During an eBay Live stream dubbed “The $10 Million Box Break” with Logan Paul and Ken Goldin, the duo pulled two copies of the famous Magic Johnson-Larry Bird-Julius Erving Topps Scoring Leaders card from a sealed box of 1980 Topps Basketball.
While unearthing a valuable card like this from a decades-old box is certainly exciting, let alone two, the question it poses is: Did they beat the odds?
Considering the set features 176 cards (each including three panels of one player each), and each 1980 Topps Basketball box includes 36 packs of eight cards each for a total of 288, if evenly collated, each box should yield 1.64 examples of the card.
Uncut sheets of the set show the card featuring the trio was actually double-printed, so it seems as though Goldin and Paul beat the odds on this one, if only slightly.
What about the value of those two basketball grails?
A BBCE-certified box of 1980 Topps Basketball goes for around $15,000 these days.
While a PSA 10 copy of the Scoring Leader card has sold for as much as $840,000 in the past, and recently for $600,000, there are just 24 out of a total PSA population of 17,181. That is a Gem Rate of 0.14%.
A pack-fresh card certainly does not guarantee a PSA 10; in fact, when dealing in vintage, it is quite unlikely. This specific set is known for print defects, specifically black or white dots on the surface. That is in addition to centering issues one would expect for a card of this era.
Though it is difficult to say what the odds of landing a PSA 10 is, using the Gem Rate as an imperfect barometer, it seems highly unlikely that either of these cards would yield a 10. There are 634 PSA 9s, each of which is worth essentially the same as the box.
So, if both these pulls were to receive 9s, it would be a return of double the investment. But, if neither were graded higher than an 8 (which goes for around $8,000), a decently high likliehood considering just 725 of the 17,181 (4.2%) achieved that feat, the pulls would not meet the $15,000 value of the box.
The pair continued breaking boxes into the late afternoon, pulling three Hulk Hogan cards from a box of 1985 Topps WWF Wrestling.
More than 20,000 people were watching the live stream.
Will Stern is a reporter and editor for cllct, the premier company for collectible culture.