[hempick]

Over the past few months I've busted a ton of retail jumbo packs and blasters from 2017 Series One Topps and I've noticed something that I thought had disappeared from the hobby.

I first noticed it with the jumbo packs.

Every time I got an Andrew Benintendi rookie card in the second half of the pack (after the inserts/parallels), a few cards later there would be an Aaron Judge rookie.

It happened to me with 4-5 different jumbo packs. I don't remember if the other cards in those packs were the same, but I'd imagine that they probably were.

Anyway, I hadn't encountered that with the blasters I opened until today. (Granted I hadn't pulled a Benintendi or Judge from a blaster until today.)

So, I just opened a blaster and I got a Benintendi in the 4th or 5th pack and sure enough there was a Judge card in the very next pack.

I remember poor collation being a staple of the hobby back in the 80s (and maybe even the early 90s), but I thought those days were long gone.

It seems that collation has become an issue again.

I've even noticed it in some other products like Fire and Gallery on a smaller scale.

Is this a common thing in the hobby again? The last time I collected was around 2001 and I don't remember it being a thing then.

[kerryandbeth]

Yes, it is still an issue...big time! And, not just with Topps. The worst case I have encountered was actually a football product. Two years ago I ordered 8 Blasters of 2016 Panini Football from Dave and Adams because my local Wal-Mart didn't carry the retail-only cards. Out of the 8 Blasters, 3 were EXACTLY the same, even down to the inserts. Then 2 others were EXACTLY the same. So, out of 8 Blasters I was still missing a lot of the base set even though I had 3 or 4 dupes of other cards.

Then, this last December I got 2 Super Jumbo boxes of Bowman Draft. There are 5 packs each of 60 cards. I had EXACTLY the same 60-card pack in both Jumbo boxes except for the autograph (thank goodness!)

[hempick]

Yes, it is still an issue...big time! And, not just with Topps. The worst case I have encountered was actually a football product. Two years ago I ordered 8 Blasters of 2016 Panini Football from Dave and Adams because my local Wal-Mart didn't carry the retail-only cards. Out of the 8 Blasters, 3 were EXACTLY the same, even down to the inserts. Then 2 others were EXACTLY the same. So, out of 8 Blasters I was still missing a lot of the base set even though I had 3 or 4 dupes of other cards.

Then, this last December I got 2 Super Jumbo boxes of Bowman Draft. There are 5 packs each of 60 cards. I had EXACTLY the same 60-card pack in both Jumbo boxes except for the autograph (thank goodness!)

Hrm. That really stinks. =\

I bought a few collector boxes of Topps Gallery from my local Walmart and 1 more from a different Walmart. They are supposed to have 2 autos guaranteed per box. I haven't opened them all yet, but in the first box I got a Jose Altuve Blue parallel auto 29/50 and Eduaro Rodriguez. In the second box I got 2 Magneuris Sierra autographs. In the third I got a Benintendi auto redemption and ANOTHER Altuve Blue parallel autograph (this one was 31/50).

I mean, Altuve is a great player, so that was nice, but 2 Altuve Blue autos and 2 Magneuris Sierra autos in a span of 3 boxes? Seems odd.

As a side note, I've gotten a ridiculous amount of Astro inserts/parallels/etc out of the Gallery boxes so far which is strange because I'm in Florida, not Texas. It feels like they sent the shipment to the wrong area lol.

[rjcj2017]

The worst is when you grab, say, 3-4 blasters out of a fresh vendor box (the cardboard boxes with the yellow tape) at Target, and 2-3 of them have exactly the same "run" of cards.

I get that if you buy them from different stores you might run into that, but each box from the same case should be different.

It's like Panini and Topps don't understand that one person might buy more than one box.

[djohn]

I have seen this happen plenty of times, with packs being exactly the same. Usually this doesn't happen within the same box, but I have seen boxes with very similar packs before.

[hckydv7]

To me these are not collation problems. i do not have a problem with the order of the cards being the same etc. But when I buy a pack, blaster box, hobby box, etc, and get the same card more than once that is a problem.

[hempick]

To me these are not collation problems. i do not have a problem with the order of the cards being the same etc. But when I buy a pack, blaster box, hobby box, etc, and get the same card more than once that is a problem.

There should NEVER be a pack with the same exact cards. There should also NEVER be more than one of the same card in a single pack. Both of those things are problems.

[markhamilton]

I participated in a couple of Chronicles case breaks and watched three or four more and noticed that if there was a Jordan Montgomery Redemption, one or two packs later was an Aaron Judge redemption. Don't remember if it was a Chronicles Autograph or a different one, but that happened at least once per case.

[mgruber2]

Overproduction. I think they are reverting back to the late 80's early 90's. Same collation issues as back then.

[cjgiannini]

There should NEVER be a pack with the same exact cards. There should also NEVER be more than one of the same card in a single pack. Both of those things are problems.

Just this week I opened a box of 90-91 NBA Hoops and in EVERY pack, the 10th and 11th card were identical. And there were several packs which were identical, which means I ended up with 4 copies of several cards.

I just got back into collecting and I haven't had issues with duplicate packs or duplicate cards in newer sets.