Saturday, May 31, 2008

Old school breaks
Seem to be one of the latest fads in the blogosphere - I want to join in the bandwagon as well, but only I would know that I don't need anymore cards for my collection when there seems to be too much excess. You don't get enough of the cards you need and you are stuck with cards you can't really 'use.' Maybe it is better to let others do the ripping, no matter how tempting it is to try and do some on your own.

Redemptions - I'd like to bust old wax of 'recent vintage,' but if there is a chance of pulling one in a product release a year or so ago, then it has to be an obvious deal breaker.

Condition and tampering - I'm wary of any unopened product because even for old-school breaks of negligible value, it happens where cards can get damaged or you get bupkis because of some shady things happening with the boxes.

Card quality - I don't care if they are worth basically the same these days, but I'd rather go through a old school [err junk box] of something I remembered as pseudo premium from the mid 1990s [1992 Fleer Ultra, 1993 Bowman, 1994 Fleer Flair, etc], rather than the products from mid through late 1980s [1986 Topps, 1987 Topps, 1988 Donruss, 1989 Score, 1989 Topps, etc].

Quality of card images - is it a brand where I can have a lot of card images to go through? If you aren't going to pull anything of value, why not bust a product that has at least quality images [i.e. old Upper Deck product, maybe late 1990s Fleer Ultra].

Rookies - for an old-school break, rookie cards of the past that aren't worth anything these days [like 99.9 percent of anything you will bust] may still be 'cool pulls.'

Value - for an old-school break, anything over $30 is probably pushing it for a product whose demand has waned since its release.

Cards - do I get a lot of cards to go through with my break? You don't want to be swimming in cards, but you want to be able to go through a number of them if possible.

Hits - for recent old school product, how many hits do I get per box [one, two, three or more] and what is the breakdown [one autograph, one game-used card, one dual, et al]? Do the typical hits out of the box make it worth getting?

Reality check - what am I really going to get and will I be satisfied? Is the product a 'has-been' product or one that still matters?

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