Leaf Best of Football Unopened Is Riskier Than Risky

When it comes to buying packs (and/or boxes) of sports cards, every sports card collector knows they are taking a risk.  That risk is the possibility you'll get nothing of extraordinary value in that pack -- like all base cards.  Of course, on the other hand, there is always the possibility you might get something totally awesome like a $200 hit.  More often than not, you'll end up getting less money back than what you paid.  That's just the name of the game.  We all know of that risk, and accept it when we buy products.

But one such product takes this risk way above and beyond what I think is reasonable.  That product is 2014 Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition. (Currently priced at $155 on Blowout Cards as of April 25, 2014.)

In this product you get one cut autograph which is slabbed by BGS, and one sealed football box.  At first thought this product might not seem so bad or so different from buying a hobby box of football cards yourself as you might do every few weeks or every month, but I think it is.

When you choose to buy yourself a hobby box of football cards, you tend to buy what you want and what you like.  Why buy a hobby box of a product whose design you hate?  By choosing a hobby box of a product you like you are ensuring that you're getting a product you like.  This choice is a benefit to you as a consumer.

If you're like me, when you buy a hobby box of football cards, you may also tend to avoid products which have expired redemptions.  Not all companies honor expired redemptions.  Upper Deck and Topps will not honor expired redemptions, but Panini will.  If you're concerned that you might get a hit which is expired and will not be honored by the company that produced that product, then you should avoid that product.  The choice to choose which product to buy in order to avoid expired redemptions is another benefit to you as a consumer.

When you buy a box of 2014 Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition, you give up both of those benefits.  You don't get to choose which football box you're going to get, thereby running the risk of getting a product you hate.  You also run the risk of getting a football product which has expired redemptions which will not be honored.

In my opinion, losing those two benefits is enough to make me not buy 2014 Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition.

Now, I know some people might be thinking that there are some benefits to buying this product.  I suppose there are.  Like any other packaged sports card product, you have the chance at hitting some great cards and getting back more money that you paid for the box.  For example, maybe your cut autograph will be Dan Marino.  If it is, that is awesome!  And maybe the football box you get is Topps Five Star Football, Upper Deck Exquisite or Panini National Treasures -- all very expensive hobby boxes which cost more than the $155 you spent to buy the Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition Box.  More than likely though, you're not going to get a National Treasures box.

One of the box breakers I use frequently (Breakerz Anonymous) did a very nice analysis on the "recover rate" -- the amount of money you'd expect to recoup when you buy a box of 2014 Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition.  He watched all the available case breaks for this product on YouTube, crunched some numbers, and estimated that the "recovery rate" is 62.1%.

In other words, if you spend $989.95 buying a case of 2014 Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition, you will on average lose $375.34 for opening it just to see what football boxes and cut autographs are inside.  That figure does not take into account what may be inside the actual football boxes themselves.  Once you open up those football boxes you are likely going to suffer another loss of money as the value of the cards in that box, on average, will not cost more than the value of the sealed box.

Imagine the level of frustration you would have if you paid $155 for a box of 2014 Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition, you open it up, your cut autograph only worth about $20, and your unopened football box instead was 2013 Topps Magic (Blowout price of $51).  Talk about a brutal punch to the gut.  If you open up that box of 2013 Topps Magic, you're probably only going to get $20 worth of cards in return on average.  So at the end of the day, after spending $155 for a box of 2014 Leaf Best of Football Unopened Edition you could be left with a $20 cut autograph and $20 worth of cards.  That's a "recovery rate" of 25.8%.

One guy on the Blowout Cards forums said he paid close to $200 for a box of this product, got a Joe Schmidt cut autograph ($5 to $10), and his sealed football box was 2010 Topps Chrome Football ($65 on Blowout).  He opened up the Chrome box and didn't even get an autograph!  Things might not have been so bad had he pulled a Tim Tebow, Sam Bradford, or Dez Bryant base rookie card but he didn't even get any of those guys either!  In total, he probably had around $15 worth of cards in the end.  That's a "recovery rate" of 7.5%. 

That last anecdote was a brutal one, and probably one of the worst ones you'd see.  Could anything be worse than that?  Yeah.  How about getting a product full of expired redemptions.  I couldn't find the tweet or post, but I remember seeing one guy complaining about getting an old Upper Deck product, ended up getting a redemption for a high valued card, but that redemption was expired!  (Upper Deck does not honor expired redemptions.)  So this guy basically had a "recovery rate" of 0% from the football box.  I can't remember who exactly he got for his cut autograph but it wasn't anyone super valuable.

Frankly, I don't know why people buy this product.  I'm guessing people just don't think enough about all the product's risks.  If they did, I think they would realize that the risk is just way too much to endure.  The possibility of getting a product you hate makes it risky.  The possibility of getting a low-value sealed football box makes it riskier.  And then the possibility getting a product with expired redemptions makes it insanely risky. 

I don't blame Leaf for making this product, but as a consumer I'd stay far away from this product and would never buy a box of it for myself. 

The Pitfalls to Participating in High-End Case Breaks By the Team

Participating in case breaks is always a risk.  Participating in high-end case breaks can sometimes be extremely risky.  Today, that risk caught up to me big time. 

I had bought into a case break of 2013 Topps Five Star Football on the Blowout Cards forums.  The format was random teams.  I ended up with the Cleveland Browns. 

