Saturday, April 26, 2014

Box Breakers Should Always Ship Hits in Toploaders

In the card community there is this rule that cards are never shipped without being put into a toploader.  It's sort of like the unwritten rule of shipping cards -- but yet this rule gets written about a lot because (amazingly enough) it gets broken a lot.

The first time this happened to me was when I bought a Doug Martin autograph card off of eBay.  The dimwit seller put the card in a padded envelope and put it in the mail.  That's it.  No toploader.  Not even a card sleeve.  When I received the envelope and opened it up, the card had a huge crease right down the middle.  I was appalled.  I couldn't believe somebody would be this stupid.  Did this person really not think that the card wouldn't get bent in transit?  Or maybe this person ran out of toploaders?  What sports card collector doesn't have a few random toploaders lying around?  

Well, it's happened to me again.  This time the person who sent me the cards not in a toploader was a box breaker.  This person should know better.  This breaker has been around for over a year.  In fact, I've broke with them once before.  Last time I broke with them I didn't get any hits and when I received the base cards in the mail they weren't in any sort of special protection.  He had just put them in a team bag inside of a padded envelope.  They were just base cards so I really wasn't that upset or concerned, but I did make a mental note to myself of this fact.  I have participated in box breaks where the box breaker will at least put the base cards between two toploaders inside of a team bag to provide extra protection.  So the lack of effort on the box breaker's part was noticed.

It's generally okay to ship low value base cards in just a team bag
(although it wouldn't hurt to sandwich them between toploaders),
but hits should always be shipped in a toploader.

This time I had gotten two hits in a box break.  In the live webcast he even stated (to all the people watching) that the hits would be sent in toploaders.  Well, he lied.

The two hits arrived in a padded envelope, but were otherwise sitting naked, in a team bag and that's it.  No card sleeves.  No toploader.

Lucky for me, and by some grace of God, the cards actually hadn't been damaged in transit but this is beside the point.  The cards should have been in toploaders.  Why they weren't is beyond me.  I find it inexcusable how a box breaker could ship the hits naked, and not in any sort of protection like a toploader.  Because of this incident I will no longer be using this breaker.  I will take my money elsewhere.  I will not risk having any of my hits pulled by this breaker damaged in transit because he didn't put the card in a toploader.

I haven't named this breaker because I'm not really in the business of slandering other people (even if I am telling the truth), nor do I want to deal with the drama or the possible backlash of outing this breaker.  The fact that he is losing my business is enough gratification for me.  It's unacceptable that an established box breaker should ship hits without toploaders.  Absolutely unacceptable. 

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