Group Break Analysis. Trying to keep these boards informative. LMK what you think.

[davebo]

It seems as if there are a lot of group case breaks going on. I know for the vast majority of us, you buy a slot and get involved purely for the fun of the break. That's great. That is what this hobby is all about.

In trying to keep these boards informative, I thought I'd give this a shot. I'm going to take it a step a further to see if I could determine the value of the break based on the price per slot. For the purpose of this I am going to try and use my own case break of 2005-06 Finest Basketball that I did this week. This was not a group case break on the boards.

At $600 for the case, I determined there to be 152 slots:

36 Game Used/Autos per case = 36 Slots
72 Refractors per case = 72 Slots
12 Box Loaders per case = 12 Slots
36 Finest Fact Inserts per case = 3 Per box (including refractors) = 12 Slots (1 slot per box)
24 Non-Auto Rookies (2 Rookies per master box including Refractor RCs) = 12 slots. I needed to include the Rookie Refractors here instead of the Refractor slots.
6 Base Sets = 6 Slots
2 1/1's = 2 Slots

That would be $4 per slot plus $2 for fees, supplies and shipping. So $6 for each slot in total.

My rating scale would be:

Slot Minus = Less than slot price
Slot = Equal to slot price
Slot Plus = Greater than 1x but less 3x Slot Price
Super Slot = 3x+ Slot Price

Obviously, the hope is that the majority of slots fall in the Slot, Slot Plus or Super Slot range.

This is very subjective based on what I think these cards would sell for. This would be better with a newer product because it would be easier to get prices of similar cards of off Ebay.

I'll break it down by slot groups:

Game Used/Autos = 36 Slots
Slot Minus = 20 (Many of the jersey cards would not have gotten the slot price back as well as a few of the base Rookie Autos)
Slot = 8 (Jerseys of Wade, Iverson, McCants RC Xfractor Jersey /99 and a Villanueva Dress for Success Tie Card /99 as well as autos of Bogut (Red Ref), Lee (Red Xfrac), Francisco Garcia (Red Ref) and Villanueva (Green Xfrac /79))
Slot Plus = 5 (Chris Paul RC Jersey, Vince Carter 2 Color Jersey Patch /29 and Autos of Warrick (Xfrac), Garcia (Green Ref /99) and Garcia (Gold Xfrac /39))
Super Slot = 3 (Deron Williams Black Auto /19, Vince Carter 3 Color Jersey Patch /9 and Vince Carter Auto /25)

In that group, 16 out of 36 slots (44%) were Slot price or better. This was highlighted by 3 Super Slots with the Deron Williams Black Auto being HUGE!

72 Refractors = 72 Slots
Slot Minus = 66(Beautiful cards and some decent players including Kobe, Shaq, Amare, Melo, Garnett, Wade, Dirk and even a Tony Parker Green Xfrac /69)
Slot = 0 (I think the refractors either fall short of the slot price or over the slot price based on the numbering)
Slot Plus = 5 (Gold Refractors of Shaq and Andre Miller #'d /39 and Marbury, Nowitzki and Deng Gold Xfractors #'d /29)
Super Slot = 1 (Marbury Black Xfrac /9)

In that group, only 6 out of 72 slots (8%) were Slot price or better. The refractors are real nice cards but there is not a lot of value in them to get back the price of a slot.

12 Box Loaders = 12 Slots
Slot Minus = 12 (Yes. None of the 12 would have gotten the price of a slot back)
Slot = 0
Slot Pus = 0
Super Slot = 0

The only way any of these would have been Slot or better would have been if they were Autographs. So, 0 out of 12 (0%) were Slot or better for these

Finest Fact Inserts (3 per box) = 12 Slots
Slot Minus = 8 (Even with 3 cards per slot they can't make the slot price)
Slot = 4 (The only slots with a chance to equal the slot price were ones that had a Chris Paul RC as one of the three cards. I pulled 4 Chris Paul)
Slot Plus = 0
Super Slot = 0

Again there are some nice players in these, but no value. Even if I had pulled refractor and xfractor versions the only player with any value is Chris Paul.

24 Non-Auto Rookies (2 Rookies/Celebrity per master box including Refractor RCs) = 12 slots
Slot Minus = 6 (Not many true Rookies. Got more celebrity cards than true rookie cards.)
Slot = 0
Slot Plus = 4 (Chris Paul RC, Jose Calderon RC Refractor, Andrew bynum RC Refractor and a Shannon Elizabeth Green Refractor 1/89)
Super Slot = 2 (Chris Paul RC Xfractor /199 and a Jay-Z Black Xfractor 4/9)

Would have liked to have seen more rookies than celebrities. This is the year that Topps had the celebs listed as Rookie Cards. I actually pulled 4 Carmen Electra Refractors. Didn't get a Bynum base but did like the Bynum Refractor and the Paul Xfractor. Overall, 6 out of 12 (50%) slots were Slot or better.

