General Forum

I've been collecting cards since 1989 and have never participated in a box break. Can anyone recommend a company/group or tell me who to stay away from. You can PM me if you prefer not to make a public recommendation or who to stay away from.

I would say avoid things on major sites like Ebay (which at one time the breaks were against ebay rules on gambling), craigslist or even on Facebook (for me facebook is only social media not business stuff, trading cards is a hobby that is also part business when it comes to group breaks).

I have only joined group breaks that were on trading card forums and I tend to stick with ones from members of the community that I have known about or have observed how they run their breaks. Some break hosts will be as fair as possible and sometimes will send bonus cards for people whose teams didn't provide hits in the break.

Stay away from hosts who seem to be only in the business of group breaks, or have a ton of breaks going on at the same time. Some of them might be legit but many of them are soo caught up in the business end they don't care about anybody in the break. Also if they are doing multiple breaks every day how do you know the cards you receive will be from the specific break you signed up for?

Also watch how the breaker films their breaks if you only see the guys face and rarely any cards, they might be trying pull something or hide some of the big hits and try to keep them for themselves to sell elsewhere.

Any group that you can recommend?

TCC tradingcardcentral.com and TCZ tradingcardzone.com are good communities. Not so overwhelming as SCF sportscardforum.com there might be some others around that are also good but I haven't checked out EVERYTHING.

OH and I have had some good experiences from breaks from bloggers. Some bloggers will only do Baseball or Football depending on what they are into. Here is a link to a blog that is just a blogroll of sports card blogs. Some are one sport only others a multi-sport. It is a good start http://bdj610scblogroll.blogspot.com/

You will have to explore some of the blogs to find ones that do regular breaks. If you like baseball one of the guys who does 3 or 4 breaks a year is: Chris aka: Nachos Grande  fanofreds.blogspot.com  

Well I did 4 box breaks. One was a randon team break through Mojo and ended up with the Tennessee Titans - total bust. Second was with Sports Box Breaks and picked Miami Dolphins and did okay. Third from eBay with Jaspy's Hobbyland selecting the New Orleans Saints and also did go. Last one with Rip Kings still waiting for the product to be done.

What I missed was the fun of opening the packs on my own to see what I had. Think I will skip any box breaks in the future as I enjoy opening the box myself.