General Forum

I randomly just stopped and thought "I wonder what people's most disapointing box break is."

I now really want to hear stories and different people's experiences of guaranteed cards not in the box, bad hits, bad condition cards, or just downright bad breaks coming from boxes or packs.

I personally have not had many disappointments, but am still waiting for that big auto. The most disappointing box for me would be a box of 2018 Classics football, where the box came with one relic and one auto. I got a 5 dollar relic, and my auto was of Trey Quinn, aka "2018's Mr. Irrelevant". But a close second would be a box of 2018 score football where I got only three of my four guaranteed autos, and even the three I got weren't great.

I want to hear stories. What is your most disappointing box or pack break?

2004-05 Upper Deck Exquisite. I spent $500, something I had to save up for, and I got a Reggie Miller autograph (who I can't stand), a single color patch of Steve Nash (who I can't stand), I don't remember one of the cards, and base cards of Baron Davis and Pau Gasol...my two favorite cards of the box, but not $100 cards by any way, shape or form. It actually played a role in why I walked away from the NBA in 2006. It was before then, but when they started dropping real sets for crap like that, it annoyed the heck out of me and still does.

2015 Donruss Signature Series..football. i opened a couple boxes and not only did i get no one of importance, i rcvd 3 auto's of the same person- Michael Campanaro of Baltimore. 

A few years ago I bought a box of 1989-90 O-Pee-Chee hockey cards. There must have been some water damage (or extreme humidity) at some point over the years, because the sticks of gum were half-disintegrated and had leached into some of the cards underneath, sticking them together and leaving only the bottom few cards in each pack unaffected.

The seller was really kind about it, however, and we worked out some sort of combination refund/reorder.

My single worst pack was one from a box of 1995 SP, NASCAR. Three of the same card, in a row, out of the same pack. 

Also, one thing that really ticks me off is when you buy a box, come up short on the set, but have a stack of duplicates much larger than the missing cards. It happens a lot with Panini, but they have the exclusive license to two of my three sports, so it may be that I just deal with them more.

I have had way too many to recall...pretty much the reason I only buy singles these days...guaranteed to get what I want.

In 2009 I bought a case of hobby boxes of Topps Baseball and I didn't get a complete set. I was missing around 4 to 5 cards from each team.  I actually wrote to Topps, never received a response.  I gave up collecting until last year.  

My worst was a 1988 Donruss wax box.  Didn't pay too much for it, but you know it was searched when you're finding Lou Gehrig 1985 puzzle pieces in the packs...

Billy, that's some tough luck...

I think what annoyed me most about the 2018 Score box is that there are so many great rookie autos in there (Baker Mayfield, Saquon Barkley, Josh Allen, Sam Darnold, Lamar Jackson to name a few) but the two rookie autos I got, have combined for less than 50 snaps. At least I got a Jimmy Garoppolo auto, so the box wasn't a complete bust.

I can't really cite a specific box as the worst, many have been disappointing for various reasons:

   Early boxes of Upper Deck were notorious for producing multiple copies of a few cards & nowhere near a complete set.  Buying older boxes now can run into problems with UV coating sticking entire packs of cards together (e.g. 1994-95 Score Hockey).  Also, boxes that had obviously been stacked under a lot of others over time yield packs that get stuck down the middle, due to the extra thickness of the pack's outer fold/seam.  Finally, boxes bought at Walmart that were opened, resealed, returned & re-shelved.  The one that made me give up on retail card shopping was a box of Topps Finest basketball, which at least had the common cards still in the packs, but all the inserts & the special pack were switched out with random junk cards.

   In the end, it is still an "eye of the beholder" assessment of good vs. bad boxes.  If I pull a hard-to-find card that I need for a PC, then I'm happy.  If I get a "1/1" of some random dude, I *should* be happy with the box, but it's still disappointing.  If I make the call & shell out the money for a box - whether expensive or cheap - there's some inherent value in the buying/gambling/ripping/sorting process from which I feel satisfied about most purchases.