Opening Sealed Products

 Clearly I've diverted my attention and resources predominantly to breaks since early January 2026. I feel that the return on investment is just so much higher than when I buy retail products or even my own hobby boxes. All that being said, I still partake once in awhile in retail or sealed hobby, especially when said hobby boxes are cheap. That case happened to me over the Labor Day weekend as I found 2024 Topps Chrome Women's Champions League hobby boxes for $70 a pop. For context, mega boxes in which you aren't guaranteed anything will often cost just about the same. I bought four boxes. All four had one autograph per box plus five numbered parallels. The four autographs and my favorite hit are all posted below.

What I really appreciate about the women's sets is that they have big names on their autograph checklists. The Vivianne Miedema /25 auto is a great example. She's one of the best female players in the world and it's a low numbered auto. Dianni /35 is another good one. Dumornay is another good young player although that auto is /199. I don't know much about Fujino but it's a rookie auto /99. The Salma Paralluelo starting XI parallel is just a beautiful card. The gold on it looks like real gold even though it's not. Plus, the Caroline Graham Hansen card is a case hit. I also got 19 other numbered cards from the 4 boxes in addition to the Paralluelo. 

I know people will tell me the boxes are cheap because the resell value on women's soccer cards is low and they aren't necessarily blatantly wrong. BUT, this product is a fun rip and relatively easy to make your money back on at a price point as low as it is. Besides, for me the fun is opening the cards and keeping the autographs anyway so the total value doesn't mean as much to me as it does to some.