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What Drives the Success of Live-Streamed Trading Card Box Breaks?
Chance, community, and nostalgia make box breaks a Vegas-style hobbyist’s dream. But is it gambling?
KEY POINTS
- Practical and psychological factors make live-streamed box breaks compelling.
- Nostalgia and community amplify the meaning assigned to sharing trading cards.
- Live streaming and the chance of getting a valuable card to increase the urgency and excitement.
A box break is a live-streamed event where an online host or ‘breaker’ breaks open a case of sports cards or reveals other memorabilia live online. Before a conversation with Ryan Hockensmith at ESPN, I knew very little about the rising enthusiasm for box breaking. With trading card box breaks, participants can buy in by purchasing spots from the breaker. Purchasing spots can be for a team or a place in the selection order. Also known as group breaks, popularity has surged in recent years among sports card collectors. It is a mash-up of the long-standing hobby of sports card collecting with the trend of unboxing videos on YouTube with Las Vegas thrown in. The trend is so popular that there are box breaks for kids, albeit the ones I saw were really unboxing videos and didn’t require buy-ins.
