Simple Math Experiment To Determine Cost of Ripping Wax Vs. Buying Singles on eBay (ie. 2026 Bowman Baseball)

You're listening to Cards to the Moon, a podcast about trading cards from both a collector and investor perspective. We hope you'll stick around for the ride as we take a deep dive into the state of the hobby, share some hot takes, hopefully some useful advice and fun stories along the way. Hey everyone. Welcome back to Cards to the Moon. My name is Clark from 5CardGuys.com. You could also find me @5CardGuys on Instagram, YouTube, and on Facebook. I'm flying solo today for this Friday's episode, and so I wanted to take the opportunity to do a little math exercise. And I'll try to not make it too boring. But what I wanted to do or show you guys is is something that a lot of collectors have to think about whenever a new set comes out. And that is whether you want to buy a hobby or jumbo box and rip. Or would you rather just buy the cards you actually want off ebay and on this pod? We've always said the latter is always the smarter choice, but we also know ripping is so much fun. And I'm certainly guilty of ripping way more than I should. But with all the recent discussion and discourse on how expensive the hobby is getting, I think the idea of ripping is either getting out of reach for a lot of collectors, or if you do buy a hobby or jumble box these days, many times you're left with really bad roi. But my question is just how much worse can it get now with the higher wax prices? And honestly, if you think about it, it's not only smarter to buy singles for your wallet's sake, but it's almost necessary to buy singles instead of ripping just so you can continue to enjoy the hobby. So I did a little experiment to see how much I'd lose by ripping in general. And I also looked at what I'd be able to buy if I didn't rip and bought singles instead. Okay, so for this experiment, I chose something I considered buying, but instead I've decided to look for singles I really want on ebay. And the set I'm looking at Today is the 2026 Bowman baseball set, which was released earlier this month. Now, I didn't want to buy a jumbo box, although I really wanted to, because I love chasing prospect cards. But when I looked online on the Dave and Adams website, I saw that I was going for about $700 US for a jumbo box. So using that number, I imagine buying three boxes and ripping. So quick math, that would be $2,100 US plus tax. Let's add a couple more hundred. So that's 2,300 total for those three jumbos. And for the three boxes I chose to quote unquote rip, I just looked up YouTube videos by online breakers, and the first three I saw was the ones I would pretend to have ripped. Okay, so if you're still following, I will give you right now the results of those three rips that I saw on YouTube. And it's not exactly pretty. All right, first box or first video I saw was from Western NY cards. And oh, I should mention you can get three autograph cards per jumbo box and a few inserts. There's also a few numbered cards, but you quickly realize after seeing some of these videos, a lot of the insert cards and even the non auto numbered cards don't go for much like $5 on average. So for the most part, on each rip, I priced out the three autos and any numbered or SP card of a big player that might have some decent value. Okay, so first box, the hits were Marconi German, his first Bowman Speckle refractor autograph card, which is numbered to 299. It's a pretty cool card. Interesting prospect, but it last sold for about $30. All right, next, there was a David Shields base auto, and that recently sold for $50. And the third auto was Brendan Tunink, another base auto, and that sold recently for $27. So if you combine all their three autos, the value is $107 total. But. And this is kind of a big but there was also a Bobby Witt Jr crystallized card, which I believe is a SSP, a short print insert. It's not autographed, but selling for around $500 right now. So the total box value for box number one is roughly 600 bucks on a $700 box. So you still lost 100 bucks, but it could have been a lot worse, especially without that Bobby Witt crystallized insert card. All right, next, this rip was from Degen Rips, and here's what they pulled. The first auto was Anthony Frobose, and it's a Greengrass refractor auto. The Greengrass, I think is new to this year set. And that's number 299 that sold recently for $55. Then there was Marconi German again, coincidentally, but it was a redemption card for his variation refractor auto. And there's been a couple of those sold already for $80. And then third auto was a player named Daniel Pierce, that was a base auto and that sold for 55 bucks. In that same rip, there was a Shohei Ohtani Bowman Sterling card. And I was interested in and I was curious about the value because it was Ohtani, and it ended up being just $5. Okay, so total for Degen rips roughly $195. Let's estimate that to 200 on a $700 box. That is a loss of $500. Ouch. Okay, the last break is from acme packs on YouTube. And again, the YouTube videos I selected were the first three I saw when I did a quick search for 2026 Bowman jumbo box rip. Okay, so let's see if Acme packs did any better. The first auto was Victor Figueiroa, another Greengrass refractor auto number to 99, and that actually