Published February 11, 2026 | By Alyx E, Founder of Collectors MD
Earlier this month, Josh Luber and Jesse Einhorn released a 30,000-word white paper titled, “The Blindboxification Of Everything“. Luber, co-founder of StockX and founder of Ghostwrite, brings clarity to what’s quietly reshaping the modern-day hobby beneath the surface.
The core idea is simple but unsettling: more and more industries are borrowing from the casino playbook. Mystery. Scarcity. Limited access. Randomized outcomes. Breaks. Repacks. Loot boxes. Drops. Waitlists. Invite-only access.
The hunt becomes greater than the capture.
When I was in active addiction, I wouldn’t have used language like that. I would hide behind words like collecting, investing, participating, or entertainment. But the truth was, I wasn’t chasing ownership. I was chasing adrenaline.
If I hit something big in a break, I didn’t feel at ease. I felt activated. If I missed, I felt urgency. Either way, my nervous system sped up. The object itself almost didn’t matter. The anticipation did.
Luber and Einhorn explore how blind boxes, breaks, repacks, and even luxury goods operate on engineered anticipation. Waitlists for handbags. Invite-only access for luxury watches and sports cars. Raffles for sneakers. Digital repacks scaling from hundreds of thousands to tens of millions in revenue in a matter of months. The mechanics are familiar: variable reward, intermittent reinforcement, emotional suspense.
They say the hunt is greater than the capture, but is it? Because when the boxes are empty, the wrappers are on the floor, and the adrenaline fades… was chasing a card ever worth your stability?
It’s not just cards. It’s sneakers. It’s streetwear. It’s gaming. It’s financial markets. It’s entertainment. All of these systems increasingly reward the thrill of access over the substance of ownership.
And here’s the part that landed hardest for me: if the thrill is the product, what happens to the person chasing it?
In my own life, gambling fed collecting. Collecting fed gambling. One created financial pressure; the other promised relief. One created shame; the other offered distraction. They coexisted. They reinforced each other. And culturally, the environment didn’t slow me down; it normalized the pace.
I’m not anti-hobby. I never have been and I never will be. Collecting will always have a special place in my heart. But awareness changes everything. When the hunt becomes more intoxicating than the object, we have to pause and ask ourselves what we’re actually participating in. Because if we don’t notice the architecture around us, we start believing the urgency is coming from inside us alone.
We’re living in an era where more industries are optimizing for stimulation. That doesn’t mean we’re powerless. It just means we need to be more conscious. The thrill of the chase isn’t the same as building something meaningful, and when we blur that line, we drift away from reality.
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When the game becomes the attraction, awareness becomes the boundary.
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