With the popularity of the Walking Dead I'm seeing a lot of auctions for single packs. Has anyone won one of these/any series? Did you find anything good inside? I've been tempted but with prices so high have managed to stay away. I'm very leary of cherry picked boxes.

.........and your right to be, don't touch them, be afraid etc.

Unless you know and trust the seller stay well away from any single or multiple pack auctions.I would say the same with sealed boxes these days as well,it's just too easy to cherry pick a case.

I remember in the1990's when I was active collecting trading cards, shops sell resealed packs and boxes. I was quite good in getting inserts by feeling packs. I started noticing that the packs were being sold with different sealing looks. They used heat sealers to reseal the packs. My hunch is that most of the packs and boxes on ebay have already gone the same way aside from already being cherry picked.

Especially with Walking Dead, you have to be careful of Retail Pack too. If it's a good scan, the packs do say retail, but the seller usually forgets to mention that. Odds of a premium hit in Retail packs are 1:1000 packs.

Stick with sealed boxes unless you know the seller or feel like gambling.

Ed

I like to break packs and made my own basic sets and regular/chase inserts sets. So in some cases I buy just one sealed box and the rest a lot of packs.

If you are searching for "great hits" in a pack lot. Avoid it because it just a miracle.

quote:

Originally posted by Triple-Frog:
I would say the same with sealed boxes these days as well,it's just too easy to cherry pick a case.

Well, that's disheartening. Especially for someone like me who will NEVER buy a case. Not that I can't afford it, I'd just rather spend my money in other ways.

But anyway, the question is - how in the world do you cherry-pick a case? Packs, I can see, but a case of sealed boxes? So, what, the buyer starts opening boxes until he/she hits the stated number of case "hits", then figures that the remaining boxes are duds?

^Some inserts are specifically inserted in certain serial number pattern in the boxes/cases. I don't know these days though.

quote:

Originally posted by dcole:

But anyway, the question is - how in the world do you cherry-pick a case? Packs, I can see, but a case of sealed boxes? So, what, the buyer starts opening boxes until he/she hits the stated number of case "hits", then figures that the remaining boxes are duds?

The problem is the seller does not have to figure or guess as the manufacturer has allready stated that certain cards are one per case so once you have found it thats your lot.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:

quote:

Originally posted by dcole:

But anyway, the question is - how in the world do you cherry-pick a case? Packs, I can see, but a case of sealed boxes? So, what, the buyer starts opening boxes until he/she hits the stated number of case "hits", then figures that the remaining boxes are duds?

The problem is the seller does not have to figure or guess as the manufacturer has allready stated that certain cards are one per case so once you have found it thats your lot.

Exactly. Just look at Vampire Diaries season 2, while there are a lot of good hits in it the 3 auto/wardrobes are by far the best, and those are 1 per case. Over the long haul if someone is opening a case they will hit it on the 6th or 7th box on average (sometimes on the first box, but equally as often on the 12th) so it would be easy to set aside the remaining 5 or 6 boxes.

Obviously most regular sellers sell of all boxes from each case, I've had my share of good pulls from ordering loose boxes from sellers I trust, and you can see that in box breakdown threads too.

quote:

Originally posted by Incarnadine:

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
[The problem is the seller does not have to figure or guess as the manufacturer has allready stated that certain cards are one per case so once you have found it thats your lot.

Exactly. Just look at Vampire Diaries season 2, while there are a lot of good hits in it the 3 auto/wardrobes are by far the best, and those are 1 per case. Over the long haul if someone is opening a case they will hit it on the 6th or 7th box on average (sometimes on the first box, but equally as often on the 12th) so it would be easy to set aside the remaining 5 or 6 boxes.

Obviously most regular sellers sell of all boxes from each case, I've had my share of good pulls from ordering loose boxes from sellers I trust, and you can see that in box breakdown threads too.

That's it exactly. A reputable dealer will not try to outsmart his/her customers because in the long run, its good business to have buyers pull the best cards. They will keep buying from you. If they never get the top hits, it won't take too long before they go elsewhere, so cherry picking of cases is pretty short sighted.

But as already stated, when the manufacturers guarantee that a certain number of limited inserts will only be one or two per case, once they are pulled it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the other boxes have lesser premiums. All card collectors want good correlation in products so that you don't have a loaded case one time and a lousy case the next time. However this "one per case" business that is very popular now because some autographs and relics are so ultra limited really can be abused.

I remember back in 1996, the by now mostly forgotten comic book set PROPHET, by SkyBox, was released. It was so obvious as to which packs contained the 2 per box motion cards, as they were so much thicker than the other packs. Unfortunately, many comic stores I went to had the packs cherry picked, and the owners kept the boxes on the counter, where unsuspecting customers could have been mislead into thinking the "hits" were still there.