sold for $90. Jorge Quintana, it was a base auto that sold for $15. And then the third auto was Hector Ramos. Hector Ramos, and it was a Pac Fractor auto. I believe that's new to the set this year. And if you haven't seen it, it looks pretty cool. It looks like a design of a baseball pack, but in a refractor form. Anyway, that pack, Fractor auto is numbered to 89. That one for $250. So the total is $355, which is pretty much half the value of the $700 box, 50% of the cost. If you add all three boxes up together, that's nine autographs total. And if you do quick math, and if you do quick math, and those autos averaged with the most expensive auto being 250, and the lowest valued auto was 15 bucks. If you remember, the average was $69 per auto. And if you add up the total cost again of all three jumbos, it was $2,300 US then if you subtract the value of the hits, which was about 1150, that works out to be half the value. So you're down 1150 after ripping those three boxes. So that's the gamble, right? You know how the saying goes, the house always wins. Now, let's say you took that $2,300 and you wanted to buy singles instead and go after some of those chase cards. I think this is where it gets interesting, because when I went on ebay and looked at what $700 US can buy you in singles from 2026, Bowman, the cards you want, they're pretty decent. And there are some really interesting prospects in this year's set. So let me give you some examples. Ethan Holliday, younger brother of Jackson Holliday, he's chasing this set, and for $550, you can grab his pack Fractor Auto, the pack Fractor I was just talking about, and that's numbered to 89. And as for Ethan, I feel like he's getting similar hype as his brother did Jackson in the Hobby right Now, again, for $550 with $150 left over, you can get Ethan Holliday's Packfractor Auto Raw numbered to 89. All right. Another card you can get for about $500 is Eli Willits, his pack Fractor Auto, again numbered to 89. Another elite prospect, he was chosen first overall in the 2025 draft. 500 bucks. I'd be happy with that if I ripped and got his card. So in both these cases, for the price of one jumbo box, you could pick one of these two cards and still have at least 100 to $150 left over. But there's a lot more to choose from if you look at the checklist. So let's talk about the Bowman Anime short print cards, right? Because we know anime and manga style cards are all the rage right now. And you can actually get an Ethan Holiday Bowman Anime SP card for $510. Or how about Jesus Mad's Bowman Anime SP that's going for $550. Or maybe you believe in Mike Trout like I always have, and his Bowman Anime SP in the 2026 Bowman set is going for $425. And you know what? There's even more higher end cards you can target within this price range. For example, Yoshinobu Yamamoto's patchwork embossed case hit SSP is going for 400 bucks. If you haven't checked out the Patchwork insert set, it's pretty cool. I like the design. I think the base SP of that card, the patchwork set, comes one every 12 boxes, so it's hard to hit, but you could just buy it on eBay for 400 bucks. There's also the Final Draft insert set, which is even cooler in my opinion. And you can get the 2026 Bowman Chrome final Draft Ellie De La Cruz Black, which is numbered to 10 for just $430. There's also the 2026 Bowman Final Draft Derek Jeter card looks pretty cool. Look it up. And that's going for $300. And then if you're still believer in Roman Anthony of the Red Sox, his final draft insert SSP card is going for $500, which is all under $700. That is the price of a single jumbo box. And just quickly a few more cards that you might be interested in for under 700 bucks, especially if you're a serious prospect. Rookie investor. This is Connor Griffin. He has a top 100 red refractor SSP card. And of course the red refractor being numbered to five that sold for $660. Then you have Roman Anthony, his blue refractor auto numbered to 150. Of course it's a redemption card, but you can get it for $700. I put this because I'm a Jays fan. The Kazuma Okamoto Chrome rookie autograph card. Blue refractor number to 150. Nice color match. It is another redemption card, but that can also be bought for $700. Then again, I'm coming back to Ethan Holiday. You get his first Bowman orange refractor which is of course numbered to 25. It's not an auto, but you can get it for $685. And one more Ethan Holiday card. His first Bowman Auto Refractor SP number to 499. That's going for $700 as well. So I mean, if you're chasing a top prospect, Ethan Holiday is up there and it almost just makes sense to just buy his singles buy his refractor auto on ebay rather than ripping and hoping to hit an Ethan Holiday. We got one more example and this is if you consider just pooling all that cash for the three jumbo boxes together and want to just pick one card, you'll have enough to get the 2026 Bowman Munetaka Murakami Chrome Refractor auto number to 499. His redemption card is going for $2,000 right now. And that's still at least $300 left over for, you know, that final draft Derek Jeter card I was just talking about before. Let me lay this out a little bit more clearly for you. For 700 bucks, if you go the singles route, you can get a Holiday or will it's pack Fractor auto. You can get a Trout or Holiday