As I have stepped back into the world of card collecting I see a LOT of new trends that I had never heard of before. One thing this seems to be crazy popular are "Breaks." I did about 10 second of homework and decided I just needed to try one for myself, so I shelled out some money for my first break with www.thebreakexchange.com. Why TBE? Well, they popped up high on Google and their mobile website was easy to use. I looked at a couple others and they were way to busy to even try to understand.
My first break? A 2020 Panini Absolute Football hobby box. for $57 I got 4 teams: Arizona Cardinals, San Francisco 49ers, New England Patriots and Da Bears, so some potential for cool hit in there. You can see on the right side of the video...I am Casey St.
Now I really had no idea what to expect. First off, I thought the production quality was good. The whole video is short and simple, and the breaker had a little bit of commentary, which was good. There were no big Hits in the box, but the person who had the Packers got two nice pieces. My biggest surprise was that I got ZERO cards. I would have had more fun buying $57 worth of blaster boxes and opening them in hopes of finding something decent. At least then I would have gotten something. This is in no way a knock on TBE. As best I can tell they are super popular and have a great reputation. There were simply two things I didn't take into consideration.
1. An entire box only contains 15 cards. I am from the Junk Wax era, and we got like 15 cards for $.50, so a little bit of a disconnect there.
2. As mentioned before, I really didn't have any thoughts that I might strike out completely. It just happens. Maybe much like a baseball player stepping up to the plate, you don't actually think you're going to strike out. It just can't enter your mind, or you're already sunk.
Breaks seem to be sold as "The card shop experience." I.e. opening a pack of cards with all of your buddies and being stoked to see what you got. Also, it does allow you to get into a box of cards that you maybe couldn't afford otherwise. I think the Paninis are about $350 per hobby box on ebay right now, so I kind of see the point here, but the card shop experience? Not even a little.
Would I do this again? Not with these odds. I will likely do a multi-box break or case break - something where I will definitely have something to show at the end, but I am not likely to do something with such low odds again.
I do think that my next break will be through Facebook...I may not be able to watch the entire thing in person, but I like the idea of being able to interact with my fellow breakers a little more than just watching 6 minutes of video by myself, in the dark.
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