When Blowout Cards put out a $250k bounty for the complete set of the 2023 Topps Baseball 330-card Golden Mirror Image SSP, it landed right at the feet of Minnesota-based card company Real Sportscards.
Voted Breaker of the Year at the Beckett Industry Summit from 2019-21, Real Breaks, the breaking division of Real Sportscards, had been developing its new App, Uncommon, for a year.
“We’ve been breaking for six years on Facebook, and what we found is that social media is a great place for the community but a terrible marketplace,” said Ryan Holland, CEO of Uncommon. “eBay is a great marketplace but terrible for community. So we created our platform to help with that.”
Holland wanted to launch the app exclusively to his current customers in conjunction with the 2023 Topps release. When Blowout announced its bounty, Michael Walters, a Real Sportscards customer since 2020, approached Holland about an idea.
Walters would purchase 300 cases of 2023 Topps Baseball Series 1 to complete the 330-card Golden Mirror set. As the title sponsor, Uncommon would document Walters’ journey ripping through 3,600 hobby boxes while announcing its launch. At that point, Holland knew he would have a much larger audience.
“Ryan and I became good business-minded friends,” Walters told Sports Collectors Daily. “I became a strategic partner with him too. I told him, ‘Let’s start creating some cool content,’ which is the strategic piece for adding more value.”
Walters, the founder of studio503, a marketing and promotional consultant agency, put up $285,000 for the 300 cases with help from Uncommon’s sponsorship. Walters, who is also a professional angler, used his experience gaining fishing sponsorships in this endeavor.
“I liken a lot of the hobby to fishing,” Walters says. “One more cast, one more pack. You don’t know what’s going to be on the other end of the cast.”
Completing the Mirror Image Variations
For the first time, Topps made a super short print variation for all 330 cards in the set. The Golden Mirror Image Variations show different images of players and teams compared to the base sets. The SSPs emphasize greater emotion.
The odds of getting even one Golden Mirror Image Variation for hobby packs is long–just one is found in every 454 packs. For the larger Hobby Jumbo packs, the odds are one in 46 packs. According to Beckett, there are about 150 copies of each Golden Mirror Image Variation.
“There is no way I could do this alone,” Walters says. “But by being part of the [breaking] community, we could get a lot of people involved.”
Last Wednesday and Thursday, the Real Sportscards shop hosted a steady stream of 20-30 local collectors to open thousands of packs. On the first day of ripping, a father and son in the store hit on an Adley Rutschman SSP rookie, likely the most expensive card in the set. They wanted to sell it back to help with the chase, but Walters and Holland didn’t feel right buying back the card without knowing the true market value of the card.
On top of the 300 cases Walters purchased, Real Sportscards was breaking their allotment of Topps product. Anyone who hit an SSP on a break was allowed to sell it back for $100 credit in a future break.
Once the bounty is hit, anyone who sold back an SSP will get another $100 in credit for a future break and a complimentary prize pack filled with premium cards and Uncommon gear. To date, 44 SSPs have been sold back by breakers.
At last count, Walters was 50 cards away from the finish line. The staff at Real Sportscards is also sourcing cards from eBay where over 1,500 were listed for sale or auction as of Tuesday night..
The Hits
With the amount of ripping taking place, Walters has accumulated his own, well, bounty of cards. Every “hit” is listed in their eBay store including the biggest pulls. In a week’s time, they’ve sold nearly 2,000 cards. Every card is sold in the auction format, starting at 99 cents.
So far, they’ve pulled tens of thousands of parallel and relic cards. How big is the haul? Walters estimates he has about 6,000 relic cards.
Some MONSTER hits from Topps Series 1! They keep getting better as they go. 👀🔥
Ripped LIVE on https://t.co/FobPd2cVFf.#ToppsSeriesOne #GoldenMirrorBounty pic.twitter.com/XKltxeil6X
— @theuncommonapp (@theuncommonapp) February 20, 2023
“One of the biggest transitions I’ve learned from breaking is it’s about being smart when to buy them and when to sell them,” Walters says. “On a new release day, the faster you can get this stuff to market, the faster you can recuperate the investment to go after that bounty.”
The biggest pulls that come to Walters’s mind is a redemption for a one-of-1 Riley Greene Reverence pulled from a silver pack. Walters also recalls pulling a Julio Rodriguez silver pack Orange autograph.
The $1 Million Bounty
Blowout is offering a $1 million bounty for the entire Golden Mirror set (Series 1, 2 and Update). One would think Walters and the Real Sportscards team are primed to go for the Series 2 and Update Golden Mirror Image sets when those products are released later this year. But Walters has no plans to do that.
“No,” Walters laughed when asked about completing the other sets. “The issue with it is the timing. It would take a lot of work to get that done [competing with football]. I call Series 1 the ‘Amazing Chase,’ but the other two I call the ‘Impossible Chase.'”
When the chase is over, Walters, ever the creative, plans to create more content centered on the “full accounting” of the endeavor. He wants to be transparent about how much money he laid out and how much money he made back, including the Blowout bounty.
“Some people think I’m the dumbest guy alive,” Walters says. “Half the people think this is great for the hobby. The other half wants me to fall one card short. I’m actually doing well. Hitting the bounty, obviously, is critical to the return on investment.”
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