Pack Searching Experiment - it Should Not be this Easy
July 17th, 2007One of the more disturbing trends in the last several years in the sports card industry is pack searching. Pack searching is the “art” of figuring out which packs in a box contain autographs or relic (game used jerseys, bats, etc), presumably because those packs will be thicker or weigh more or “feel” different. I recently read two distinctly different articles on the topic that inspired me to do my own experiment. Joey from Squeezeplaycards talks about the dark side of pack tampering:
On one visit to the card aisle at Target every pack had a notch cut in the side exposing the edges of the cards. Another time I was in Wal Mart and noticed two men searching through the packs. I stood afar and watched as they asked each other about the packs and moved the cards around in them. Finally I walked up to them and asked if they had found all of the good cards. The younger man said no, he was just trying to decide which cards to buy. I asked him if he thought it was fair for people to tamper with and search the packs. He ducked his eyes and put the cards back and walked out of the store. As he walked away I wondered if he would just come back another day and continue to try to beat the system. For me, I picked up a sealed box and checked out and waited till I got home to see if I got any good cards.
The next time you are in a retail store looking to buy some packs think twice about it. The packs that you buy may have been searched or tampered with in some way. Buy a sealed box instead; your odds of getting undamaged cards are much better that way.
While Jason Barrow wrote more of a tell-all piece about how pack searching is done:
If you look for information on pack searching on the Internet you won’t find much because it’s considered a taboo and an off-topic in the sports card community…Remember, there is nothing illegal about pack searching. It is similar to testing which piece of fruit is ripe at a supermarket by squeezing each one, the pack searcher is touching each pack to see which one is ripe for the buying.
Both pieces really made me think “there’s no way it could be that easy”. I’ve opened my fair share of cards but never really considered an attempt at pack searching, so I figured I’d buy a box and give it a shot. I purchased a box of 2007 Playoff Prestige Football online and last night I sat down to see if I could predict which packs had the good cards. As you can read in Jason’s article, there are several different methods to pack searching - anything from bending the pack to actually weighing it - but I decided to try my own method.
I picked up a set of vernier calipers for about $15 on Amazon and decided to attempt to precisely measure the thickness of each pack. Here’s how the experiment was to unfold:
- Open the sealed box and number each pack 1-24 with a Sharpie
- Measure the thickness of the pack, from the center, in millimeters.
- Measure in random order, three times per pack to eliminate any natural variation or operator bias
- Take the average thickness of the three measurements and use that as the thickness to “predict” which packs would have autos or relic cards
- Take photos of everything
Here’s the box - I apologize (a little) to Donruss for picking on them. I chose to open this box for no other reason than because it had some potentially cool cards.:
Here are the calipers:
Here are the numbered packs:
Here’s an example of my measurement technique (I squeezed the packs to the point where I could rotate the calipers 90 degrees and hold the pack without it slipping):
And here’s the resulting data:
| Pack | 1 | 2 | 3 | Avg |
| 1 | 7.24 | 7.26 | 7.20 | 7.23 |
| 2 | 5.16 | 5.27 | 5.18 | 5.20 |
| 3 | 5.36 | 5.69 | 5.54 | 5.53 |
| 4 | 7.30 | 7.43 | 7.26 | 7.33 |
| 5 | 5.27 | 5.35 | 5.24 | 5.29 |
| 6 | 5.38 | 5.27 | 5.24 | 5.30 |
| 7 | 7.37 | 7.41 | 7.45 | 7.41 |
| 8 | 5.52 | 5.42 | 5.32 | 5.42 |
| 9 | 5.15 | 5.16 | 5.16 | 5.16 |
| 10 | 7.83 | 7.37 | 7.28 | 7.49 |
| 11 | 5.42 | 5.40 | 5.34 | 5.39 |
| 12 | 5.20 | 5.49 | 5.39 | 5.36 |
| 13 | 7.27 | 7.34 | 7.48 | 7.36 |
| 14 | 5.29 | 5.28 | 5.45 | 5.34 |
| 15 | 5.40 | 5.44 | 5.40 | 5.41 |
| 16 | 7.25 | 7.41 | 7.48 | 7.38 |
| 17 | 5.26 | 5.22 | 5.16 | 5.21 |
| 18 | 5.64 | 5.31 | 5.39 | 5.45 |
| 19 | 7.36 | 7.64 | 7.37 | 7.46 |
| 20 | 5.30 | 5.47 | 5.26 | 5.34 |
| 21 | 5.22 | 5.31 | 5.23 | 5.25 |
| 22 | 7.37 | 7.45 | 7.44 | 7.42 |
| 23 | 5.37 | 5.31 | 5.40 | 5.36 |
| 24 | 5.18 | 5.33 | 5.30 | 5.27 |
It doesn’t take a statistician to see that there are two distinctly different types of thicknesses: those around 7 mm and those around 5 mm (the actual averages are 7.39 mm and 5.33 mm). It’s also important to note that the average standard deviation among my 3 measurements was only .09 mm/pack - clearly not enough to influence the results.
