Quote:
Originally Posted by jlittle1981
This may be a naive question, so bear with me. But I am more interested in breaking cases for fun and keeping what I want out of them, and then unloading stuff I don't want or need. I am a real big Heritage collector, so I want to buy a 2013 case for around what BO has it at presell ~725. If I keep a master set and just sold off any extra base sets, sp's and hits, how much would I expect to recoup? Obviously not trying to profit since I want to keep some stuff, but I think it would be cool to start doing cases if I can recoup say 50-60% each time.
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This is the exact thing I started to do this year - breaking a single case of products that I wanted to make a master set of and then selling off the rest (incl. nearly all hits unless really of PC interest). It really depends on your hits - in 2012 so far I have had an OK BB Ser.1 case, a meh Heritage case, a crap Bowman case, a decent Ser.2 BB case, an awesome Topps FB case, and a pretty-much-crap Update case. I would say that has averaged out to just about the 50-60% return you mention. For the last few months my income from sales has outpaced my expenditures on cards/supplies/shipping, but it is a fair bit of work (sometimes 2-3 hrs. per night on eBay, 6-7 nights per week to keep up with shipping), and I would agree with Brent's assessment that breaking BB after July is mostly a financial loser. Right now all I have left on the calendar for this year is a high-end hockey group break, but that will likely pay for itself by the time the final payments are due. One thing I have learned is never, never try to compensate from a crummy hobby/Jumbo case by going all-out on retail - take your lumps and move on. But threads like this are great and help make sense of the bewildering changes in the hobby over the past decade for those of us who grew up in the mass-produced era of now all but worthless cards.