Sealed Sports Card Boxes

Hobby boxes are exclusively available from dealers and distributors, while retail boxes are widely available. Hobby boxes and cases are more likely to contain high-value hits, like parallels, guaranteed autographs, memorabilia cards, and numbered cards. You can still pull cards of value from retail boxes, but autographs and lower numbered parallels are not as common in retail as they are in hobby boxes.

A hobby box is an individual box that includes a certain number of packs of cards, which is dependent on the product line. A hobby case holds a specific number of hobby boxes. Many brands will have a “case hit” which is a very rare card of higher value which will be randomly placed in one of the boxes in any given hobby case. By purchasing a hobby case instead of a box, you are guaranteeing you find the case hit.

The answer depends on when you ask! The most popular cards change depending on the season—baseball card cases are especially popular during baseball season, and so on—but other factors can affect their desirability, as well. For example, if a popular movie about football came out, people might flock to football sports card boxes. 

All that said, new sports card releases from all sports are always flying off the shelves. Chasing rookies from all sports is also a very common tactic among collectors.