Ever get a bad box of cards?

[hawkeyesc72]

Anyone ever get a wax box of packs and it turns out to be terrible?

Happened to me twice recently. I won an 89 Topps box and a 81 Donruss box off eBay.

Both had 36 unopened packs according to description.

When I opened the packs, the only card of any value I got in the Topps box was a Randy Johnson rookie.

The 81 Donruss box was much worse.

I literally got the same 6-7 packs for maybe 32 of the 36 packs. Multiple packs had cards repeated (started out with some cards, then repeated those EXACT SAME CARDS, then repeated them again in the same pack!) . Another had 6 Phil Niekro cards! 17 cards in the pack, I ended up with 6 Niekros, 4 of another player, 4 of another player, 3 of another player. 17 cards gave me 4 total players.

Has this happened to anyone else? I really feel like the box was rigged. The odds of 36 packs being placed in a box and of those 36 packs 32 giving the exact same cards is astronomical without some sort of human interference.

[Metsfan1991]

Originally Posted by hawkeyesc72

Anyone ever get a wax box of packs and it turns out to be terrible?

Happened to me twice recently. I won an 89 Topps box and a 81 Donruss box off eBay.

Both had 36 unopened packs according to description.

When I opened the packs, the only card of any value I got in the Topps box was a Randy Johnson rookie.

The 81 Donruss box was much worse.

I literally got the same 6-7 packs for maybe 32 of the 36 packs. Multiple packs had cards repeated (started out with some cards, then repeated those EXACT SAME CARDS, then repeated them again in the same pack!) . Another had 6 Phil Niekro cards! 17 cards in the pack, I ended up with 6 Niekros, 4 of another player, 4 of another player, 3 of another player. 17 cards gave me 4 total players.

Has this happened to anyone else? I really feel like the box was rigged. The odds of 36 packs being placed in a box and of those 36 packs 32 giving the exact same cards is astronomical without some sort of human interference.

No, every box I buy doubles my initial investment.

[Soxfanguy]

2019 Topps Chrome- if a monkey literally took a dump in the box it would be better

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1325432

[LCM1223]

Welcome back

[MSU Bulldogs]

'81 Donruss had terrible collation. There is really nothing of value in either of the sets.

[pewe]

I bought 6 boxes of 2018 stadium club last year that essentially had the same base cards, and repeated the autographs like 70% of the time... it was only the other hit cards that differed.

So frustrating as I was just trying to make a couple complete sets, and I was missing like 1/3 of the cards.

[somethingclever]

Not surprising on the 81 Donruss, they are notorious for really bad collation.


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[darin2200]

As far as the 1981 Donruss, your experience is common for that product, the collation was horrible, their are videos on you tube of the same thing happening, I saw one where they got lucky and got like five Tim Raines rookies thanks to the bad collation. As far as the 1989 Topps my guess is you just got unlucky, their aren't much for key rookies worth too much, Randy Johnson is certainly one of the better ones.

[ThoseBackPages]

all the time

[4softcorners]

I once bought an unauthenticated 1980 Topps baseball wax box off of someone on the CU BST forum many years ago when prices were a lot lower than they are now. I was more naive then and figured since it was a forum transaction on their website and the seller was pretty active there, that I’d be ok. When I sent it in to BBCE, 8 packs came back bad and the box was “frankensteined”. I to this day have the bad packs in my possession so I can use them as a reference point on what to look for if I ever make a “raw” unopened purchase again which I hardly ever do.

I ripped the rest of the packs and got nothing of value. I assume the seller knew the collation patterns of this issue and weeded out the Ryan, Henderson and other good packs if there were any. Or they just built the box with packs not containing the good cards. Either way, it was a learning experience and to be more careful where to spend money.

[jszczech]

I'm not even sure there is such a thing as a good box of 81 Donruss.

[HarryLime]

I would imagine that just about every remotely valuable box from the '80s that isn't sitting in a sealed case right now is Frankensteined. You're fooling yourself if you think otherwise. That doesn't mean they're bad boxes though. I've had plenty of luck with non-FASC boxes from BBCE. The only unopened product I would ever buy off of eBay would be a rack pack that I have great scans of.

