Chris McVay had just started a live stream on his breaking platform when a community member announced they wanted to conduct a giveaway. McVay was thrilled, but what happened next threw him for a loop. The member said the giveaway was for him.
McVay’s wife was eight months pregnant with their third child. After the member’s comment, he checked his phone and saw he he’d received $1,030 from Venmo.
There was a message: “Whatever you need it for!”
McVay, the owner of Buck City Breaks (BCB) in Ohio, was overwhelmed with emotion on the live stream. He doesn’t know everyone who contributed, but he knows the group it came from. The same group that has supported his journey since 2017, when he started breaking card boxes for fun with his childhood best friend, Adam Colvin.
“We considered this ‘our hobby for the hobby’ for a while, just giving collectors a cool place to hang out on a Friday night while we opened boxes for them,” McVay said of his origins. “In late 2018, we left our day jobs and started doing it full-time.”
But McVay describes his journey as a “roller coaster.” While his business is going strong, he recently saw his best friend, Colvin, leave the business they started together. Now, Buck City Breaks is a one-man operation.
Ben Smith regained interest in collecting cards in 2016 and was soon drawn to card breaks. He enjoyed buying into higher-priced products with the opportunity to land something big. But most of his experiences were transactional. He wanted to move more of his base cards and connect and network with community members.
Smith’s solution was to start his own breaking company. In 2018, he began Midwest Box Breaks (MBB) out of Indiana, determined to help collectors sell, trade, network, and build sets. Smith has brought the company from humble beginnings to include a marketplace, five breakers, 3,700 members, and 1,600 Discord members.
Buck City Breaks and Midwest Box Breaks operate on a separate stage from the one occupied by some of the hobby’s larger attention seeking screamers. At times those streams are filled with childish antics, NSFW jokes, elaborate costumes and a cringe worthy presentation.
But the two are not small-time operations either. MBB just passed more than $2 million in sales this year. BCB has more than 31,000 followers between X and Instagram. They occupy a space enjoyed by several other companies that McVay describes as “popular breakers.”
But what exactly is the appeal of breaks? After all, most participants will get less than an equal return in value. It’s part of the business model. A $500 box might be worth $800 or more when a break is filled, with part of it covering shipping materials and postage.
Why do hobby members buy into breaks when the odds say they will lose money? There’s the thrill of the unknown, of course. A chance to see new products opened without spending anything. The possibility of landing something valuable for a modest investment. Sometimes it’s just cheap entertainment that requires only an internet connection. Buck City and Midwest both say it’s something a little deeper.
Online Card Communities
Every break creates a gathering. Collectors join online, not just to watch packs of cards being opened but also to engage with the other people takin in the video stream. After a while, the people get to know each other better, maybe at first bonding over cards or favorite teams, but then moving on to bigger life issues. The chat has a life of its own.
“We really stressed to make a group about people first rather than the money or the cards,” Smith said.
Adam Fertmann, a member of MBB, seems to give the description of a tightly-knit support group and not what one would expect of a breaking company.
“Everyone is empowered to play a role – it’s not about one ‘leader,’” Fertmann told SC Daily. “It’s about everyone demonstrating leadership in their own ways. Some of us help manage the discord server, and others support the break team by building breaks and giving product feedback.”
One key role is to just be a friend to other collectors.
“I have seen people stand beside one another when life can seem at its darkest hour and be there when someone is in need.”
Another member of MBB, Ryan Wise, tells of the time when members raised $10,000 for the Colorectal Cancer Alliance. They also raised money to send a youth baseball team to the Little League World Series. When members or their families have had medical emergencies, the community has been quick to rally around them to cover expenses.
Sometimes collectors drop into a live break just because they need to escape for a bit.
“This community is there to provide whatever support we can for each other,” Wise said. “For me, this community – no, family – has kept me on my feet when I have faced tragedy, has supported my family, and celebrated personal wins with me.”
McVay credits his avid customers with providing energy even when the daily grind of running the business can seem like a huge task.
“This operation means so much to so many people,” McVay said. “It gives what I’m doing purpose, knowing that I’m helping connect collectors and bring joy to so many people.”
Community is a term that is often overused and sometimes mocked. But the key ingredient to breaking companies’ success is a dedicated, loyal following of members who connect to the other people who support it.
The Breaking Experience
The community is in place, in large part, because of the vision the founders had for their companies. McVay understood how to provide an experience that extended beyond the computer screen.
“When you open a Buck City mail day, I always want it to be a positive experience,” McVay said. “I throw bonus items and packs into most of our mail days that I package up, not just those who don’t get much.”
It’s that kind of understanding that keeps McVay in business. One of the biggest criticisms of breakers, from outsiders, is that breaking is a losing proposition for those who buy in. Why would people continue to come in when they’re losing?
“I have had a better ‘return’ by joining breaks as opposed to opening packs and boxes myself,” Fertmann said. “A single jumbo hobby box of Bowman Draft will cost somewhere in the realm of $500-$550. I’d rather spend half that amount on a couple of break spots where I get to focus on the teams I’m most interested in. Without breaks, I couldn’t collect this product at all.”
McVay concurs that breaking can provide a good strategy for building personal collections, collecting favorite teams, and hitting on favorite items.
“The biggest benefit of breaks, to me, is having the ability to buy your ‘shares’ into a product,” McVay said. “It allows collectors to strategically bolster their collections with the players and teams they love.”
In 2018, Smith started breaks at cost to build the business, and as time passed, his profit margin stayed well below 30%, which he was advised to aim for. He notes that he doesn’t take for granted that people are spending their hard-earned money with him.
