Coming to a local retail outlet near you...Pack Searchers

Some of the articles you read here at Sport Card Collectors are ones I wrote before starting a blog. I have always been into writing and whether it was read or not, I always just typed things up. Sort of a bonus hobby. We will get to why I mentioned this in a bit. The other day when looking around on different sport card Facebook pages I stumbled upon something that caught my eye. Someone claiming to know where all of the good cards were posting clips of their breaks (now to keep this person from being searched I will not mention the name it was under) but as curious as I am I went and checked out the page. To my surprise after reading some of the posts and comments underneath I had uncovered a pack searching page. A place where a person was teaching others how to pack search.

So this made me think back to an article I had started on pack searching but never had finished it. This page helped me bring back the article to shine more light on this darkness in the hobby. So some of this writing is from that article and some is new based on info I have researched from different forums and pages.

For those of you who may not know what "Pack Searching" is, its when someone goes to a retail outlet such as Walmart or Target (some may do it at hobby shops but most hobby shops keep their cards behind the counter) and they feel out the packs from boxes to try and find the hit or the better cards and beat the odds. By feeling out the packs, they can feel which ones are thicker would hold memorabilia cards and sometimes they can even find the die cuts in packs. Don't ask me how they do it, but they have practiced for awhile. Some even bring postal scales into retail outlets and weigh each pack to find the heaviest one which most likely has the hit. And even worse than that some will cut into the card wrappers and find the best cards. Which to me is totally wrong. But they do it.And everyone needs to be warned of it.

Pack Searching hurts the hobby especially those who cannot afford hobby packs and buy retail ones. What do they get to look forward to if they pick out a few packs from a box that may have been searched? No hits or good cards most likely. And some people may not even realize that the box had been Pack Searched or maybe not have even heard of this until now. Also, pack searching can damage the cards for the next person picking up the pack they left behind due to the techniques they use to search it.

A form of pack searching also used to happen in the late 90's before the boom of memorabilia cards. Card companies always had a way of putting packs in a box. For example, a friend of mines uncle (who is no longer in the hobby and left it in 98)  used to have theories on every product that he put together on note cards after buying a certain amount of boxes of it. Like a box of Spx football 96, the hit or insert from the box would be lets say the second row of packs, four packs down. And if no one had touched the box before he put his hand in it, it worked every time. It was very frustrating for me being a child and someone who could only afford a few packs at a time and trying to buy a pack hoping for something big then finding out someone had already taken it out of the box....it made me want out of the hobby. But I continued on. Card companies got smarter after awhile on this in the 90's and no longer laid the boxes out the same. If only they can figure out how to stop pack searchers now a days, everyone might feel safer about buying retail.

Some suggestions I would give is putting decoys in every pack. Maybe putting all retail packs into plastic packaging where no one can touch it.Or maybe having all retail outlets move the packs behind the counter like at a LCS.

Here are a few tips when I buy retail, I look for a couple of things. One, I try to make sure the box looks full that way you know it might be newer. Two, I try to get packs from a box where packs are not tossed all around. Three, I sometimes stick with only blaster boxes from places like Walmart and Target  but be aware of these as well. Some people open these, take out the good stuff, and rewrap them and bring them back to the store. Make sure you are very careful on what you buy. Those most of the time are safe buys

Not all of you will agree with me on this topic. Some of you might say, hey, we all do it sometimes. Others might say, well with the price of cards you want to make sure you get your money back. Or maybe you will agree. But either way, I wanted to shed some light on this and say how I felt about it. And would like to hear what you think as well below in comments!

Do you agree with pack searching? Have you tried it? How can companies fix the problem if you are against it?

Posted in: Pack Searching, Panini, Topps, Upper Deck