The legitimacy of sealed booster boxes going forward

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Ok, so I’ve tried to interpret the rules to the best of my abilities. If this belongs in the General subforum, so be it, move the topic, but seeing as the concept of price is going to feature heavily in this topic, I felt this was the proper place to put it.

Given the brooding these last few days with resealed WOTC boxes, certain “gurus”, the many possible attempts at manipulation and the general spike of anything sealed, what is going to happen? No company verifies (or are able) to verify sealed product. No-one is using Carbon-14 or Terahertz Spectroscopy on booster boxes any time soon. As of now, you don’t know what you buy. To the people of longstanding respect within the community and a strong pedigree to their boxes, this is going to be less of an issue.

But what about everyone else?

Take an example from my own collection (not trying to sell, just using an illustration):

I have a Fossil 1st edition box I bought around 2010/11. I bought several of them from the same very legitimate seller, I opened all of them save one and they all contained real packs with real cards. Case closed right? No, not by any stretch. Any potential buyers know full well I could be lying about all of it. Providing pictures of the other opened boxes is not enough, providing transaction data is not enough, nothing is enough. From the buyers point of view, the box could be a scam. The pedigree, on its own, is close to useless because I can’t prove that the box I’d be trying to sell is the same box I bought. Although I’ve been involved in this a long time, I’m a pretty private collector and I don’t have a huge phonebook I can display for people to ascertain my credibility. So naturally, in the future, the option of just opening the box and either selling the packs or ripping them and add to the grade-pile is becoming more tempting. I’ve already seen movement on this subject the last few days with more and more people thinking the same across multiple platforms.

Regardless of the possibility of manipulation and “that’s what they want you to do!”, the trajectory doesn’t really change much. Selling sealed boxes is going to become more lucrative to the few, and less so to the many. Boxes from high-profile sources with a strong pedigree is going to command a massive premium, and the amount of gradable cards is going to go up as more people break their boxes.

I feel that a lot of people don’t take this seriously yet, because we’re so attuned to the way things used to work just a few years back. A few hundred dollars per box in a market dominated by credible sellers, former distributors and harmless teenagers short on cash. Now, we’re in a shark tank of scammers, fleecers and flippers where buying boxes is more akin to investing in pink diamonds, just without the means of verification.

What are your thoughts? What could we/should we be doing? What do you think is going to happen? How can we protect our investments?

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I think people just don’t want to believe their boxes may be resealed and haven’t yet taken it seriously but for sealed collectors this is a HUGE blow. I don’t know how anyone that purchased a WotC box say in the last 5 years can sleep at night, just in the last 48 hours quite a few boxes have been opening and shown on video to be fake. People buy these boxes hoping to resell them in 10 years to help pay for their home or child’s higher education. How devastating is it going to be to learn they think they have that paid for and come time to cash in it turns out they have nothing.

That brings me to the point of ‘selling’ I agree with exactly what you said - people can make up any pedigree they want. We saw in the Dumb Money video how the ‘stored in the safe for 20 years’ story went. Essentially a story means nothing. EVEN if the seller couple provide their receipt from the retailer 20 years ago - nothing. Even as I’m typing this there is a Team Rocket 1st ed box on eBay with 4 hours 8 minutes left. The box is damaged cardboard indentations indicated it has already been flipped up for display and the wizards wrap is in perfect condition.

Current value 0
Current bid 14.2k

IMO general box value for everyone but the most trusted in the hobby (but even them unless they bought it from the retailer themselves - they had to buy the box from someone else…) will plummet with consumer confidence. Boxes opened and verified in person very well could still run at full value but then its not a factory sealed box anymore.

Overall devastation for the sealed market I’d imagine box owners may open their boxes to verify the contents before its too late to do anything about it or I expect them to attempt to sell and move into singles.

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You make some very good points. The fact is, you can’t trust anyone, at all.

Mainly because, even if you can trust that one person. Who did they trust when they bought it, and so on and so forth. Will this affect the market for sealed boxes. Who knows. But I do think that it will affect how transactions are done.

I’m sure that there will be a much more dialed in approach to verifying authenticity. Or even scenarios where a box is opened in the presence of buyer/seller with a refund being possible if the outcome is negative.