“The key is to manage your budget, stay disciplined, and look for ways to enjoy the hobby that are cheap or even free,” Smith said. “We offer breaks as low as $10. Having reasonable expectations about what you may pull in a break is also important. In some cases, I have reached out to customers and encouraged them to sit out for a bit. I’ve had customers spend $200 and not hit much and had someone hit a card sold at auction for $62,000, and his break spot cost $14.”
The Grind
For breakers on Smith and McVay’s scale, the hustle never stops. Most weekdays involve 12-14 hour workdays. Working on the weekends is a must. The stacks of cards pile up, and packages must be sorted, matching a stack with the correct shipping labels.
Smith and McVay are also on a constant loop: sourcing products, building breaks, promoting their products, and going online with breaks
“I feel like I have an obligation to my community,” Smith said.
For McVay, a one-person operation with two kids and a baby at home, staying on schedule can be daunting.
“With the additional responsibilities at home that come from having three young kids, I feel like I’m constantly behind,” he said. “Although the grind can be mentally draining and the hours put in can be exhausting, I absolutely love what I do and the community I get to do it for.”
Then, there are times when breaks go unfilled. For McVay at Buck City, the price of the breaks often leaves little wiggle room for discounts or haggling.
“We have always kept our margins modest, which has probably led to some of the struggles in our business,” McVay said. “But it has maximized the joy and positivity we’ve been able to spread throughout the hobby. “When our breaks stall out, we take the remaining teams, average the prices, and allow collectors to purchase spots in a condensed random team pool.”
For Smith at MBB, he usually sees the community step up.
“We are fortunate that our community will rally around unfilled breaks to get them ripped,” Smith said. “If a break doesn’t fill before we go live, it often fills while we are live.”
As for price competition among breakers and people collecting pricing data among breakers, he welcomes it as a sign of health for the hobby.
“My belief is consistency and accountability at fair pricing will help keep a solid customer base,” Smith says. “I enjoy offering discounts and will run at-cost breaks or even a slight loss to bring in new people and to keep our collector friends in the game.”
The Fanatics Factor
It’s believed box breaking traces its origins to 2006, at a card shop named The Backstop in Toms River, NJ, owned by Rick Dalesandro, who created an alter ego called Dr. Wax Battle. He dressed the part for videos promoting his shop.
At first, Dr. Wax was an early-form content creator by filming kitschy skits. But then the videos pivoted toward customer reactions to box breaks. Then, the early form of breaking arrived, where a customer opened a box and shared the cards he got pack-by-pack.
But even as late as 2017, card breaking was considered a niche segment in the hobby. That’s no longer the case. The headwinds indicate that breaking isn’t just here to stay but poised for a breakout.
Fanatics, the current license owner for MLB and soon-to-be for the NFL and NBA, is placing a bet that breaking will continue to grow. There’s no clearer evidence of this than when it created its breaking platform, Fanatics Live.
The platform has nearly 60 breakers, including some of the most well-established companies. If a breaker is on the platform, it can be seen as an official endorsement from Fanatics that you’ve arrived.
Another sign that Fanatics is catering to breakers is their “breaker’s delight” boxes. Debuting with the 2023 Topps Chrome Baseball release, they’re made for breakers. The boxes cut out base cards, include only “hits,” and command a premium to regular hobby boxes. The Breaker’s Delight boxes include only 12 cards per box. It’s the first time a manufacturer has acknowledged making products tailored to breakers.
But even for businesses like Midwest and Buck City who aren’t on the Fanatics Live platform, having a direct account with Fanatics is a big deal. A year ago, Smith went through the interview process and after a few months, he was approved.
“I operated for four years getting product from a secondary source,” Smith said. “With the direct account with Fanatics, it brought my prices down. It was a game changer.”
Smith has been able to pass his savings down to his customers. McVay at BCB is still awaiting approval, hoping for the best for his business and community. Even as a two-time breaker of the year, as named by Beckett Media, he’s on the waitlist.
“I have tried to break through with a Fanatics direct account,” McVay said. “They told me, ‘Everyone, their mother, brother and sister are trying to get in right now, but you’re on the list.’ They looked at my revenue and would rather support higher volume breakers, which I understand. But if I had the backing and direct prices from Topps or Panini, the sky’s the limit.”
The Future
Breaking is a personal relationship. A level of trust is involved when paying someone to open packs of cards, sort them, and carefully mail them for you. Over time, as the process is repeated, that trust deepens.
Breaking companies are chasing a version of the American Dream, making a living by doing what they love. For these breakers, it’s the opposite of taking a profit and moving on to the next.
“I manage myself daily with the mindset that I’m accountable to the hobby and our card community,” Smith says. “It is truly a family to me. I’ve been moved to tears before by their friendship, love, and kindness. On bad days, it picks me up and pushes me to be better.”
Jason Farmer, a regular breaker at BCB, is thankful to be part of the community.
“I’ve had Chris and a chat member send me autographed cards of my favorite two football players just because they’re amazing people,” Farmer said. “They knew how happy it would make me.”
On top of the kindness shown to each other, Farmer also says that McVay will seek recommendations on how to get better for future breaks. One result is that BCB recently started an account on TikTok.
“We have been passed up over the years by other breakers raking in much higher profit margins,” McVay says. “But one motto that I will always hold to is, I’m not going to make as much money as possible to pad my pockets. Instead, I’m going to make as much money as possible to give back.”
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