I had a very good, high end customer ask me tonight if I’d sell him a mystery box for 5,000.00. I replied what is a mystery box actually. I’d heard them mentioned and just assumed someone sends someone else a gift with unknown contents. Kinda a friendly gesture. He explained you pay a certain amount and the person sends you a box with surprise stuff inside that’s normally worth a little bit more. He also said some well known people in the community do this to get rid of stuff in lots. He said he bought one recently for only 200.00 and it had about 240.00 retail value stuff.
As far as the 5k offer, I told him I’d hate to take the chance of disappointing him but I’d look into it.
For those of you aware of mystery boxes, I’d like to know what you think about this from both a buyers and sellers perspective. Is it really a lot of fun for the buyer? Is it worth it at such small margins for the seller?
Or are there different types or styles of mystery boxes?
Generally its items in a box worth pretty much they paid for but with the added bonus of those items being illiquid. Youtubers like it because they can act surprise amd get some clickbait.
I think I read somewhere that a forum member sells some at like $35 a pop and they sell well and the customers seem to like the variety, and the seller gets to get rid of excess cards that they no longer want. Tbh when I rejoined the hobby I won some of those mystery lot auctions on ebay but those were complete disappointments, and that was before I started researching card values lol
Lootboxing and gambling meets Pokemon lol. To be honest I’d love to find a genuinely worthwhile mystery box, but eBay is absolutely jam packed full of these amazing “pre-packed bundles” that just contain 99% crap and maybe a couple of GX/Holos.
You’re better off taking the gamble on buying someone’s huge bundle who’s selling off their collection, in my experience you always end up with much better finds.
As for high end mystery boxes, that risk/reward factor gets higher. You’re going to have to bank on something great being in there to make it worth the money. For this reason, I’d only really buy one off a big player such as you @garyis2000 , or someone like Rusty (TCAGaming, I know he sometimes has them for sale). He’s probably asked you because you’re such a reputable guy in the hobby and you’ve probably got the best stuff to put in a Mystery Box lol.
I don’t personally like them either, but when there are people buying them by the thousands and thousands and going back for more it’s hard to say “without exception”. Clearly given by the dozens of monthly forum posts asking “what should I collect”, there are a lot of people without direction out there. Realistically and functionally it’s not much worse than buying booster packs at retail to crack. 95% of booster packs I would say are an insta-loss value wise at retail given half the GX/V etc. qualify as $1-$2 bulk ultra rares.
Buying singles of what you want and/or buying the specific cards you want in the grade you want are the optimal way to collect from a time and cost perspective for 99% of people but there are still loads of people who go other routes, and this is just one of those sub optimal routes that people enjoy from time to time I guess.
I don’t know if it depends on the person selling the mystery box. Saw a couple of youtube videos of mystery boxes from reputed sellers like TCAGaming, which seem great (atleast worthy of the price). Also its great hype for the youtube channel and advert for the seller.
When a seller advertises mystery boxes, I see it as usually a way to move product that is selling too slowly. The trick for the seller would be including the right ratio of items/value that the buyer feels like they are winning.
When a buyer requests a mystery box, and when you get to the $5000 range, I think the customer is just telling you that they respect your knowledge of the hobby and integrity as a seller. They want the element of surprise and gambling while knowing that they will be getting high quality contents.
Additionally someone like UnlistedLeaf can use it for content, I think his high end mystery boxes from Rusty have been some of his higher performing videos lately.
Mystery Boxes are insanely popular and successful. I had to stop selling them(at least for now) as it was pretty much unsustainable unless I decided to be single again.
Anything over $1k I urged the buyers to specify what they wanted, or at least a general idea, but many people literally want to know nothing and just be surprised.
They can be done in a way that is beneficial for both ends(Almost 500 mystery boxes on ebay and no negs/neut). Personally I would watch a video just to see what @garyis2000, stuck in a $5k box. You can hate on them all you want, but when you have loyal customers coming back over and over again asking for a mystery box with genuine excitement, it is going to happen. Nothing illegal or shady, with both parties happy.
I agree with TCA. I did 2 mystery boxes upon requests for 2 youtubers and did the same asking for a general idea of what they would like. Both stated “surprise me” and provided them both with fair value. However, I do not like this statement that the person of interest made to you @garyis2000,
“He explained you pay a certain amount and the person sends you a box with surprise stuff inside that’s normally worth a little bit more”
This shows me he/she will be very picky about what they receive and has a higher potential of being upset about not agreeing on the same value you may have on the items you send. I could be looking into that wrong, but as long as you are fair, it can be beneficial for both parties.