The first pack I opened (7.23 mm) contained a Larry Johnson game worn jersey card - sweet! At this point I was beginning to question whether or not all of the ~7 mm packs would have relic cards. Of course I was wrong and many of the packs contained cardboard fillers like the one below.
This is what really perplexes me - why are the fillers in some packs and not others? Wouldn’t every logical person still go for the 7 mm packs? You might not hit 100% of the time, but you damn well know you’re hitting 0% of the time if you open a 5 mm pack! Speaking as someone with an industrial engineering degree who spent some time working as a quality control engineer - how the hell does every pack not weigh the exact same amount and have the exact same thickness? Seriously guys, this isn’t rocket science - figure it out. Make a hard casing around each pack to fix the size, make every card the same size regardless, or at least put the damn cardboard in every pack!
In the end, here are the relic/autos/parallels found from the 16 packs that measured around 5 mm:
- Ronald Curry Parallel
- NFL Draft Tony Hunt
- Willie Parker Stars of the NFL
- Rudy Johnson Prestigeous Pros
- Tom Brady Parallel
- David Carr Parallel
Here are the relic/autos/parallels found from the 8 packs that measured around 7 mm:
- Larry Johnson Game-Worn Jersey
- Roy Williams Prestigeous Pros
- Tony Hunt Parallel
- Devin Hester Super Bowl Heros
- Rudy Johnson Prestigeous Pros
- Gridiron Heritage Cadillac Williams
- Brett Favre Game-Worn Jersey
- Kenny Irons Prestigious Picks
So let’s sum up: 8 of the 14 good pulls we’re in the 7 mm packs, and there were only half as many 7 mm packs (8 compared to 16). So on any given open, you had a 100% chance of getting a relic/auto/parallel card when opening a 7 mm pack, and only a 37.5% chance with a 5 mm pack. Not to mention that the two game-worn jersey cards both came from 7 mm packs as well. Oh, and for the record there were 6 pieces of Cardboard, 5 of which came from 7 mm packs. Freaking unbelievable.
Again, why the hell would anyone ever open a 5mm pack? Personally I think this is a bigger issue for hobby shops than it is for big chain stores like Walmart and Target. We know that stuff is picked over - it has been for years by employees. Couple that with a few “smart” collectors who pack search and you should stay away at all costs. But if you’re a hobby shop owner, why wouldn’t you open a few boxes and pick out the good ones (7 mm in this example) and put only 5 mm on display for customers?
“They’ll go out of business” you say. Ok - fine - maybe they keep one or two 7 mm in the box. You still have an enormous problem. First and foremost, the kid who can only afford a pack a week never has a chance at that Brett Favre game-worn jersey card I got because shop owner has already separated that pack. If the hobby wants to reach out to kids, it needs to at least give them a fair chance of getting a decent card! Many of them can’t afford to buy sealed boxes like you or I.
Secondly, shop owners inadvertently promote pack searching when they sell “hot packs” on eBay - packs like these 7 mm ones that have a higher chance of resulting in a good pull. If they can’t stay in business with honest tactics that promote the health and well being of the hobby, than they shouldn’t be in business anymore. The proof is in the pudding - a quick search of eBay will find hundreds of packs like this one for sale. Don’t tell me card shop owners aren’t doing it because they clearly are.
