Published September 08, 2025 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD

Have you ever opened a box of cards—maybe just a blaster or mega box—chasing that one big hit for your PC? By the fifth or sixth box, the thrill begins to fade, and defeat starts creeping in. Then, suddenly—maybe in the very last pack of the final box—something catches your eye. A shimmer peeks out from behind a stack of base cards—a design you haven’t seen yet. You dramatically slow roll it, heart pounding, and reveal a beautiful short print or parallel of a player you genuinely love.

For that brief, fleeting moment, you’re overwhelmed with joy. But almost instantly, instinct takes over—you race to 130point or CardLadder to check the comps. And within just a few moments, the feeling shifts. What you thought might be worth at minimum, a few hundred dollars raw—perhaps even more graded, turns out to be just enough to barely cover the $60 box it came from. And the sting is even sharper knowing you already ripped through several boxes just to get there.

Then the spiral begins. That inner voice starts whispering: Should I keep ripping? Maybe I’ll hit even bigger in the next box.

That’s the trap so many of us fall into—the slow creep from just one more to losing count of how many we’ve opened. The initial joy of pulling a card we genuinely like gets swallowed up by the disappointment of realizing how much we’ve spent chasing it. Suddenly, the math overshadows the moment.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The real catch-22 is that the joy was there all along—you didn’t need another box, a comp check, or a bigger hit to validate it. When you pull a card that truly belongs in your PC, that deserves to be enough. That’s when intention comes in. If it fits the filters and criteria you set for yourself—whether that’s a favorite team, player, design, subset, or simply something that sparks joy—then it already has value. Maybe not necessarily monetary value, but meaning.

I was reminded of this recently when I let myself rip a few Select Basketball mega boxes and pulled a Stephen Curry Crown Jewels super short print. My heart skipped a beat. The card was stunning. It checked all the boxes: great player, sleek design, desirable set, and a rarity that felt special the moment I saw it.

Then I checked comps—$60–70 at best. That’s when I stopped myself. I realized the number was irrelevant. I wasn’t planning to flip it. I wasn’t even planning to grade it. I reminded myself that I was ripping for passion, not profit.

Even if the market says otherwise, a card holds lasting value because of what it means to you, not what it’s worth.

For me, if I’m going to rip, it has to be mindful and intentional now. It’s not about chasing or proving anything to anyone in my inner circle or on social media. It’s about the purity of the hobby—the joyful moments that make you smile, the cards that make you pause, the pieces that mean something only to you.

And that’s the shift so many of us need. Because it’s easy to forget, in a hobby that constantly tells us to grade, to flip, to chase, to compare—that the real measure of a card isn’t in the dollar amount it commands—it’s in the story it carries. It’s in the way your heart jumps when you pull it, the memory of the moment, and the meaning it holds long after the comps have changed.

At the end of the day, the hobby isn’t supposed to leave you with a pit in your stomach—it’s supposed to give you something to hold, to cherish, and maybe even to pass down one day.

When you let joy outweigh value, you realize that sometimes one card, pulled with intention, can be worth infinitely more than a mountain of empty boxes.

#CollectorsMD
The value of a card isn’t what the market says—it’s the joy it gives you.

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