Suppose you have enough cash at hand but want to spend it in an economical way and want to relive the nostalgia of for example opening an unlimited base booster box or chasing a card like a PSA 10 Charizard down for ‘cheap’…Is pretty much your only option to weigh the packs?
Say that 1/4 of the holos will grade a PSA 10 and the rest a PSA 9, I have no clue whether those numbers are accurate, but I’ll just go with them.Then PSA 10’s are probably $1500 for the Charizard, $350 for the Blastoise, $250 for the Venusuar and the others (12) $125, resulting in about $240 per card, of which you are getting 3.The PSA 9’s are about $250 for the Charizard, $100 for the Blastoise, $75 for the Venusaur and $40 for the others (12), resulting in about $60 per card, of which you are getting 9.
Boxes seem to cost about $3500.Light weighted packs seem to sell for about $60, you are getting 24 of them, so that’s $1440.
The graded cards will net you 3 * $240 + 9 * $40 - 12 * $10 (grading costs) = $960
By now I’ve realized that an unlimited base box is not the best example for my point, but comparing weighing vs not weighing:* When weighing packs you lose about $3500 - $1440 - $960 = $1100
When not weighing packs you lose about $3500 - $960 = $2540
Of course these comparisons are not exactly fair as I have omitted the other cards from the packs entirely (be it selling raw or graded) and that you do get a whole lot of more cards when also opening the light packs.
But even in this case with the bad example it goes from getting just over 30% value back to almost 75% value back when weighing packs.
So… is weighing packs ‘required’ if you want to open old booster boxes?Has weighing become more accepted, also for similar reasons?
Charizord has about a 1/10 PSA 9-10 ratio fyi, but I’m not sure why you even bother calculating the expected value of the cards since you subtract that value from both situations.
Weighing packs, selling light = - $3500 + $1440 + x
Not weighing packs, open all = - $3500 + xWhere x is the value of the holos
In fact, the only difference between the two is the amount you make selling light packs.so… what’s the question?
If you want a specific card you need to just buy the card…opening packs to try to get it will on average cost you way way more. When people come to me to buy booster packs and they say they are chasing a certain card I always tell them to just buy the card if they want it for way cheaper.
Calling weighing wrong is fine and a personal opinion.
The truth is that it should just realistically be the rule now. We aren’t in a magical world where it isn’t happening to the vast majority of vintage packs. Selling “unweighed loose” vintage boosters is unethical to me at this point.
I really wouldn’t even purchase a loose pack anymore unless it was weighed high or low
We have very reputable people like Rusty selling unweighed packs from freshly cracked boxes, but even that is quite uncomfortable as it leaves the door open for others to crack a box and claim to sell all the packs unweighed while weighing them off camera.
Tl;dr I think all vintage packs should just be sold as heavy or light at this point as pretending you have the 1:3 chance from the 90s is an outright lie
I agree. The only conditions were you have ethical dilemmas is when a portion of people disclose the fact the pack has been weighed and a portion of people don’t. Then you have a situation where people can deceptively sell weighed packs.
If no one weighed anything there wouldn’t be a problem. But no matter how hard you fight against it, there will always be people who weigh. The other option is where everyone provides the weight of every pack they sell. Then there are no victims because everyone is 100% aware of what they are buying. Everyone should be demanding to see the weight when they buy packs because if this practice is normalized, no buyer will get burned.
Arguing that weighing is unethical is just not relevant today. The difference between heavy and light 1st ed base packs is on the order of $2000-4000. Heavy and light packs have an established value but unweighed packs are basically Schrodinger’s pack where the value lies in the seller’s reputation since the seller has all the power to deceive someone. Weighing a pack is the equivalent of realizing the value of an item, just as grading a card through PSA takes Schrodinger’s condition and places it on a quantifiable scale and establishes value.
Pack weighing is the functional equivalent of grading. Period. It establishes a (mostly) objective way for a seller to describe an item that offers greater transparency to the buyer and prevents scummy sellers from omitting critical information about the item. It establishes the value of the item. It also protects the seller. If you sell 6 truly unweighed packs, there’s a 8.8% chance they are all light. Unknowingly selling all 6 to a single buyer can seriously damage your reputation. Buy weighing, you remove that risk from the equation since there’s a transparency and standard you can point to if the buyer has an issue, exactly the same with grading.
If weighing packs is immoral then so is grading. What if someone buys a PSA 8 from you, and they crack it from the case and relist it as “mint” hoping to get a premium from a buyer who is looking to grade a 10? Is selling PSA cards unethical too because of the indirect impact it could have on a future buyer?
Everyone should be demanding weights when they buy a pack. Anyone who doesn’t enables scummy sellers to continue to not disclose weights.
Many good points here even though I hate the fact of weighing, I can’t stop somebody from doing it. If I were to sell a pack, I would have to weigh it so the buyer is informed and stops retaliation or opening a case. Sucks this is what it comes down to but any growing hobby with increased profit increases scamming, fakes, customs, etc…
Also just for everyone to get the most out of the packs, its better to keep the light ones sealed for those who want to collect sealed, and open the ones you might actually get something good out of. Not saying people shouldnt open light packs, but i like collecting some sealed booster arts and it feels better leaving them sealed if i know theyre light anyway.
Bah, damnit @pkmnflyingmaster, I hate to admit it, but I think you’re right. It sucks that what was once a shitty and unethical thing is now a growing norm that, without which, impacts both sellers and buyers.
I wonder if Reverse Holos on commons became a common practice for English Packs as a way of avoiding that issue.
Ah, that’s kind of what I meant. I figured with multiple holos in each pack, it would make it unreliable to see if they held rare holos or not and thus not fall into the “Heavy vs Light” situation as old packs did. Didn’t even consider code cards though, good note.
Kind of a rookie question from me here given all the time I’ve dedicated to Pokemon collecting lol, but at what point did the packs start becoming unweighable? i.e., what sets are not prone to being weighed and can considered truly random no matter what source you’re purchasing it from?
I know the code cards assure the packs can’t be weighed nowadays, but did the reverse holos starting with the e-Reader cards prevent weighing as well? Thought I remembered hearing about that somewhere but that never really made a lot of sense to me because the packs with a holo also still have a reverse holo.