, two were Casey Hayward, and one was a sp nick Perry auto out of 1.5 cases. Magic there was one jerel worthy auto, and some minor parallel hits, but that was in 3 cases. There were 8 players in those 3 magic cases that had 4 dupe autos, 8 that had 3 dupes, 14 that had 2(kaepernick actually had 2 in one case) and there were only 21 that had 1. That actually really surprised me, as it was three cases sent to three different people in different states. Overall, though, I do think I'll keep breaking with one two guy operation, as they are very personable, and I've got 17 hits from them in almost as many boxes of different product. I need to cut back on spending on them for a little while, as I was using some extra tax return.

[uwash97]

I think if you can find a guy that you trust (and it sounds like you have) then going the box break route can be fun, but it more often than not is frustrating because you are only going to get a fraction of the total hits, and sometimes (as you know) you don't get anything at all. I think one thing you should do is educate yourself about a product before getting in a break. For example, if all you can hope for are autos of the draft picks, then you should probably avoid that break for this year because as aviator said they don't have any good rookies, at least where cards are concerned. Just go buy those cards separately (or trade for them). But there are some products that have good chances at vet autos as well, so maybe focus on the products where you could possible pull a Rodgers or Woodson auto, but understand that those are longshots.

[bojesphob]

Thanks uwash. Yeah, I hadn't looked into what was in Prominence and Limited before I got in on those breaks, and that's when I started looking at what was in them, after I didn't really get anything.

I think the biggest reason I decided to try it out was that recently buying retail boxes, or a random box that my local store has wasn't netting anything. Yeah, I got some good hits for other teams, but trying to unload them has been trying at best. I've got almost 4000 cards for around 10-12 teams sitting around my house gathering dust while I try to figure out what to do with them. I've received around 14 Packers autos in the 2 weeks I've done breaks, and some nice parallel cards and inserts, so I'm not fully disappointed with breaks, just some of the products (which will probably be mitigated by being more choosy of what to break).


What are people's experiences with online trading? I don't know anyone locally who collects, so I would probably end up trying to do so through sites like this.

[joe callahan13]

I hate group breaks. I would MUCH rather get my own, but that's because I am not a team collector anyway probably.

Anyway, the big problem for you is that the card companies don't put the same number of rookies from each team in their product. (And don't even attempt to do so) It is all about the money. It costs a whole lot more to have Andrew Luck sign than a 5th round draft pick, which is why the planets have to align to hit a Luck auto in Topps Magic. This is also why you will get LOTS of dupes for the cheaper guys. If you are only interested in the Packers autos, you would probably be better off buying singles. Boxes are like scratch off lotto tickets, a large majority of the time, you are going to end up disappointed. It's that other 10% that keeps you coming back, and the possibility of it that makes it fun.