2020 Bowman - 12 Case - Pick your Player! - BREAK #2

[AlexHunter]

Originally Posted by lisu

I got crushed in the first break. How do I get skunked by Erik Rivera of all players?! but this is fun. Thank you Dave for all you do. I know I like giving you a hard time, but it's much appreciated.

I feel you lisa! I got lucky with two color autos on one guy and was beyond ecstatic (btw an orange and yellow auto STILL doesn’t match I the price I paid for the spot). But all my other spots were totally shut out. I remember you taking that Eric Rivera spot like towards the end and being like “dang she got a good price” win some, lose most in this hobby!


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[reddragonthe]

Originally Posted by wilsonsingles

All i can say, is that it is too much of a coincidence that we are getting almost the same 16 cases (12 in first and 4 in second) of cards (Autos, color Autos, color chrome) in these breaks. Something just isn't quite right.

I'll hold real judgement and give the remainder of the 8 cases left in the break to see if anything changes, but i would bet, we will only see 1 Dominguez Auto and maybe 2 Witt Auto's in the rest of these cases. All the chrome autos/color will essentially remain the same in the next 8 cases apart from maybe 1 or 2 cases.

Just really disappointing if this turns out to be true.

If it turns out that we see 1-2 autos of any prospect auto from here on out I'd say that's not "disappointing" but instead the exact expected outcome based on pack odds.

[AlexHunter]

If boxes and cases were collated perfectly that autos and colors cycled through every player on a checklist and then started over, that would actually be bad for Topps and the hobby I think. It certainly would be bad for breakers (but isn’t there a contingent of people saying breakers are what’s wrong with the hobby?)

The thrill comes with the possibility of getting multiples of one guy and none of another. I could see people being upset if there were stated print runs and multi-case break after multi-case break there was a major discrepancy in the quality of cards and/or color pulled.

My buddy opened a case of bowman hobby and got 2 jasson chrome, one with dimples and OC. Totally pooped the bed on the odds and seems nearly impossible to happen. Then he opened a stray box and got three jasson chrome in it.

I just don’t understand why people try to math nerd out stuff like this. The best value has always and will always be in buying singles. There is no formula to the way hits are packed out. Dave got skunked hard on Vidal Brujan Auto spot and then proceeded to pull like 7 total In The subsequent breaks.

Just enjoy the videos and the cards! Figure out all the financials of it at the end, but don’t ruin the fun experience with business. Business can come later.


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[ExpFacilitators]

Originally Posted by AlexHunter

My man.....you literally just countered your whole argument and explained WHY chasing ROI or expected values in a break is futile.

Let’s be real- We do these breaks to have a greater shot at getting oranges, reds, and supers of certain players at fractions of the cost instead of buying 10 cases ourselves.

There’s very few, if any spots that naturally just make their money back. I had Luis Robert in the last break. Was like $250ish and I’m pretty sure I got fully skunked on color- and with my luck I was on the 30 base side not the 60 base side.

Maybe I’m just not getting it.........I am dumber than you after all.


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I'm not trying to make a positive ROI here. I mean, we collectively overbid so much in these things that we are able to add in $7000 worth of extra product (or 14000 in Houdini's first "10" case break).

What I am saying is that if we make a distribution of success rate for any given player, of course there will be tons of guys that whiff, and there will be some that hit 3-4 color...that's the variance of it all.

But regardless of how likely we are to pull an orange or a gold, once we have that card in hand (for now assume it is a prospect and not an insert), each player should have a 1/150 chance of it being theirs.

when your probabilities are 1/150, the variance (which can be precisely calculated) dwarfs any expected number of successes. But as you increase the number of players (akin to your example of just buying the print run), the variance in your TOTAL successes goes down. In the first break I had approx 35 spots, so every time we pulled a prospect color, i had about 35/150 chance of it being mine, or not quite 25%. In Break 2 i have 33% of chrome spots.

All I want is a reasonable approximation of 25-30% of total color. I am not saying the number of color chromes is high or low, I am conditioning on the information that we have it.

When I watch a recap and I see 10-12 numbered chrome cards, I should have 2-3 of them *on average*, with enough variance in a given case to not be surprised when I get zero. And I wasn't surprised when I got zero a handful of times.

But as the number of cases increases, we know for certain that the true odds will emerge. Yes, even 24 cases is a small small number, but 24 cases with 1/3 of the chrome spots is a slightly different beast.

I think we arrived at a per-hobby-case expectation of 0.18 parallels per spot. Well, if I have 50 spots then I expect about 9 per case (including non-numbered atomics). In this break I'm averaging closer to 3, which is extremely low.

In Houdini's break I have only 4 players, and the jumbo averages make it closer to .13 parallels per player per case, or after 35 cases it should be around 4 per player. I have 4 total, or 1 per player through 35 cases. That's so unlikely even acknowledging that Topps isnt using a random number generator to guide their collation.

