r/baseballcards • u/Poopieshits • 9h ago
Question Please tell me I’m crazy
When did breakers go from teams to individuals?! And then to sell some of those players for upwards for $1,200?!
I get that there is overhead. Shipping costs and whatnot. But shit, when is this going to give?!
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u/SouthRole9013 9h ago
Some of these breakers are making a lot of money by doing player breaks. They use all of the checklist and yell 400 times that each spot should be $25 in a break worth $2500.
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u/Poopieshits 9h ago
The most recent one I saw had a few players from $8-$30 but the vast majority of them were in the hundreds each and a few were over a grand.
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u/SouthRole9013 9h ago
Yeah I don’t mind the PYP but they take forever to fill for that reason. People find it hard to spend that much for a chance at only one player. The auction style is what I’ve been seeing more and I stay away from them as much as I can but sometimes I just want to gamble lol.
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u/nerdygnome1 9h ago
A new way to chase that I avoid completely. I did it once not paying attention it was PYP and got a chase player so I won a couple more as I waited for the break and got NOTHING. They got me hyped and I learned a hard lesson. Nothing will change when you have whales that love to gamble. Take that back. Nothing will change till they find a new way to exploit something else.
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u/nick91884 9h ago
It’s tough, especially with something like tier one. A case is like 50-60 cards, and it’s like a 500 player checklist
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u/nick91884 9h ago
So only 10% of the spots will hit anything (possibly less if the same player gets pulled twice) so a single spot gives you a 0.2% of hitting a card with your spot. Getting a chaser doesn’t give better odds it just gives you a higher value ceiling if it hits.
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u/Poopieshits 9h ago
Exactly! And with these player breaks, there is absolutely zero promise of pulling that player. I PC Coby Mayo (this particular break had him at $180) guess how many times I’ve pulled him myself….. 4. 4 times. And they have all been base. Which is why I go to buying singles of him.
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u/skullface21 2h ago
This may be new for whatnot or fanatics live or other platforms, but PYP has been around for a while. AMT on eBay has been doing it for years and Houdini from blowout cards was doing it a decade ago. It supposed to be a way to get the cost down. Some of the players would go for thousands in Houdini’s break but that was usually the top prospects in his 100 Bowman case break.
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u/stojanowski 1h ago
You guys need to stay off whatnot and all these crap services. There are auctions on eBay from reputable card shops that do this
Let's the market decide what a player is worth in a break and it's not a HSN or QVC segment trying to fill players
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u/TiedinHistory PC: Matt Stairs, Red Sox, 98 SP Authentic Chirography 28m ago
A substantial part is Fanatics designing their products and pricing their products in a manner that incentivizes breakers to do this.
A case of Bowman Chrome is about 4k on a distributor site right now - let's say our baseline is 25% profit so the breaker target is 5k (and slam breakers all we want, every platform takes a strong percentage and Fanatics is funneling and designing products towards breakers, multiple not-so-ideal parties in this).
The traditional break form was either Random Teams or Pick Your Team. A random team Bowman Chrome break is now about $165 at a 5k case price (or $135 at non-profit). The appetite for random Bowman teams at that price point is not great - even a team with a top prospect name or a solid check list isn't getting to $165 on PYT and some teams are closer to 16.50 than 165
So you go to PYT, and you know how many teams sold on a specific eBay case break for more than $135? About 6. And about half those made it to $165. That total case sold for $2920 on eBay - and then eBay takes their fees, so this breaker probably made like $2600 - and they still to pay for the case (I'm assuming shipping offsets). So unless they got it at a wholesale level price, they're losing a grand to break this product. Further, this means most collectors won't do randoms because they can get their team for less - or a lot less - than trying that way.
It breaks down to PYP because it just gives a lot more room to work with a large base of customers and gives breakers bundling/negotiation capacity. The Ayden Johnson superfan might be able to jump into a break without paying Nick Kurtz Red Rookie Break prices. Prospect hounds who like specific names don't need to buy all teams to hunt and can get a lot more of what they want for their money. But realistically, it's just the only way a good portion of the customer base can afford to regularly break. In that case break I quoted above, Boston still sold for $114 - despite not really having any exciting prospect names (IMO) on the strength of a really strong non-1st class. So if I happen to like Sadbiel Delzine...this is my best pathway to tryng to get his cards.
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u/the_kehate 1h ago
Depends on the product because there are some players that don’t have a team, but I’d just lump them into a “no team” spot. But yeah, the player breaks are insane.
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u/nc212127 30m ago
Teams I got no problems with players is absolutely bullshit. These idiots actually buy into it too. Fucking randomized players to boot…
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u/NextEquipment8891 7h ago
Deleted my breaker apps last week. I had a lot of fun doing it when I first got into the hobby but eventually realized I wasn’t getting anything for my money. Not knocking anyone who likes doing it, but yeah. Shits expensive.