Saturday Stories: Breaking 2 - Real Breaks

So my first break was a dud. I got zip. Zilch. Nada. And honestly, it just never occurred to me that I would get zero cards out of the deal. I was also left a little...bored. the breaker was fine and efficient,  but he just opened packs on video with no crowd interaction,  and that purported "card shop experience" was missing. There was no interaction. Not much excitement. 

For my second break, I figured I would check out what the book of face had to offer. Enter Real Breaks. They boast 12,000+ members, and they have been Beckett's "Breaker of the Year" twice.

I also like that they ship all of the cards you get, so you're not left empty-handed.

The break was several boxes of 2020 Certified football and 2020 Mosaic football, and my break was a $79 random team break. Now $79 seems like kind of a lot of ching to lay out for very little guarantee, but it's a lot less than buying all of the boxes on your own, and when you factor in shipping, product, and general overhead, it seems like a fair deal. 

Through unlucky chance, I wound up with the Jets. One cool thing that I found right away is that you can sell or trade your team with other participants. I offered a guy the Jets for Carolina, and he took it. Literally anything would be a better team to me than the Jets. Too bad they just blew their perfect season...

In the team trading and throughout the break it became obvious that a lot of the participants knew one another at least online, and had done this before. The breaker (Titus) as well seemed to know a lot of the participants, and kept up some entertaining banter and patter as he cut boxes and ripped foil. He didn't show the base cards, so I didn't know quite what I would get, but he did a great job talking about the hits and answering questions and comments that popped up in the Facebook feed. 

So once again in the break I got zero hits. The guy who took the Jets got a four patch card or something- a pretty big hit (which I still wouldn't want), but there are two silver linings:

 1. All of the cards they open ship, and I did get some McCaffrey base cards in both sets for my PC, and 2. There was "skunk protection" on my break. This means that everyone who doesn't have a "hit" (a low #'d card/auto/relic) gets put into an additional drawing for a chance to win something. In this case it was for an autographed copy of Jerry Rice's newest book America's Game. 

And I won it! This is great for me because I'm a reading nerd. I read a book or so a week, so this will definitely get read and appreciated. The book also came with Beckett authentication, which is cool if I ever decided to sell it. 

About 10 days after the break, a nice little package arrived at my door with the book and a cello pack stuffed with a dozen cards. Was the merch worth $79? Probably, but definitely not without the book. I think the book has potential for resale somewheredown the line, should I choose to sell it. I'll definitely read it, and I wouldn't have even know about it otherwise, so I'm pretty happy with the take.

Overall, the experience was excellent. Emil was great, and I enjoyed the sense of community and camaraderie far more than the cold efficiency of my last experience. 

I will definitely do another break with these guys. I really like the experience and it did mostly give me a bit of that card shop feel.