Things could definitely turn around a bit, but lets say that these trends keep up for the next 8 cases. If I pull 1 or 2 total orange out of the 50 ish that we have in total (when, again conditional on it being a prospect, I should get 1/3 or 16 of them), that's so unlucky I have to move from fascination to frustration.

it's not about making money or thinking I'm "unlucky" because I only hit 3 autos or didnt pull a red. I actually thought it was mostly funny when I hit zero of the first 20 oranges from the first break. But when I saw the second break start to show the same names again and again, it was less funny. I'm a few cases away from daydreaming about a little Topps gremlin who found my player list on here and started diverting cases to mess with me.

Not to keep invoking the roulette example, but it's important to draw an distinction. Many people treat group breaks like betting on one number, and they expect to hit 1 in 38 tries. They think the wheel is rigged when they go 38 tries without hitting. Stats will confirm how silly that is. It gets less silly the more numbers you bet on. I'm basically playing the first 12 and over a hundred spins, I would like to win 1/3 of them...with full understanding I might only get 1/6th of them. Right now its closer to 1/15th of them and I started lamenting it because I was annoyed at how tilted the table was.

[ExpFacilitators]

Addendum: Discussing this aspect of it is fun for me, even when I'm on the wrong side of variance.

I'd be equally interested if I was hitting 4 mauricio oranges and someone else was whiffing 50 spots. Id be full with spicy nuggets but I would still want to discuss what was wrong with the Wendys in the first place.

[dthimesch]

The other cases still don't show as available for pick up, and I don't know why, But I am going to get them.

I need to take care of some things here this morning/early afternoon.

I am looking at a late afternoon/early evening (Pacific Time) start again

[ExpFacilitators]

Originally Posted by dthimesch

The other cases still don't show as available for pick up, and I don't know why, But I am going to get them.

I need to take care of some things here this morning/early afternoon.

I am looking at a late afternoon/early evening (Pacific Time) start again

Will be fun! Have 2 bowman breaks tonight on top of apparently some big important event related to baseball prospects.

[AlexHunter]

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[KOs Cardroom]

Originally Posted by ExpFacilitators

Firstly, the spicy nuggets are excellent. I want some right now.

I dont really want to extract value in the sense of re-selling or making money on this break. I just love to collect and buy up all the cheap-o chrome spots to facilitate that.

But now imagine you are hungry. You drive up to Wendy's and order 2 10-packs of spicy nuggets and you pull up, pay, and they give you 1 nugget. You call headquarters and they say "sorry, what we meant by a 10-piece was actually a draw from a distribution with mean 10 and st deviation 3, so we can assure you that 99% of the time you're going to get between 1 and 19 nuggets".

You say "damn...I guess I just got unlucky, but I'm still hungry, so I'll go through again. Who knows...I might even get 15 spicy nuggets!"

You order a 10-piece. You just want to enjoy that sweet spicy goodness.

You open your bag and see zero nuggets. Another unlucky draw.

There is a point where, if this kept happening, it would fascinate and/or frustrate you. Maybe 5 passes through the drive-thru, maybe 10...we all have our tolerances.

But in the end, I just want a few spicy nuggets.

haha amazing! well im pulling for you even more now

[ExpFacilitators]

Dave, were you able to track down those pesky cases?

[Neilburkhardt]

Posted on the wrong break by accident, sorry

[dthimesch]

Originally Posted by ExpFacilitators

Dave, were you able to track down those pesky cases?

Yes I have them.

Still looking at getting started in about 3 hours

[ExpFacilitators]

Originally Posted by dthimesch

Yes I have them.

Still looking at getting started in about 3 hours

Cool...glad you found them.

[dthimesch]

Sorry guys I really thought I’d be able to start a bit earlier tonight. Hopefully within the next 20-30 mins

[neema]

Originally Posted by dthimesch

Sorry guys I really thought I’d be able to start a bit earlier tonight. Hopefully within the next 20-30 mins

The effort is there! No rush. The sooner you open them, the sooner some of us realize we had no chance lol

[dthimesch]

Getting set up now

[dthimesch]

Case #5

[dthimesch]

Case #6

[dthimesch]

Not sure how that happened

[dthimesch]

Recap Videos:

Case #5



Case #6



Case #7

[dthimesch]

Case #7

[lisu]

never mind!

[dthimesch]

Be back tomorrow (probably around the same time, unless I can sneak a case in earlier) for another 3.

Since the added cases wont be here until Friday I just didn't figure there was a need to rush a bunch of cases all in one day.

[ExpFacilitators]

Congrats to the Lora spot (and a lesser congrats to me for my Baz spot) for hitting the double oranges. I woke up and took me a few minutes to realize I was looking at different case hits haha.

I’m glad I was on the right side of the orange correlation yesterday but I am still fascinated by the propensity to have cases me that similar to one another.

[droctagon]

Originally Posted by ExpFacilitators

Congrats to the Lora spot (and a lesser congrats to me for my Baz spot) for hitting the double oranges. I woke up and took me a few minutes to realize I was looking at different case hits haha.



I’m glad I was on the right side of the orange correlation yesterday but I am still fascinated by the propensity to have cases me that similar to one another.

Photos of case #6 are posted twice. Not a doubling up, sadly.


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