anime sp. You can get a Yamamoto or Ellie De La Cruz numbered case. Hit a Roman Anthony SSP card or Jeter final draft like I mentioned. Or you can rip a box and statistically expect to open 50% of the jumbo box value with a small chance of getting something really special. But that's the thing about ripping, isn't it? That small chance of hitting something big is largely where the appeal is because there are definitely cards in the 2026 Bowman set that are worth way more than 700 bucks. And who knows, if you rip enough boxes, theoretically you could pull one of them. So just to give you an idea, some of the hits you can get include Kevin McGonagall autograph pack fractor number to 89. That's going for a thousand bucks. And then there's also the Shoi Ohtani patchwork chrome refractor which apparently is a case hit last sold for $3,400. Again, Shohei Ohtani. You get a final draft SSP card that sold for $5,500. And then let's go back to Munetaka Murakami. He also has a final draft SSP card in a red refractor number five that sold recently for $5,505. Now I know everyone's hopeful that the next box they rip is the one, right? Why can't you be the guy that makes that next big pull like those breakers you see on YouTube always seem to do. But again, let's be realistic about the math. Jumbo box gives you three autos and the odds of one of those autos being an Ohtani Final Draft SSP or a Murakami Red refractor number to 5R pretty damn small. Imagine you bought 10 jumbo boxes. That's about $7,000. Your expected value based on what I've seen from breakers and from this mini experiment is somewhere around 3 to $4,000 in hits. 50%, right? So that means you would need to get really lucky on at least one box to just break even. And chasing that $5,500 Ohtani card, you can end up spending $10,000 on boxes and still never hit it. In other words, you can always dream. But usually when reality hits, you're left with a lot of paper based cards. Insert chrome cards worth five bucks each maybe. And then of course 50% of the jumbo box value in autograph cards. Alright, so now that you've seen the numbers calling out the listeners, what are you more likely to do? If you're a prospect collector and you have specific players you believe in or players you follow, I think targeting the singles you want is probably the best way to go. And other than the elite elite prospects or rookie card chases, you can find a lot of refractor autos within the price range of one, two or three jumbo boxes. But if you still want to gamble, you want to go after that big whale, then by all means go ahead and rip. Especially if you're also willing to just pay for the experience and fun and entertainment value of ripping. And I didn't mention this before, but buying into breaks is another option. But I just want to warn you definitely know what you're getting into whenever you do rip. Because when I rip, I'm never surprised when I end up getting skunked, which is happens more than I like. And you know what? I've also hit some cards that have provided great roi, some loyal listeners you'll remember that I hit. I believe I mentioned in a previous pod that I hit the Ronald Acuna Jr. Patch auto out of five. And that came from, I believe, this year's 2025. Or was it 2026 top series one baseball. But then for me, it was worth the gamble because the hobby box of top series one just cost me about 150 bucks or so. So I wasn't sweating it. But as I said off the top, with retail prices seemingly getting higher, it's definitely worth asking whether you want to keep ripping or at least rip as much as you previously have. But just remember, the math is the math. And right now, ripping 2026 Bowman expecting to profit, I just think is simply unrealistic. Now, I'm pretty sure if I watch three more breaks, the results would be similar. In fact, I'm sure there are a lot more breaks without any hits that were simply not recorded and or uploaded to YouTube. So what I'm saying is you'll definitely see a disproportionate amount of videos showing breakers getting those big kits since they ripped so much product. Anyway, that's my exercise. Hope you enjoyed it. And for me it was a little eye opening because now I know what I want to really do, which is go on ebay and look for the singles I want. How about you guys? Would you do the same or is ripping just that much fun? You just gotta rip. Every year, whenever the next Bowman Chrome or Topps Chrome set comes out, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can always reach me on IG at five Card Guys or on Facebook and Shameless Plug for my Daily Auctions page where you might see some of these bigger hits from 2026 Bowman up for auction. You can bookmark that page@fivecardguys.com dailyauctions and I'll include that link in the show notes below. All right, thanks for tuning in. We'll have a regular episode for you on Tuesday. Got Will and Roy back. I'll see you then. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening to Cards to the Moon. We'd really appreciate you subscribing to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcast and you can also connect with each of us on Instagram and @5Card Guys. Or you can follow Hyung at Integrity Sportscards or John @tradeyouces. You can also check us out at fivecardguys.com thanks again and hope to connect soon.