May 2018 Loot Locker

I don't have my usual picture of the outside of a Loot Locker to put up at the top of this post, but I got my May Loot Locker in the mail a day or two ago. As usual, I went with the Triple Play option that includes a little more than the slightly cheaper All-Star box. There are also football and basketball lockers.

Here is what I got in my Loot Locker for the month. A couple pieces of candy, some Ultra Pro top loaders and sleeves, 1 pack of 2018 Panini Diamond Kings, 2 packs of 2018 Donruss, and 2 packs of 2018 Bowman. These are all Hobby packs. I always like to break down the value of the Locker based on the going price for Hobby boxes to see if I'm getting a decent price on the packs. I just take the box prices from a major online card retailer, divide those by the number of packs in a box, and multiply by the number of packs in my Locker.

2018 Diamond Kings: $75.95 / 12 = $6.33 x 1 = $6.33

2018 Donruss: $104.95 / 24 = $4.37 x 2 = $8.75

2018 Bowman: $179.95 / 24 = $7.50 x 2 = $15.00

Total: $6.33 + $8.75 + $15.00 = $30.08

Well, with the cost of the packs, hobby supplies, candy, shipping, and labor, I hope the Loot Locker folks got a good deal on their product, because this Loot Locker yielded more in packs than the $30 base price. Let's see if I pulled anything good.

I didn't find much exciting in the Diamond Kings pack. That Gabby Hartnett card has a cool picture. Other than that, I am struggling to find a lot to say about this one. Robinson Cano's injury and suspension kind of put a damper on my fantasy baseball team.

One of the Donruss packs was a Noah Syndergaard hot pack, with a Stat Line parallel and a Nickname variation appearing back to back. There were a couple of other interesting cards in the mix, including a Diamond Collection relic card of Deven Marrero, who has gone from playing not-that-great for the Red Sox Boston to playing not-that-great for the Diamondbacks Arizona.

I got a couple of neat inserts in the Bowman packs. The Ronald Acuna is a #Trending insert and the Bowman Sterling of Carlos Correa is a one-per-box insert. I like the way the Correa card looks.

Overall, this Loot Locker didn't rock my socks off. Of course, with card prices being what they are right now, it's all a big gamble. I am still not sure if I'll be grabbing another Loot Locker in June. They put a decent amount of product in there for the price, but maybe the price of cards is too high right now.

March Loot Locker

I ordered another Loot Locker in March. Just like in February, I ordered the Triple Play Locker, with a little extra stuff compared to the basic All-Star Locker. In addition to baseball lockers, they offer basketball, football, and hockey lockers. The draw with Loot Locker over a repack box is that all of the packs in Loot Lockers are from Hobby boxes. For people who don't have a local card shop, or people whose local card shop isn't all it could be, this is a decent alternative to a monthly card store trip to pick up a handful of packs and supplies.

The cards ship in a 400-count box, so even the packaging is useful to a card collector.

You get a couple pieces of candy, as well as some top loaders and penny sleeves.

This month's packs included 2 each of 2017 Panini Optic, 2018 Panini Donruss, and 2018 Topps Gypsy Queen. According to my calculations, my February Locker included $28.64 in packs. My method is just to take the box prices from a major card retailer's site, divide them by the number of packs in a box, and multiply by the number of packs in the Locker. Let's see what I counted up for this month's packs:

2017 Panini Optic: $89.95 / 20 = $4.50 x 2 = $9.00

2018 Panini Donruss: $87.95 / 24 = $3.66 x 2 = $7.32

2018 Topps Gypsy Queen: $119.95 / 24 = $5.00 x 2 = $10.00

$9.00 + $7.32 + $10.00 = $26.32

That really feels like it's a pack shy of what I'd expect from this box. The value on last month's box felt about right. This one has $2.32 less in calculated value, and it really felt like there was less there than last month's box did.

Another pack of Donruss would have been very welcome here, but an additional $3.66 might push this too high. Their model has been to include three products in each Locker, but I calculated about $1.50 for a Hobby pack of 2018 Topps Series 1 last month. That could close the gap without going over. Maybe last month just gave me an inflated sense of what I could expect to get in a Loot Locker.

I obviously don't know what Loot Locker's costs are on these things, so I can't really say what a true reasonable value band is for the included packs. They have to include the cost of the cards, supplies, shipping, candy, packing peanuts, ink and paper for shipping labels, payment processing fees, website hosting, labor, the cost of prize packs for the randomly-inserted extra packs, taxes, and maybe a little profit.

Not much came out of Gypsy Queen. I guess the J.P. Crawford Fortune Teller insert was the biggest hit. I also got a Lance McCullers Jr. base card for my only Astro of the entire break.

I got a couple of nickname variations, a Diamond King of Bryce Harper, and a shiny Stat Line parallel of Buster Posey numbered # 102 / 228.

The Optic packs didn't yield a whole lot of interest for me. The highlights were probably a Prizm Diamond Kings card of Dexter Fowler and a Prizm card of Ryne Sandberg.

That does it for this Loot Locker. It was kind of a disappointing month. It felt a little light on packs, and the packs I got didn't yield much of interest to me. The lack of exciting pulls probably accentuated the feeling of disappointment. I'll probably keep ordering Loot Lockers, but I may try dropping down to the All-Star Locker at some point. I like what Loot Locker does, and I think they provide a good service to collectors without card shops to visit. I feel like it's good to support them where I can.