[lorichie56]

Kinda weird seeing so much retail box breaks now. Seems like theres quite a bit of unlicensed cards out now too. Trading was always such a fun part of the hobby for me kinda sad to see ebay is the way to go . Thanks for all the advice fellas appreciate it!

[kerryandbeth]

kinda sad to see ebay is the way to go

Not true! I have over 600 trades on this site and still going. Others are in the 4-digit trade number...they are just saying don't buy a box just to see what is out there.

[spazmatastic]

Trading IS the way to go if that is the aspect of the hobby that you enjoy most. But you still need cards to trade to others. Modern hobby boxes aren't going to get the return of traders that you want. Retail boxes will help more for less money. Not just blasters, but the re-packaged products (especially Fairfield brand) can help a bunch. Discounted blasters from years past can help too.
I have about 350 trades on here but I don't do many trades on Beckett these days. The long-time members have mostly left and the current traders mostly want the new stuff. I have well over 1,000 trades/sells/purchases across only 4 websites. MOST of them are trades, so I do know what collectors are looking to obtain in multiple sports.
But if you want to bust some hobby boxes that can really help with your traders and hit the desirable mark... Boxes from the late 1990's have inserts that have become quite valuable and highly desired in the market. Box prices are still pretty low compared to what can possibly be pulled. Look at prices for 1995-1999 boxes of Finest, Flair, SP or SPx, most Pacific products and the Upper Deck Black Diamond and Topps Stars releases. All of those brands had hard-to-pull inserts and parallels that are worth more than the box price alone. Even if you don't hit the high-value cards, you get a bunch more solid cards than you do from modern products. The products above can be found for the same price as some of the low to mid-range products today. It may have less cards than the lower-end products today, but the per-card value is much better. Modern cards in the same price range will deliver way more base cards and possibly lots of duplicates of them. The base inserts aren't worth much more than base cards either b/c there are so many insert sets these days.
If you spent $200 on a single box of cards from the past few years, you might only get 10 cards. And those 10 cards might not even net you $200 back in sell or trade value. You might get 10 cards that you can't sell for a combined $50 and could maybe trade for $100 worth of cards. But, you MIGHT hit ONE card that could sell/trade for a few hundred dollars. I'd much rather gamble $50 on a box than $200 on a box! It's up to you how you want to go about it.

If you want to talk about it in much more detail, PM me (using the PM link below this reply). I've been buying, collecting and trading for nearly 35 years now. I've been selling a little bit of my traders the past few years too. So I've been on all sides of the hobby. I'd love to chat with you to see where you actually want to go in the hobby. I'm always happy to help inform someone using the knowledge I've obtained in all these years of collecting. I love this hobby and I'll never give it up!