I realize that this was only one box, but it really does illustrate a HUGE problem. Sometimes this hobby drives me nuts! Honestly, I feel like it all comes down to greed - greed by Donruss to not spend a few cents extra per pack on QC, greed by shop owners to pick over their boxes before putting them out, and greed on the part of collectors to artificially increase their chances at a good pull by pack searching. And we wonder why a hobby that, for all the increasing money that’s flying through sports these days, is dying a slow and painful death in front of our eyes.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Very interesting post Adam. Was that a hobby or retail box?
There’s really nothing worse than a hobby store owner who pack searches his own product. The hobby store as we knew it is quickly becoming extinct and greedy owners aren’t helping the situation. I realize it has to be really hard to run a successful brick and mortar hobby shop, but with the already jacked up prices in most hobby shops the buyer should at least have a chance at pulling something nice when buying individual packs.
I stumbled upon your blog because I received the track-back for linking to my post. I never knew about your blog before, I’m loving it and added your feed to my RSS reader!
July 17th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
Hi Jason,
Thanks for the comment and for taking the time to read. The box was a hobby box - probably should have specified that in the post. Your post obviously really got me thinking about the whole thing and helped me a lot in learning about pack searching, so keep up the great writing!
Adam
July 17th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
That engeneering degree really came into play here. That was a great illustratioin. I have always tried to figure out how they decide which packs to put the “filler” in. I would have assumed it would be in every pack that did not contain a thicker chase card. In my experience I have found them in a pack with a thick jersey card and had a pack of regular cards from the same box with no filler.
I bought some packs at a shop of the same product in the study and the shop owner held the box above my head so I couldn’t see in the box and he asked me not to squeeze them. He said the Playoff Prestige Football was the simplest to detect the relic and autos.
Thanks again, great post.
July 17th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Joey,
That’s really interesting - kind of ironic that I chose the product that was simplest to detect relic and autos (at least according to that shop owner). I certainly didn’t plan it that way, but I’m glad I picked a box that illustrates the problem. I’m thinking about doing a more widespread study down the road looking at a lot of different brands/packs because the whole thing really intrigues me.
Adam
July 17th, 2007 at 4:46 pm
If you are a speculator and an oppurtunistic person it could be financially rewarding. Some very interesting comments came up over on Jason’s post about the topic.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Ok there is nothing wrong with pack feeling which is bending the pack a small bit for a gu card.
Some greedy people made that up so they can do it and get their cards or so shop owners sell more.
I pack feel and it works it isnt a crime it doesnt damage the cards inside it just helps find gu cards.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Ryann,
I never said it was illegal - just unethical. If it helps YOU find a GU card, than it’s hurting any chance a new collector has of finding a great card, therefore decreasing their satisfaction with the hobby. Which in turn could lead to them spending their entertainment dollar elsewhere and eventually results in what we have now: a hardcore group of older collectors and no future hobby to speak of whatsoever. Pack searching is a very individualistic, self serving, short term answer that screws the hobby in the long run. Any collector that pack searches and says they care about the long term future of the hobby is a liar and a hypocrite in my book.
Adam
August 11th, 2007 at 12:19 am
ok.the cardboard insert is being used to not only mislead these(card sharks)but also used in shipping,test after test revealed the inserts improved stability during shipping.we want to ensure little johnny’s auto rc isn’t bent when he opens the pack.in response to ryann’s comment his post is the most hipocritical i have ever heard,pack bending doesn’t hurt he say’s!!!what’s worth more a bent reggie bush rc or mint?ryann you and countless other greedy,selfserving (collectors?)are robbing this clean hobby blind and we are taking steps to stop your vandalism.asst engineer product development some large co.
August 11th, 2007 at 9:50 am
JJ,
Great to hear that someone in the industry cares and took the time to comment. Hopefully card companies will find a (cost-effective) way to eliminate the problem permanently.
