2005 Playoff Contenders Football Hobby Packs

My desire to hit an Aaron Rodgers autographed rookie card hit its peak a few months ago.  I bought thirteen 2005 Playoff Contenders Football hobby packs from Steel City Collectibles.  They were $13.95 each, for a total of $181.35.  

There are supposedly about five autographs per box.  So by buying thirteen packs, I was expecting to hit about two to three autographs.  I emailed Steel City Collectibles prior to my order asking why the hobby packs were loose packs and not in a sealed hobby box.  They said that the hobby box was damaged, but the hobby packs were fine.  Who knows if that's the truth or not, but Steel City is a reputable seller so I figured I could trust them.  

Well, here's the haul from those thirteen packs:

You will note that there are ZERO autographs.  

Yup, thirteen packs and $181.35 later, I have nothing to show for this break except a few worthless inserts.  I found it hard to believe that I didn't even hit one autograph.  Were these packs searched?  They didn't seem tampered with or resealed.  

I looked on YouTube for some other box breaks, and it does seem like boxes having less than the advertised autograph content is a common problem.  I saw a few breaks where there was one or zero autographs in an entire box.  So I guess that is what happened with the hobby box that these loose packs came from.

I knew that buying these hobby packs was going to be a risk.  I wasn't expecting a return on my money.  But I wasn't expecting it to be this much of a disaster.  And boy, was this a disaster.  It's painful to think what other cards I could have purchased with that $181.35 instead.  Ugh.