6 Base Sets = 6 Slots
Slot Minus = 0
Slot = 6
Slot Plus = 0
Super Slot = 0

I don't think anyone can argue that a Base set that includes Kobe, Lebron, Wade, etc. isn't worth the price of a $6 slot. 6 out of 6 (100%) were Slot or better.

2 1/1's = 2 Slots
Slot Minus = 0
Slot = 0
Slot Plus = 2 (Udonis Haslem Framed Xfractor and Lorenzen Wright Black Printing Plate)
Super Slot = 0

Obviously, since they are 1/1s they are going to be Slot or better. Could have been Super Slots if they were better players. 2 out of 2 (100%) were Slot or better.

Final tallies over the entire case are:
Slot Minus = 112
Slot = 18
Slot Plus = 16
Super Slot = 6

So, 40 out of 152 were Slot or better. That's 26% of the slots. So if everyone bought 4 slots (38 participants), in theory, each person would have gotten at least 1 slot where they would get their money back. 22 out of those 40 would have gotten their money back plus some extra. That's not too bad.

Overall I think this was a good break. Even for the price of a slot nobody would lose their shirt.

The purpose of this is to see how a break breaks down. It could be useful in deciding whether the product should be broken again or how to re-arrange the slots to give all participants in the break a better chance of making their money back. In this case, for instance, possibly packaging some of the refractor slots together instead of as single slots.

Please let me know what you think and I will see if I can apply it to a group break. Sorry for the long read. Apparently I have way too much time on my hands.

[yazevans]

Great analysis! Maybe some of the group break hosts could do this as a post-mortem for group breaks. It could be good info for doing additional group breaks of certain products.

However, if I did this with the 04 Leaf Certified football case I did last week it would have been ugly.

[davebo]

Yaz -
Thanks. I do think it would be easier to do for the newer case breaks and I do think it can be useful. I mean, every case can be different. But it would at least be a gauge on how successful a group case break was.

[ifish73]

I don't follow basketball or basketball products, but one of the cards was of Jay-Z?

[ifish73]

I hope that wasn't a stupid question.

[davebo]

In 2005-06 basketball products, Topps included celebrities on cards. They were Carmen Electra, Jay-Z, Christie Brinkley, Shannon Elizabeth and Jenny McCarthy. The even included Autograph versions. I did not get an autograph.

[wilsonsingles]

Excellent analysis.

this was probably the antithesis of a great group break. way too many losers.
but was actually not a bad case break for a single breaker with some of the great autos.
three or four great cards would make back half your case.
sell off the non rookie refractors, game used, inserts and you might get another 30%-35% back.
keeping all the rookies, rookie refractors, and rookie autos ends ups being a pretty good deal for around $100.00

i broke a few of these cases and 06/07 cases and felt pretty much the same way.

[kevdog73]

Thanks for the info. Interesting stuff, the only thing is that there are so many factors involved with each brand and product. The hotter brands will always have a higher resale value than the less popular brands. Most of us are taking a shot at a big hit without buying a case and I think that is the bottom line. Never the less that was very interesting and thank you for doing it. By the way I still need those 08 Upper deck singles you have.

Kevin

[davebo]

Thanks. I agree that there would be a lot of losers here, but I think re-shaping the break could help. For example, if you took out the single slots for refractors and made each slot for all of the refractors in a box you would lose 60 slots but the price per slot would only jump to about $9 a slot. You may have more of those slots (8-9 refractors per box) getting to at least the Slot price.

So do you think that with high end products there are actually more winners? Let's say at $60 a slot for National Treasures do you think there are that many $60 cards coming out of it? I should look at the break that was done a couple of weeks ago and see.

[davebo]

Kevdog -
I do agree that there are a lot of factors. One of the biggest just being the luck of the case you get. You can get a great case or a dud case which could make all the difference when looking at it like this.

And I do understand that the group case break is more of a gambling pool. Each person is taking a shot at getting the case hit without spending the money to buy a case. Plus, it is fun to watch and interact with others on the board. Lastly, not everyone is in it to re-sell. There could be people that would be very happy with a few of these refractors because they like the player or team and don't care if they can make their money back.

[kevdog73]

Like I said great insight and something to think about. But where are my UD singles LOL