Have you ever heard the term “hot box” thrown around in the sports card industry and wondered what the heck they were talking about? Well, worry no more!
A hot box in the sports card collecting world is a box where every pack inside the box contains a hit (autograph, jersey, limited, etc). Panini, Topps, etc will sometimes put out hobby boxes that have a chance of being a hot box. You can see a recent example where packercards87 on youtube got a hotbox of 2019 Panini Legacy Football:
What are Hot Packs?
There are a couple different definitions for hot packs. Sometimes people open boxes of product where X hits per box are guaranteed. Let’s say there’s 10 packs in a box. The buyer opens 9/10 packs and did not get a hit. Therefore, the last pack should contain the hit. People then take these packs and sell them as “hot packs” for 2-3x the typical retail price on eBay, etc. Another method some use is weighing packs to find heavier ones that presumably include a thick memorabilia card.
Another type of hot pack is when a person repacks their own packs to guarantee “hits”. These packs are, in my opinion, never worth it. If you apply common sense, it’s easy to understand that no person trying to make money would put valuable cards into a repack product and then sell the packs for less than the value of the hit. Most of these repackers get their friends to claim they got an epic hit and then load their products up with cheap jersey card hits that are a dime a dozen. Avoid these repack products!
Have you ever bought a repack product or hot pack before? What was your experience? Leave a comment below!
