Baseball Card Guy Buys 300 Cases of Topps Series 1 To Try And Win $250K Bounty

This is a wild story for anyone that's tapped into the cardboard realm. 

For you non-collectors, Topps Series 1 is the flagship baseball card product every year. Topps has exclusive licensing rights with the MLB, and Series 1 is the first 2023 product to hit the market. It also always releases in February right before Spring Training, just in time to scratch the itch for all baseball fans that also happen to be card junkies. It's a fun release, equal parts cheap enough to enjoy as a casual buyer but filled with enough chase cards and stud rookies to make it worthwhile for mass breakers. 

Blowout Cards, a notable retailer, has upped the ante this year and made the 2023 Topps Series 1 release very interesting. They're offering a special incentive to the first person that builds a rare set within the base checklist. $250K to the first individual who builds the "golden mirror base parallel" set. 

What is a golden mirror base parallel? For every one of the 330 subjects featured in this product, they have a "golden mirror base parallel" SSP (SSP=super short print). These odds are listed at approximately 1:46 packs, so if we break that down there are 10 packs in every box and 6 boxes per case, 60 total jumbo packs per case. There isn't necessarily any guarantee to this, but there should be (at least) 1 golden mirror base parallel SSP per case, maybe two if the odds are in your favor. He would essentially have to break all 300 cases and get 2 golden mirror parallels every 10 cases (with no duplicates) to knock it out initially without hitting the secondary market.

Each case runs right at $1,300 not withstanding any discount if you're buying in bulk, but just for mathematical purposes we'll call it an even $1,300. 300 cases x $1,300 = $390,000. I've seen some folks saying he spent around $200K on these cases but I don't see how that math checks out unless he got a wholesale price or some special deal.  Either way, this is the initial investment in hopes of getting out ahead of the rest of the world to secure the better part of this 330 card short-printed set. It's also important to reference that there are roughly 150 copies of each player's SSP variation, so it's not 100% set in stone that he's the first to do it, although he seems to have a good head start.  

Is it worth it for this guy to invest this much in a product that's seen significantly higher print runs in recent years? By my math, he's already in the hole for a good bit if the price point was $390K, even if he does put the whole set together. Again, I don't have a firm number as to what he got these cases for, so he could be on the hook for less. 

This endeavor might seem super risky, but it's calculated, especially if he got better pricing than most. Of course he's gained a ton of traction online and he's partnered with an app to livestream, now the mass rip has gone viral in the card community. 

He also stands to pull some INSANE cards out of 300 cases, some more valuable than the golden mirror parallels. He's been posting some of the highlights so far, and a lot of these cards hold up very well from a resale value. It's a loaded rookie class this year with Adley Rutschman, Michael Harris II, Gunnar Henderson, and more, so that's a big bonus.
Overall, I see this guy making his money back and then some throughout the entire process. If he's got the means to buy that much product in the first place, surely he's planning on reselling singles and making up a good bit of his investment right there. If and when he does complete the golden mirror parallel set (I have to imagine he'll be the first to do it), there's another $250K there for him as a cherry on top.

It's looking like a good bet that he'll be the first, he had secured 250 of the 330 golden mirror parallels as of yesterday and there are plenty in the community that he'll get singles from to complete the set. The clock's ticking, but his methods on the front end were pretty slick to get out ahead of everyone else with this. 

What a kick in the nuts it'd be if he wasn't the only one with this idea and wasn't the first one to put it all together.

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