I really, really can't emphasize this enough: the amount of bad product on eBay FAR outweighs the amount of good product. Stay FAR away from cellos, even if they're graded. Know what you're buying and who you're buying it from. Learn how to check for signs of tampering. There are many bad actors out there actively producing illegitimate unopened product. Please educate yourselves.

Arthur

[patchgenie]

anything topps

[dodgerfanjohn]

1981 Donruss is a mess and I’m not sure what you were hoping to pull anyway.

1989 Topps is cheap and plentiful. It might be fun to open but there’s nothing of value in it.

One thing I note...and this is true of all 80’s boxes up until about 1986 when the rookie craze actually started to be a real thing...if you were opening in real time...that is you were opening packs of 1980 Topps in June 1980....you were looking for stars, not rookies. You wanted to hit Yaz, Steve Garvey, Steve Carlton, Pete Rose...even Nolan Ryan wasn’t much of a thing yet, and no one knew who the hell Rickey Henderson was.

While some Rookies took off right away, most were later in developing. I remember specifically getting the 1983 traded set because of Ron Kittle....not knowing that it was Daryl Strawberry that would actually be the big deal from that set.

Point being, there would have been no whooping and hollering at the time pulling the big rookies. Things just didn’t shake out that way(and even when they did it was like maybe a $2-5 card). Nearly always it was a matter of going through you commons a few years later and discovering you had that card.

[pac_rat_76]

Is this a rhetorical question?

[jayjones82]

I've gotten bad cases (the most notable of which was 2019 Topps S1)

[Bruins1993]

Not necessarily the first guy that opened all your packs... before you!

[drstrader5]

This post reminded me of an LCS experience I had back in 2000. A guy came into the shop and picked up a handful of 89 Topps packs from a junk wax bin and he said to me "One of these days I'm going to pull the Griffey RC."

[ehp6737]

Oy vea

[hairysasquatch]

Most are bad. Then and now.

[whoshotjr]

Originally Posted by Soxfanguy

2019 Topps Chrome- if a monkey literally took a dump in the box it would be better

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1325432

Yeah Chrome collation was terrible. I think I hit the same run of 4 cards three times in one blaster.

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[speedyjg13]

People get bad cases of cards

[Astros19]

Originally Posted by pewe

I bought 6 boxes of 2018 stadium club last year that essentially had the same base cards, and repeated the autographs like 70% of the time... it was only the other hit cards that differed.

So frustrating as I was just trying to make a couple complete sets, and I was missing like 1/3 of the cards.

Hit me up if you're still wanting to finish your set. I have a bunch of dupes.
I think I still need 5 or 6 cards to finish my set.

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[fulltritty]

Originally Posted by Soxfanguy

2019 Topps Chrome- if a monkey literally took a dump in the box it would be better

https://www.blowoutforums.com/showthread.php?t=1325432

Watched some of these breaks at the National last year and they were brutal.

[jdandns]

Originally Posted by hawkeyesc72

Anyone ever get a wax box of packs and it turns out to be terrible?

The 81 Donruss box was much worse.

I literally got the same 6-7 packs for maybe 32 of the 36 packs. Multiple packs had cards repeated (started out with some cards, then repeated those EXACT SAME CARDS, then repeated them again in the same pack!) . Another had 6 Phil Niekro cards! 17 cards in the pack, I ended up with 6 Niekros, 4 of another player, 4 of another player, 3 of another player. 17 cards gave me 4 total players.

Has this happened to anyone else? I really feel like the box was rigged. The odds of 36 packs being placed in a box and of those 36 packs 32 giving the exact same cards is astronomical without some sort of human interference.

As a kid, I collected a non-sports card set from Donruss issued in 1982 called "The Dark Crystal" based on a fantasy movie. I remember buying pack after pack until the whole box at the convenience store was gone and not getting anywhere near a set even though it was only a 78 card set and I bought 36 eight card packs for a total of nearly 300 cards. I don't think there was some grand design to get people to buy more cards, but rather that Donruss' quality control, in this case, collation/decollation, was terrible. I could see the same thing happening with a baseball set from the same time, although your example does seem to be an extreme case.

Anyway, about 15 years ago, I went on Ebay and bought a full set of 78 Dark Crystal cards for $10 which is a little less than I spent on those duplicate-filled packs nearly 40 years ago. I shoulda spent that money on candy!