Fanatics Live and Card Breaks

Breakers have become a huge part of the sports collecting hobby, and a hugely polarizing one. Essentially, breakers are companies or individuals that will buy a bunch of product and then sell off spots in their breaks for individual teams or players. So if they are opening a case of soccer hobby boxes, for example, they will sell each team in that product individually. If you want Barcelona, then you have to pay for that spot. Subsequently, every Barcelona card that then gets pulled out of that case is yours and the breaker will then ship the cards to you. For many, this has become a big blight on the hobby as breakers can be awfully obnoxious and people don't appreciate what can be price gouging at times. For a lot of these products, breakers are making multiple times more than what they spent to acquire the product in the first place.

That being said, if you know what product to look like and scour the different breakers on Fanatics Live (personally I've not been impressed by What Not at all), then you will sometimes actually find some very good deals. Let's also face it, it is the only way for many of us to get into breaks of products that would otherwise be way too expensive and STILL hit mega cards. I have been resistant to join breaks up until a few weeks ago when I was home for a month. I don't know if it has been beginner's luck or not, but I've hit some absolutely great autographs. That doesn't even include the case hits or 100 or so numbered cards. As this is an autograph blog, I'll list some of those out. 

Wayne Rooney.

This card is just an absolute monster pull. It's not quite the same feeling as pulling the card yourself, but watching it pulled on a livestream for me was still great. This is an on card autograph numbered 20/50. These Marks of Excellence are some of the most coveted autographs in soccer since on card autos are hard to come by. They fall one every 15 cases of hobby boxes. Each case has twelve hobby boxes. Do the math!

Fernando Morientes

This was a cheap $15 spot I bought for Monaco in a two case break, and was stoked when they pulled this 1955 version gold auto /50 of Fernando Morientes. This just an absolutely beautiful card and these fall one every 4 cases. so every 50 or so hobby boxes. 

Gianfranco Zola

Another soccer icon was hit from a Chelsea spot I won in a Select break. This break was auction style where if you're the winning bid, the wheel spins and you're randomly assigned a team. I got lucky and got Chelsea, which of course hit. This is a nice autograph though not numbered. Zola was enough of a legend to end up in my soccer autograph case though.

Lennart Karl Rookie Auto

In another auction, I was lucky and drew Bayern Munich. In one of the two boxes, they then hit this massive rookie auto of Bayern Munich young stud Lennart Karl. This kid is the chase rookie in the Topps flagship 2025-26 set so to pull his autograph was huge! This is an easy $300 plus autograph as there is a lot of hype around this kid.

The next autograph might not be the biggest, name, but it's a stunning card as it is the black mojo refractor numbered 2/10 of Bayer Leverkusen forward Victor Boniface. He's a solid player and pulling any autograph to /10 or less is massive. The card pops in person. 

This is an auto mem card of Dortmund forward Karim Adeyemi numbered /150. This card was pulled from Museum Collection, which is a higher end set. It's not the craziest autograph, but it's a cool hit nonetheless and Adeyemi is a good player.

This Antony autograph /150 was hit from yet another case of Topps Flagship. I have joined a lot of breaks for this product as there are some crazy deals to be had. For example, I had the Betis spot for free as part of a deal I made to get Leverkusen. Another solid player and a numbered autograph for a free spot.

Lastly, I also had to post Federico Chiesa Select autograph I hit for Liverpool in the same break as the Zola above. I already had a Chiesa auto /50, but as a Liverpool supporter it's always nice to hit an autograph of one of these guys.

Overall, my experience has been pretty good in my couple of weeks participating in breaks. You really have to keep an eye on cheap deals though since sports like football and basketball will always be overpriced with so many people trying to get into the breaks. I've only rarely been able to get any deals on anything outside of soccer, though I did get a couple $2 spots in some. It can also be very dangerous because it is very easy to spend money, so tread carefully on these platforms.