Saved From The Hype Monster

Before I get into the case break, I want to share another box opening that I did a few weeks ago.  

This one was part of the hoard that I am liquidating which is composed of mostly basketball.  If you know me, you know that is the one sport I don't really delve into.  I have a small Michael Jordan collection, but that is all baseball.  I have a couple other sets in one binder, but that's it.

Anyway, this collection has a lot of wax boxes, but the majority of them have already been opened.  There are, however, a few that weren't.  One was this 1999-2000 Upper Deck flagship box.  It's the size of a hobby box of the time, but it's more like a blaster in that it's priced at $20 and only has eight packs of ten cards.

I looked up the odds on the Database and put them in my eBay description:

Possible Inserts:

Basketball Heroes: Julius Erving (1:23 packs)
Future Charge (1:8 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
Game Jersey swatch
     (Kidd, Shaq, Duncan, Barkley, Garnett, Stockton, Van Horn, Olajuwon, Pierce, and Jordan 1:2500 packs)
     (Kobe, Pippen, Hill, Payton, Carter, Miller, Iverson, Robinson, Walker, Malone 1:288 packs)
Game Jersey Patches (1:7500 packs), Super (/25)
History Class (1:11 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
Jamboree (1:11 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
MJ: A Higher Power (1:23 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)
MJ's Final Floor relics (1:2500 packs)
Now Showing (1:4 packs)
     Quantum Silver (/100), Gold (/25)

Pulling a jersey would be epic!  Especially if it was Jordan, Shaq, or Bryant!  The big names garner three and four digit crooked number prices on eBay!  

So full hobby boxes go for $750 or so on there.  Since this was just about a third of a hobby box, I put mine at $275 initially, I think.

It sat.  There were some followers.  But it sat.  I got a low ball offer the first few days.  But then nothing.  I figured it might get snatched up quick.  Nope.

So I let it on there for about two months at a lower price.  After that, I figured it isn't going anywhere.  So I took it down.  Thought there might be someone who messages me wanting to get it after it was taken down, but no.

After all that, I couldn't take the suspense.  

I opened it.

I'm ultimately glad I didn't sell it to someone for $245!

I snapped photos as I went, so they're not quite in logical order.  Here's the box topper ad.

"7 Packs plus 1 extra pack".  No UD - It's eight freakin' packs, OK?  Stop it.

So this is a typical pack, from what I recall.  Eight silver foil base cards (as opposed to the bronze foil in baseball and football) and two inserts.

Some decent names in the base cards.  And there were inserts that contained Jordan, et al, or were all Jordan.

Other insert sets were rookie-centric, of course.

The Jordan on the left is the most valuable card found in this box.  It goes for about $15.  No jersey, sorry.  No blockbuster pulls here.

I should have expected the absence of a big hit.  But what I really didn't expect was the absolutely HORRIBLE collation of the base cards within this box.  As you can see here, there were TRIPLES of a few cards, and doubles of a significant number as well.  I've lost track of the exact numbers, but out of 80 cards, 12 were inserts, and only about 50 couple were unique base cards.  Over a third of them were dupes within the same box!

I wouldn't have been surprised if the buyer immediately asked for a refund after blowing almost $250 for this.  It's really only worth about a tenth of that.  

I probably should have taken pictures of all the inserts at the end, but they'll likely end up trade bait on the Database after a while anyway.

Let me know if you've ever pulled something awesome from a small box like this, or ended up with jack squat from one.