Matt Olson & Pack Wars
Everyone that opens cards likes to gamble. If you didn't, you'd just buy singles, since the majority of the time, you're going to do better buying single cards than opening a pack, box, or case. Sure there are some exceptions like Brent & Becca who open tons of cases and have a network of pre-buyers, and occasionally you will hit that Red Ink Shohei Ohtani autograph, but those are a minority of cases.
One of the more interesting aspects of getting a bunch of gamblers together is the idea of collective risk/reward. I've had this happen in the casino, where my wife and I have "shared" the winning/losing of high limit slots with another couple. It was a total blast, and something that I would do again in a heartbeat. It's always good to have people rooting with you. Which brings me to the idea of pack wars. The idea behind pack wars is simple: a set number of people (usually divisible by the number of packs in a box) buy in equally to however much product will be opened, in this case a box of 2013 Bowman. I must confess that at the time, I had no idea who was in the product and didn't care, except that I wanted to gamble with some friends.
Then everyone gets a pack and before they are opened, someone sets the ground rules. For the first round, someone might say "highest career home run total" - and the person who gets the Albert Pujols card is happy and the person with all the pitchers in their pack is bummed out. I particularly like the fattest, shortest, or oldest player, but I also enjoy "most total vowels in a name." You can get creative. Whoever wins the round gets the cards from ALL packs for that round.
That is how I got my first Matt Olson card - a 2013 Bowman Blue Refractor Autograph. And I decided at that point that I might as well collect him, since it seemed like fate that I would be getting him. So I got some more stuff, and it's been a pleasure to watch him develop and improve since that time. I probably should have sold his stuff off during the fall of 2017 when he went on a Home Run Rampage, but I enjoyed following his career too much. Ah, my first foray into prospecting.
One of the more interesting aspects of getting a bunch of gamblers together is the idea of collective risk/reward. I've had this happen in the casino, where my wife and I have "shared" the winning/losing of high limit slots with another couple. It was a total blast, and something that I would do again in a heartbeat. It's always good to have people rooting with you. Which brings me to the idea of pack wars. The idea behind pack wars is simple: a set number of people (usually divisible by the number of packs in a box) buy in equally to however much product will be opened, in this case a box of 2013 Bowman. I must confess that at the time, I had no idea who was in the product and didn't care, except that I wanted to gamble with some friends.
Then everyone gets a pack and before they are opened, someone sets the ground rules. For the first round, someone might say "highest career home run total" - and the person who gets the Albert Pujols card is happy and the person with all the pitchers in their pack is bummed out. I particularly like the fattest, shortest, or oldest player, but I also enjoy "most total vowels in a name." You can get creative. Whoever wins the round gets the cards from ALL packs for that round.
That is how I got my first Matt Olson card - a 2013 Bowman Blue Refractor Autograph. And I decided at that point that I might as well collect him, since it seemed like fate that I would be getting him. So I got some more stuff, and it's been a pleasure to watch him develop and improve since that time. I probably should have sold his stuff off during the fall of 2017 when he went on a Home Run Rampage, but I enjoyed following his career too much. Ah, my first foray into prospecting.
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