There’s a big difference between people who do this mostly ethically like @thecharizardauthorty and @stibs and those who take advantage of people.
I disagree with the practice in general but if you’re giving people the same value if not more, and you’re moving stagnant inventory while they get to enjoy the mystery item, I don’t think there are major issues. However, it is very common to scam through this. Mystery boxes are the same process as the “1 Pokemon from Neo Destiny Shining Tyranitar? Charizord?” or the grab bag/chance listings where you are told you have chance at a bunch of massively valuable cards but you never really get them and the value ends up being much less than what you paid. My issue is that no matter how you do mystery boxes, it normalizes these scam listings.
Gambling and chance listings are becoming all too common in the hobby these days. I don’t like anything that adds to that.
I also agree with this side of the conversation. I have been asked by others for mystery boxes after UnlistedLeaf had posted his video with the one i sold him. I declined because it was unsustainable for me like Rusty mentioned for himself. Especially with my inventory/collection size in comparison.
I simply used the opportunity to #BuildMyBrand and gain more exposure. This was the most beneficial aspect for me.
This reminds me of Kitchen Nightmares where chef Gordon Ramsay goes into failing restaurants to help turn them around.
One common line you hear from these restaurant owners is something along the lines of “I’ve never had customers complain about the food” or “the problem is not the food because we have regular customers that like it”.
Not all customers will complain. Sure many people like to spend money and get a nice variety of undesirable stuff at approximately the value of the box. But with others you just leave a bad taste in their mouth and now that level of trust or reputation is gone for that buyer and potentially anyone they talk to.
I’ve seen this happen live myself. Someone I know ordered mystery PSA slabs from Rusty. They showed what they got and yes of course the value was there and that level of contents should probably have been expected given the price but the buyer was disappointed and I would also have been disappointed if I received it. Again to clarify, Rusty did everything right in the situation but just the mystery box model itself is going to inherently leave some customers underwhelmed.
The buyer didnt complain, I haven’t shared this story till now. But what was left was a disappointed buyer and onlookers watching it. The risk of selling mystery items is you will disappoint people eventually. Fortunately the pokemon market is a lot bigger than the local economy of many restaurants, so even if you lose customers over mystery items you probably wont notice. But I thought it was still worth bringing up
A clear distinction should be made as I believe people are talking of two different things.
When I came into this thread my mind went to the $XXX “market value” mystery box wherein a set value is determined and all boxes will target that value (naturally +/-) as many items are going to be illiquid and every item inherently has a huge range of “market value”. This is what Rusty is describing. This is what I am perfectly fine with.
This is not the same as the raffle/lottery/mystery box listings wherein you spend $Y and have a shot at items orders of magnitude higher in valuation, but most times will get items at a fraction of your cost. These are inherently scummy, often illegal, always against eBay TOS, and ripe for abuse/misuse. They are disguised raffles where instead of literally nothing, the “losers” just receive a bulk common holo or some trinket of nearly no value.
I think Scott’s video was off base as it did seem to try and address the ones talking of 100% value mentioned in my first point. He was saying that flippers are offloading highly illiquid items when I would argue all collectibles are inherently illiquid and many “tru collectors” don’t give a crap about liquidity as they’ll never sell anyways. I disagree with his premise that you need to own the IP to sell bundled items. It is incorrect to say grab bags are against eBay TOS as the ones I mentioned in point 1 are allowed and the ones I mentioned in point 2 are explicitly prohibited.
All that said I am 100% in the camp of people should just buy directly what they want and not buy mystery boxes, but as I mentioned some people have no direction and loads of people just like wasting money on shit they don’t need and none of us need any of these cards to begin with. How can you argue against hundreds and thousands of happy returning customers engaging in a victimless practice breaking no laws, no TOS, and causing no issues?
The problem is “market value” in these boxes. Like is part of a 5k mystery box is a base set 2 box and the sender valued it at $3500 well sure ok that’s the cheapest buy it now on eBay but you look hard enough for a little while you can probably find one for $2500.
That is inherent in our hobby. Show me an item that doesn’t have a 50% swing between it’s high and low range on recent transactions. There are some exceptions, those being the most liquid items in our hobby, but they are just that; exceptions.
@pkmnflyingmaster, the buyer in your scenario was a victim of themselves, not the victim of a mystery box. Nobody made them buy it. Take mystery boxes out of it to demonstrate the ease at which anyone can have a bad experience with the hobby and feel victimized. People buy single cards that drop in value and get discouraged. People buy booster boxes to crack, get bad pulls and get discouraged. People buy cards that end up being “weak”, or have scratched cases, or some imperfection that they couldn’t see in the 12 listing photos and feel they were duped.
