15 August 2014

Breaking it Down 13: I won! Now what?


The online breaker whose breaks I watch the most, Bomber Breaks, attended The National card show and hosted a few breaks while they were there. I bought into one of their breaks for Topps Five Star Football, hoping that I might get lucky and pull something good. I should probably have done a little more research into the product, because it turns out that a case of Five Star only has fifteen cards in it, meaning that at most half of the slots will come away with anything from the case, and even fewer if any team gets more than one card. Going into it, I thought a case probably had five boxes and 25 total hits. Why did I think that? Who knows?

My random team was the 49ers, and in a break dominated by Steelers, Vikings, and Packers cards I came away without any cards from the case and a general feeling that football breaks aren't worth the trouble of participation. I guess that is really true for most hit-driven breaks, no matter the sport. The business model seems to be that these big-dollar products are clogged up with hits of a whole pile of guys no one really cares about in order to offer a certain number of 'hits' per box. The stuff people really want is seeded so rarely that usually only one or two slots out of the 30 teams come away ahead of the game money-wise.

Luckily for me, this particular break came along with some other giveaways due to the fact that they were breaking on the main stage at the show. In this particular break the big giveaway was a Jadeveon Clowney autographed jersey, and the randomizer fell on the 49ers slot as the winner, so I came away with a pretty good prize. The jersey seems to be a generic knockoff rather than anything licensed by the NFL, but the autograph is PSA/DNA certified and has the little sticker and everything. Similar stuff seems to be selling on eBay in the $60-$70 range, so I will hopefully be able to get back about double what I paid to get into the break. I don't have any interest in Clowney or the Texans, so there is no real incentive for me to hold onto the jersey.

4 comments:

  1. I'm kinda upset I put my Manning /5 auto up on the bay, as I would have offered in return for that jersey. Clowney is a 2/14 baby and although not a card, it would have been a great addition to that collection.

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    1. That would have been a pretty exciting trade, although I probably would owe you a little on top of the jersey to match a Manning of that caliber.

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