The scarcity of sports cards used to be a parent’s job – their spring cleaning, especially when you were in college, took care of that. But in the modern era of sports cards, rarity is built into the product. Certain cards in a given game are made with deliberately short print runs, some are stamped with serial numbers (up to 5, 25 or 199, etc.) and the chances of finding each type of card in a pack are published by the manufacturer. But the idea was always that anyone, anywhere could open a pack of cards and have a chance at the most valuable cards in that product.
A recent wave of “breakers” – live streamers who open boxes of cards and sell spots to consumers (for example, a breaker opening a Topps Chrome case would sell all the star-laden Yankees cards that come out of the box to a single person for $150; least desirable Nationals spot may cost as little as $40) – getting high-value cards has sparked online fervor. There have been numerous accusations within the fan community that Topps, which is owned by Fanatics, was feeding predetermined (or “loaded”) boxes to breakers that broadcast on their internal network, Fanatics Live. Some critics went further and accused Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin of providing celebrities and athletes with boxes loaded with hits as clever marketing ploys.
This has led a growing number of collectors to question whether the insertion of high-value cards was truly random. Do card manufacturers identify the boxes containing the most popular cards and reserve them for celebrities and breakers? Or does every box and pack have exactly the same chance of containing a collection jackpot?
At the Topps Industry Conference in Atlanta on Monday, attended by approximately 500 industry leaders and store owners, Fanatics announced that the placement of these cards had been independently certified as random. The review by accounting firm KPMG LLP is the first of its kind in the trading card industry, according to Fanatics – and it won’t be the last. Fanatics says it is committed to conducting this review every year.
The report is available online and concludes that “high-value cards are randomly inserted into the Company’s finished packaged products and distributed by the Company to its customers in a random manner.”
Speaking to conference attendees, Mike Mahan, CEO of Fanatics Collectibles, said: “It is important to confirm for collectors that the process of packaging and distributing our cards is truly haphazard and that our employees are incapable to direct high-value cards to specific customers. »
According to Mahan, Fanatics Collectibles, “detailed key areas of the packaging and distribution process, which include controls over governance, physical security, job setup and review, packaging line operation and quality control audits.
Greg Abovsky, Chief Financial Officer of Fanatics Collectibles, added: “This is an integral part of our desire to serve the industry and the consumer. We listen to their concerns, address them, and generally elevate this hobby.
Abovsky provided details of KPMG’s audit process to Athleticism, which he says began with an announcement last summer. He said the accounting firm “reviewed all our organizational charts, risk and control matrices, previous employment documentation, their professionals visited the factory, interviewed the employees and gave us a clean bill of health .
“This means that high-value cards are inserted into products randomly. No one gets preferential treatment because it is not possible for anyone to know where the most valuable cards are. It’s really random.
This brings us back to Occam’s Razor. If it seems like wreckers are getting a lot of traction, it’s because they open way more products than anyone else. While the average consumer may only open a few packages or a box or two of a single product, breakers can go through hundreds, if not thousands, of packages and dozens of boxes. Remember Rupert Salt?
This KPMG audit verified that each box and pack has the exact stated chance of containing the most sought-after cards. So you can rest easy with your purchases knowing that loaded boxes are not being distributed to wreckers and there is as much chance as ever that you can. fire a Superfractor from a blaster at your local card store or retailer.
(Photo: Ric Tapia/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images and Topps/Fanatics)