Adam
August 16th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
When packs cost $2.99 each no wonder why people pack search
August 17th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Pack pricing is a whole different issue. I wish they cost less, but that’s no justification in my mind. That’s analogous to saying it’s OK to steal a car because cars cost a lot more than they did 20 years ago. Just because something is over-priced doesn’t mean you have a right to abuse the system. If you don’t like $2.99 packs, don’t buy them.
Adam
October 17th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
A great article. However I doubt they use the tool that you used, instead I bet that they are weighing the packs. This can be done with a $30 scale. The only true way to not get ripped is to buy cases or have them bust the case right in front of you.
October 18th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Agreed Joe. The funny thing is, I had a scale and was planning to do both ways, but when I saw how damn easy it was with the calipers I went with that.
October 29th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Pack searchers should die.
Never buy boxes/packs on eBay guys.
Heck don’t buy packs period.
Buy cases, or boxes from trusted sellers only if you need to bust.. otherwise, buying singles is the way to go now.
October 30th, 2007 at 9:07 am
Couldn’t agree more. Every serious collector should listen to what kidd05 has to say and buy only cases/boxes from reputable sources. What concerns me is that it hurts the youngster with a $5/week allowance that buys a pack here and there and never pulls a decent card because a) manufacturers put most of the good stuff in expensive packs, and b) when something good does get into an affordable set, pack searchers can decrease the chance that they get it.
November 9th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Great Blog! Yesterday I bought my first back of new baseball cards in 14 years! I bought three packs of Topps 2007 at a hobby store, and was just excited to see if I might uncover one of my favorite players. Out of all of the cards, the only one with any value was a DiceK rookie.
And, you know what? That’s just fine! When I was a little kid, I spent countless weekly allowances to buy a pack or two with the hope of seeing an Ozzie Smith or Nolan Ryan. And, although it rarely happened, the excitement when you did get a good card was great!
Along with the 2007 packs, I bought an old box of 1990 Upper Deck. I felt the same excitement that I had all those years ago, when I opened the 35th pack and on top was Ozzie making a jumping play at short!! It’s probably worth 75 cents, but means more to me than that DiceK rookie, or a game-used card of some guy I don’t really care about.
A lot has changed in the last 14 years, and I hope that some younger kids can get into the hobby with the passion that I had back then.
November 9th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Heath,
I’m glad you were able to regain the excitement. What you just described is collecting at it’s core. Hopefully more kids will discover that excitement and bring the hobby back to the glory days of the 90’s when you and I were growing up.
Adam
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:04 pm
I only feel the card packs because if I don’t I won’t get any thing good. If know one else did it I wouldn’t do it. But to get a good card now a days I have to feel them to get a good card. But it is disturbing when I see about 20 packs at wal-mart that have been opened and the good cards taken out of them.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Oh, and what pack did you get the Brett Favre game-jersey card from?
January 4th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Well, it’s been a while
but according to the report above that was in one of the 7mm packs. Why do you ask?
January 4th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
I was just wondering because there were 2 .726mm packs and the first pack had a jersey card in it so i was wondering if pack 4 had the other jersey card in it because it was a .726mm pack too. But I can feel jersey cards without having a caliper to tell me. I have never felt a jersey card at a retail store because people have already felt through them all.
January 5th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Ah - I see what you’re saying. I took a look at my spreadsheet from back then and the Favre came from Pack #19 - 7.46 mm.
January 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
okay, thanks
January 5th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Great article, very insightful. I remember my first game-used pull — 1999 Upper Deck MVP Scott Rolen bat card. The pack it came from was so thick I thought Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza were fighting inside of it. I didn’t notice this until after I bought the pack, however.
Anywho, part of me wishes we could go back to the age of 1993 Topps, a time when game-used didn’t exist, autographs meant 1:12,000 packs, and a gold variation of Kirby Puckett made your day…no; made your week.
January 5th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Haha thanks Zach. 1993 Topps is a classic set. I loved those gold variations
February 24th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Great article, Adam. It makes me wonder how many of these smaller card shop owners have calipers and scales in the back of their stores. The most obvious cases of “pack-searched” boxes I’ve come across have been at card shows. Many vendors I’ve seen simply take a 5000-count card box and put individual packs in each of the columns, usually the thinner ones. I never trust buying packs laid out that way Usually, I look for my favorites in a nearly full hobby box, or just buy the entire box. If I’m getting my money’s worth in game-used cards in several packs or a box, I’m happy. Otherwise, there’s always next time. Keep up the insightful writing.
