Thoughts on arena club?

[Lawmaker]

I did a search and couldnt find a thread. I have had some good luck-plus they have a buy back.

[BoSoxFan1999]

Originally Posted by Lawmaker

I did a search and couldnt find a thread. I have had some good luck-plus they have a buy back.

I've bought several Slab packs. If you feel like gambling, it's better than some "mystery pack" you can find on Ebay as you at least know exactly what the card pool is you're pulling from. And unlike ripping wax, even if you get "dusted" at worst you'll probably get back 50% of whatever you spent (unless you paid for buyback) in card value...but often more like 75-80%. Not like when you buy a $500 box and barely get $50 in cards.

There are much worse ways to "gamble" money on cards than Arena club.

Some recent pulls I got from slab packs:

• $2,500 legendary slab: 1993 Fleer Ultra Scoring Kings Michael Jordan BGS 9 (despite picking up a card I always chased as a kid, hurts a bit as this card is probably only worth $1,500 tops. OOf)

• $1,000 elite slab: 2013 Panini Prizm Giannis BGS 10 (ended up trading on Arena for a couple of Kobe PSA 9's worth around $300-350 each, plus several other cards worth another $250 or so)

• several $250 slabs: got a 2020 Andy Pages BCP 1st /150 refractor auto PSA 10, 2020 Bobby Witt Jr Bowman Chrome megabox 1st pink /299 PSA 9, 1974 Nolan Ryan PSA 9, 2003 LeBron James Draft Picks PSA 9

[Big35Hurt]

It's nice they offer the slab packs by sport. Nothing worse than being a baseball collector and getting something from another sport. But I don't gamble when it comes to sports cards as I only collect one player. Better than going into breaks for sure, but it's still gambling and not for me.

[BoSoxFan1999]

After acquiring a dozen or so slabs, I requested retrieval of them. Took about a week from request to receiving them. But upon receipt, I saw that 2 of the slabs were damaged during shipment: an Ohtani 2018 Panini Spectra pink neon BGS 9 slab (chipped on the bottom edge) and a 1960 Mickey Mantle SGC 3.5 slab that had a huge chunk missing on the bottom edge. Since the Mantle didn't have plastic pieces in the plastic sleeve the slab was shipped, it must have been packed that way (or the person that packaged it damaged it before packing).

Either way, very disappointing and I contacted Arena club with photos about the damaged slabs. The other 14 slabs I received were fine though.

[theshowandme]

The only cool thing about Arena Club is seeing Jeter at the 2023 National.

He did about 2 minutes of walk up meet and greet pictures and left.