The checklist for the product wasn't out at the time so nobody really knew for sure whether they had a good team or not.  Of course, some teams are pretty much guaranteed to be good no matter what (e.g. Saints, Packers, Broncos).  Other teams you know will be good based on the amount of big name rookies on that team which attended the 2013 Rookie Photo Shoot (Rookie Premiere).  And then there are those teams which are lacking any big name rookies, and who typically aren't your historically great team -- like the Cleveland Browns. 

It was my hopes that maybe there would be some awesome veteran signatures for the Browns in 2013 Five Star but my hopes were crushed when the checklist came out.  Not a single Browns player in base checklist, nor any Browns players having single hits.  The only Browns player in the checklist is Brandon Weeden who appears on a octo-patch book with seven other players.  Even if that card was pulled in the case break, I'd still only have a 1/8 chance of getting that card. 

So, when all is said and done, I bought into a case break, got a shit team, and have about a 0.00001% chance of getting anything from the break -- literally. 

It was only around $40 to buy into the break so it wasn't a huge waste of money.  I knew the risk, but damn.  I sure am kicking myself for buying into this break despite knowing the risks. 

The Inefficiency and Added Expense of Box Breaks

What got me back into the card collecting hobby after a long hiatus was this thing called "box breaks."  Box breaks are when multiple people come together to split a box of cards.  The cost is split among the participants, as are the cards.  Thus, the cost of buying into a break is a fraction of what a whole box would cost for one person, but you also stand a lesser chance of getting cards from that box too.

At first, box breaks sounded like a fantastic way for me to participate in collecting cards without breaking the bank.  I could buy into a few box breaks at a fraction of the price of a whole hobby box, and still have a chance at getting some cool cards.  It seemed like a win-win scenario.

Well, after participating in box breaks for over a year, I'm convinced it's not a win-win scenario. 

Part of the problem with box breaks is that they're just so damn addicting.  They're fun.  It's exciting.  You never know what team or what cards you'll get.  There's an element of chance, and randomness.  If you like gambling, then you'll probably like box breaks.  Once you start participating in box breaks it's extremely hard to stop.

Another problem with box breaks is that because they're so addicting I think it's a lot easier to spend more money on box breaks than had you just bought yourself a single hobby box and stopped there.  When you think about it, it's much easier to say to yourself, "I'm going to buy a couple of spots in a box break tonight and spend $20," than to say to yourself "I'm going to buy a whole hobby box for myself and spend $150."  But if you lack a lot of self-control, like I do, then you end up spending $20 here, $20 there, and soon enough you're spending $20 or more every night buying into box breaks.  Pretty soon you've spent way more money on box breaks than you would have had you just bought yourself one hobby box!

It took me a long time to learn this lesson, but before you buy into a box break you should ask yourself: how much am I willing to spend on this product?

If you're only willing to spend $40 on this product, then box breaks are the way to go. 
If you're willing to spend $200 on this product, then I think it's best that you just buy yourself as many hobby boxes as you can with that money.  You certainly shouldn't spend that $200 on box breaks for this product.  Why?

Within the cost to buy into each box break is the supplies and shipping cost for the breaker to ship the cards to you.  That cost is usually built into every single spot in a break.  This added cost effectively reduces your ability to purchase as many cards had you just bought a sealed hobby box and had it shipped to you.  Don't believe me?  Let's do the math.

Let's just say you're interested in buying a NFL product which is currently selling for $150 per hobby box.

If you go the box break route, the box breaker will likely be charging about $7 per spot for a random NFL team.  (Calculated by:  ($150 / 32) + $2.31 for shipping)  If you're willing to spend $200 on this product, then you could theoretically buy about 28.6 break spots.  (Calculated by: $200 / $7 per spot = 28.6 spots)  Let's round that up to 29 break spots.  In other words, you could technically buy 29 break spots such that you will own 29 out of the 32 NFL teams in the break. 

On the other hand, if you went the hobby box route, you could buy a hobby box for $150, pay about $10 to have it shipped to you, for a total of $160.  That's a whole hobby box, the box breaking equivalent of all 32 NFL teams (or spots) for only $160.  That's a price of only $5 per NFL team.  (Calculated by: $160 / 32 teams = $5 per team)  Paying $5 per NFL team sounds a lot better than paying $7 per NFL team.

Heck, with that leftover $40 out of the $200, you could then buy yourself five more $7 spots ($35) in a box break.  In total, you would have the equivalent of 37 box break spots for $195 in comparison to 29 box break spots had you just spent your full $200 on box breaks. 

Now does that make sense?

Time and time again, I see people spend hundreds of dollars buying into box breaks and spending more money on box breaks than they do the actual price of a hobby box.  This is inefficient. 

Basically, if you're willing to spend an amount of money on a product which is more than the cost of a hobby box, then you should just go ahead and buy yourself a hobby box of the product and avoid box breaks.  Alternatively, if the amount of money you're willing to spend on a product is less than the cost of a hobby box, then you are okay to buy into a box break as since that is the only way you would be able to afford a chance at getting those cards without buying an actual hobby box. 

Caveat: The above analysis is only applicable to random team box breaks or draft-your-team box breaks.  Pick-your-team box breaks are a different animal and if you're a team collector then buying into pick-your-team box breaks is infinitely times more efficient than buying multiple hobby boxes to try and get the cards for your team.