September 20th, 2008 at 9:16 am
[…] from buying boxes of cards for things like my pack searching experiment, I don’t often buy cards anymore. My peak card collecting days were as a boy, from around […]
November 10th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
[…] Pack Searching Experiment (It Should Not be this Easy) […]
November 22nd, 2008 at 2:03 pm
One thing to remember about the smaller packs…autos are usually in there rather than the fatter packs..unfortunately your box had no autos so you couldn’t reflect that fact.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
As a store owner, I’m fully aware of both people who come in wanting to feel packs and customers who think I’m stealing all the good stuff out of the boxes.
I’ve just written a reply on my blog, and rather than rehash it all here, I’ll just link to it — Hit The IceBox!.
Thanks!
November 27th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
Wayne - great post! I appreciate you taking the time to comment. It’s also refreshing to hear you say:
“The more insidious problem, however, is store owners searching the boxes. I pledge to you that we don’t, and here’s why — we have a reputation to maintain. We have a large enough number of regular customers that even if we decided to go the dishonest route, they would quickly ascertain that we were searching our boxes and stop frequenting us.”
Happy Thanksgiving!
Adam
January 6th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
I have to admit, I learned how to packsearch a couple of years ago. I have collected all my life and always went into the local Target or Fred Meyer and bought a handful of packs a few times a week. I thought I had the worst luck because I never got any game used cards. Then I found out people knew how to pack search, and realized all the boxes I had been buying from were probably searched. Right or wrong, I decided if guys are going around pack searching, then I’m going to learn to do it as well. It’s actually much more involved than anything people have mentioned on this blog. I have learned how to pretty much find anything from game used cards to autos to serial numbered cards. I know you guys will call me a hypocrite or whatever, and that’s fine. I’m honest about it. I actually miss the collecting days in the 80s when there were only 4 brands and rookies were everything and people built sets and traded. I still build sets and love pulling rookies. Collecting was a lot more fun back then.
February 21st, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Wow that study blows my mind. Someone should perform that study on every brand and type (daunting task I know) and publish a rankings system for pack searching susceptibility. This would influence collectors to buy the more “honest” brands and influence brands to maintain the integrity of the hobby.
PS: I visited for the first time and bookmarked this site today. Awesome!
February 22nd, 2009 at 8:36 am
Andy -
Definitely. I’d love to see someone or a group of people evaluate each brand and type of cards and publish some independent info about each one.
Thanks for checking out the site! Glad you like it
Adam
March 5th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Adam/Andy
I recently found myself in the same predicament that Rob was/is in. I collected cards for years thinking I just had bad luck.
A few weeks ago I stumbled across “Hot Packs” on E-Bay while looking for retail packs to buy. This discovery eventually led me to find out how to pack search, which I quickly mastered by practicing on packs I have at home.
This morning I went to Target before they opened so I could try my newly found skills at a chance to FINALLY get something good. I was the only person at the door when I showed up while a few stragglers followed behind me. Before the doors even opened 4 much older men jumped in front of me and went straight for the cards. These men saw me following the same path as them so they quickly snatched up all the newly stocked cards and ran off to a different department to “search in privacy”.
So, once again, I was left without a fair opportunity to get something worth talking about. After that happened it suddenly dawned on me that I had been foolishly spending thousands of dollars on a hobby that no longer held any meaning to me. If I had never found those “hot packs” I would not be the wiser and continue to rejoice and love the hobby anytime I got a numbered rookie card. Now I just hate it…
March 5th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
I forgot to add, once someone publishes the sort of findings you guys are suggesting, it will make it that much easier for someone to find out how to pack search which would just perpetuate the problem. Having said that, I have seen kids, yes little boys, pack searching just as much as those old fogies at my local Target store.
June 15th, 2009 at 7:24 am
It’s not the adults I see doing this, it’s kids 10-14 years old.