An experiment: hot pack vs regular packs: Rookies & Stars

[kornbreadchild]

Before I yabber away, feel free to correct me if I am unsure of certain specific detail.
So I decided to see, what the deal is with hot packs on ebay and to see if they are tampered with. Now some of you make flame me because I don't know this but I only got back into the hobby in October 2009 since leaving in 2002 so I might have missed out on the obvious.

EBAY, got a friend to buy me 5 hot packs of Rookies & Stars.

Then when I got them, went to the card shop, and bought 5 regular packs of rookies & stars from a box.

now let me ask, does Longevity have a different packaging from the hobby version?

The packaging of the hot packs seemed glued up. They definitely did a good job of sealing it. BUT if you guys have opened up rookies stars, you noticed next to kobe on the front, there is a white space. well for the hot packs it was really transparent. I could make gilbert arenas as the first base card on one of them. PLus there was no Hobby on the packaging.The back of the packs seemed to be "marked" in a way that could identify them. And the foil coloring on the front was different that the hobby packs. or put it this way, the BOX FRESH packs.

So I opened one pack, and cards were in ORDER, meaning not upside down or back to front and there was my first "hit" a base parallel Mike Bibby single Swatch. This was definitely not LONGEVITY then because it would say so right?

Cards are real, the hit is real, but I can conclude that the packaging is eiter reproduced or resealed.

the second pack, same story, with a Stephen Jackson swatch....but then the 3rd pack, when opening the foil, there was a price tag sticker of $4.49 inside the foil. LOL. stephen jackson swatch again in that one. Fourth pack, devin harris swatch and the 5th, wilson chandler swatch.

but i just wonder why if people do know this, continue to patronize obvious fake packaging and garbage GU cards for 10 bucks not including shipping when they can just buy something better for less? i mean its definitely known YOU WON'T get a HIGH END hit from this.....

Again sorry if I am posting the obvious. I just never got this hot pack thing even though i have read about it and seen it on the bay so I just had to find out....

[kornbreadchild]

so after watching some longevity breaks on the tube, the hot pack is definitely NOT longevity and its some remade/resealed stuff.

[beishuizen91]

Very nice experiment. I knew from the beginning those packs were tampered with, but if your looking for trade bait then those packs dont seem like that bad of an idea for most people. I personally would rather just spend my 10 bucks on a single [s]