It has been mentioned before. But I also think that the prices for packs will rise, because that’s likely going to be the safest way to buy sealed.

Im curios to see if a large number of packs hit the market in the next month. I have noticed a huge uptick in people opening boxes they have, to see if they’ve been sitting on a resealed box for x amount of time.

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Another point.

There is a potential ripple effect. If this leads to more open boxes, in essence. Less sealed product. What does this do for supply.

Scenario.

Let’s say I bought several different boxes of 1st edition and base 5/6 years ago. Now I’m concerned, so I open them. They are legit. Now I’m staring at a bunch of packs and going. I know there is a zard in here, maybe it’s a 9-10 and I only paid x for this box.

1hr later I’m staring at a bunch of cards, and preparing a large submission.

Is this likely to happen more now? :grin:

Another point.

What does this do for people like Gary/Scott Who are well trusted/respected and likely have more of the life history of a specific box. Who can say. I know for a complete fact this box is legit. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Seller reputation will be HUGE moving forward.

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I didn’t know how to authenticate sealed product which is why I stayed away from it

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Instead I bought PSA graded cards!

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Lol same here.

I started to earlier this year.

I was like, nope. My luck I’ll miss one detail and be holding a fat stack of evolutions energy cards.

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It is very sad this happens, but in any market where there is money to be made, scammers will arise. We just have to be very careful and take all precautions to reduce/eliminate the risk of being a victim to fraud.

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Yes. I mean all of a sudden it’s gone from “I have a super valuable sealed booster box collection and I would NEVER open them” to “shit, I honestly might need to open these to verify they’re legit.”

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There will be always two sides, the guys who own boxes and the guys that don´t. Naturally people argue for their position, but every single reseal I´ve seen so far was far from being not noticeable, and I just saw them on my phone. People that buy 5 figure items SHOULDN´T BUY THEM if they didn´t learn about them beforehand. It´s like buying a Rolex from an instagram acc, if you don´t know anything about them you´ll have a 10$ italian beach variant instead of the real deal.

Let´s send the prayers for declining box prices, some collectors will be very happy.

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I’d be more concerned buying a box now than I would have when boxes were at $1,000-$2,000 ~

Not that such a practice wasn’t an occurrence pre-2020, but you’d have to undergo some difficulty to attempt to reseal a box, I’d imagine - convincingly at that, more so whether it’d have been worth your time for a box of a low value.

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People can literally forge artwork that is ancient, currency, and anything in between. Scammers will continue to innovate. They now have 300k reasons why they should add Pokémon to the list.

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How do box collectors sleep at night

I’m going to go take a nap and wait for all this panic to die down

Gary, your first Ed base box case isn’t real, fake cards. I don’t care if it’s still in the case

Crazy how instances of fake boxes can be brought to light and it’s automatically “boxes are fucked, only confirmed legit if it’s actually opened”. Social media hype is intense

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Just buy opened and empty boxes.
They can’t fool you if you fool yourself first

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I remember when fake 1st ed stamps were the hot thing and some thought shadowless would outpace 1st ed because of it.

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I was so paranoid about expensive boosters in general even just loose packs that I tested a Skyridge pack from a few I had

www.instagram.com/tv/CG76lEXFVpx/?igshid=fdyz1h9ikk12

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What is the solution to the problem? Can a service like PSA, CGC etc break the seals and check the contents of the box. Like, check the boosters for resealing and weight the packs to ensure that everything is legit. Then reseal it and place security tape/wrap etc on it?

Because at the end of the day… if you were going to invest in a $350k booster box would you sleep better-knowing everything has been authenticated by a ‘‘respected’’ company and resealed or rather have that lovely cheap wrapper on it and hoping your investment is what you think it is?

Because the higher the prices go undoubtedly we will see more and more fake boxes appear.

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I love the idea. I guess it could create a new set of concerns though.

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But in doing that it would create even more of a premium for WOTC-sealed boxes ~

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While not WOTC, I just recently bought a Flashfire box. They are quite expensive as well at $1500. I still haven’t received it but it’s a lot of money for me and one of my biggest purchases. With everything that’s going on, it does make it me sweat everyday if it’s the real deal or not. Even if it arrives I feel like I’ll never be able to confirm. I’m guessing it’s not as expensive as the wotc boxes for scammers to waste time on it yet

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