We wouldn’t be doing our job if we didn’t provide you an ROI analysis on the annual flagship baseball product…and most anticipated at the dawn of each new year. This year 2018 Topps Baseball brings a whole load of anticipation and fun. It’s a wonderful hobby-focused product with ton’s of collectible elements…but it’s also the “safest” product from a ROI perspective. When folks ask me about individual breaking (not “group”) and what strategies I recommend… I always point them to the flagship products. Learn how to make a good return breaking those products…and then decide if it’s worth your time. So….. let’s discuss 2018 Topps.

Our Objective

The focus of this article is to help you understand what a similar investment will fare across the available 2018 Topps products. We spent over $2,500 across RETAIL and HOBBY ( +HTA) and have all of the #’s broken down below. From an investment side you are likely thinking that retail is a huge waste of time/money….and you’d be wrong. There is a lot to learn from bringing together both the retail and hobby products….

This article is sponsored by the crew at LEGACY SPORTS CARDS! Go check them out HERE and use code “BreakerCulture” for 20% off your first break! 

What did we buy?

We spent $793.18 on retail products. If you read our previous 2018 Topps article – Which retail product to buy – then you won’t be surprised with our allocation. We spent about 80% on ONLY $10 Rack boxes, this was the safest best in our opinion. We’ll let you decide if that was a good decision.

On the Hobby side we purchased 2 Hobby Cases and 1 Jumbo/HTA case. Total spend was about $1,700. In hindsight I would have probably gone with 2 HTA and 1 Hobby, but it all worked out.

Total spend for all 2018 Topps is ~$2,500.

What is the approach?

First and foremost, the idea behind our personal “breaking” is to HAVE FUN! I do everything with my boys and love getting their feedback on the cards and what they like about it. If you are doing this JUST to sell cards, you will not have a good experience. Each of my boys has players and sets we chase…and filling those checklists is the best part of this…

Second thing I do is load up on the caffeine. You better be heading to Dubbs Coffee and getting yourself a bag of fresh coffee. You won’t regret the taste and lift.

The next thing I do is make sure my time is effectively used. If you are having to sort 3-4x then you’ve wasted lots of great opportunities to list/market your cards. The base Topps is a very deep product that has a lot of ancillary content that takes a lot of time to list.

Time is your friend when it comes to deep products like 2018 Topps (and Heritage/A&G/Etc….).

As we open the boxes, we immediately sort into Base, RC’s, Inserts, Hits, and everything else. I don’t put together complete sets…because I’d go crazy… but I do make sure to do all of the primary sorting as I open to ensure I’m not demotivated later on.

After every case I list all of my hits on eBay (scheduling is your friend). I use a tool called InkFrog to set up auctions with a sharp template and easily scheduling. I then have the boys do one more scan on photo variations. They aren’t incredibly accurate…but I want them to be the ones to uncover those fun chase cards.

After listing core hits…rinse and repeat…with Cases 2+.

Reminder: The idea when cracking more than 1 case is to make sure you are keeping things efficiently organized. What can absolutely crush your process is being overwhelmed with random stacks of cards…and that terrible feeling of “crap, what do I do next?”

SELLING process…. BE PATIENT

The biggest mistake sellers (especially new ones) with products like Topps base….is….. NOT being patient. I can’t stress this enough. As a seller you can quickly get caught in your bubble and think that the fastest to market will get the best price. In some cases this is true, but in most cases it’s just not the case. Products like Series 1 baseball have a much longer list of buyers and most of them have done this for years. They are waiting for you to quickly discount and/or list with frustratingly low BIN’s. You MUST HAVE patience.

The best way to get a good read on the market is to use tracking tools to see historic prices and by watching the buying patterns on different parallels/variations/etc… It also helps to follow guys like BrentAndBecca (Twitter @brentandbecca) who crack near 100 cases of flagship products.

Some of the parallels you might think aren’t overly exciting (i.e. Rainbow Foil, Gold /2018, etc…) will provide you a LOT more value then you think. Strategically list them in lots, add them to your store with reasonably BIN’s (w/ Best Offers), and don’t create auctions with <$1.00 starting prices. Over the following 2-4 weeks you’ll slowly see those cards consistently being purchased. Your patience will be rewarded….and your sanity will be preserved. 😉

So…. Hobby or Retail?

Okay, now that you’ve come to terms with your approach the question remains, do you go crazy with Hobby or Retail?

Short answer is to error on the side of Hobby. The odds of landing some of the “bigger” hits are so much better in hobby. But every year there is content that makes Retail appealing…and this year odds aren’t horrible out of balance between the two.

With retail you’ll have Derek Jeter (Target) and Kris Bryant (Wal-Mart) 30-card insert sets w/parallels. These will sell well…especially in the first few weeks. You’ll also get the retail exclusive Legends in the Making insert set….which is my favorite (outside of the 1983 retro) subset. Finally, you’ll have plenty of MLB Player’s Commemorative Relics in the blaster boxes.

All of this exclusive content helps bring a lot of balance to the two options.

So…here are the #’s as of Feb 7th. We have about 50-75 more auctions TO LIST…. so this will be updated a few more times. It’s also important to keep in mind that MOST of our ROYALS & CUBS hits we did NOT sell. These were kept for the boys.

Hobby details 

Retail details

At first glance it would appear that Retail is the “safer” bet, but rest assured Hobby will likely out-perform by the end of the week. I sell RC’s in large lots and those will start closing tomorrow.

I’m tracking to be somewhere around a + $150-$200 on the $2,500 investment…this is WITHOUT selling base sets or doing any massive amounts of sorting. If we had the time to sort… we would have easily had 20-25 complete base sets. So… as you consider where “profits” should be…make sure you factor in the potential for complete base sets.

All in all…. a pretty standard flagship break. Didn’t nail any whales but will still come out ahead and will have helped my boys add some awesome cards to their collections!

HERE ARE THE TOP 10 eBay 2018 TOPPS CARDS — ending today!

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