Blind Boxing: do you want excitement, or cost-effectiveness?

This post features my ponderings about blind boxing. In particular the financial aspect. I think there are several sides to this story and being asked questions from non-collectors such as, "Why do you buy these boxes when you don't know what you're getting?" has inspired me to talk about these views.

I'm sure many Vinylmation collectors have thought at some time or other about the cost of this hobby. Maybe you've thought about ways to make it cheaper, how to set your budget, what you're currently spending, etc. I will hopefully never add up what I spend on vinyls, because I know it will be a lot and I'll probably think of 1 million other things I could have spent that amount of money on. But at the end of the day, I love my vinyls and I haven't regretted a single purchase so far.

But to give a balanced view of the different options available, I wanted to use this post to compare good ol' fashioned blind boxing (or bloxing) with other, potentially cheaper methods.

Take the recently released Park 12 Series for example. I was so excited about Park 12, that I bought the maximum of 8 blind boxes from the Disney Store online, the very day it was released. If we factor in my state sales tax, that made each box $14.05 and so my order came to a total of $112.40.

Compare this price to eBay, where I could buy half of someone's case (11 figures) plus the Director Mickey combo topper for $143.94. That's 12 figures for $31.54 more than I paid for what turned out to be 6 figures with 2 duplicates. So arguably eBay would have been the more cost effective option. I even found an eBay listing cheaper than blind boxing. A tray of 11 figures (so no chaser) for $105. That's $7 less for 11 figures than I paid for 8 figures. Making eBay not just a cost-effective option, but a cheaper option. I can understand why people would opt for the secondary market.

But, here's the catch if money's your concern:

• You just don't know what the secondary market will be like. Those listings I found on eBay, were pretty good. But, people might not be selling trays when you want to buy one. You might want the chaser and most of the time trays on eBay do not include the chaser. The price might not be right, trays for sale on eBay might mean you break even on what you would have paid for 11 or 12 blind boxes.
• If you don't want a whole set, individual vinyls often work out more expensive on eBay. Buy It Now prices often range $15-$30 for recently released vinyls and you could spend days in a bidding war trying to get the price cheaper. Bids may even end up at the same price or more than a Buy It Now price, meaning vinyls would cost you more on the secondary market than blind boxing.
• You won't pull a chaser if you don't blox. Chasers (depending on the popularity and date of release) sell for upward of $50 on eBay. You could spend $50 bloxing and you might end up with a chaser.

I wanted 6 figures from Park 12 (plus 2 figures I would keep if I bloxed them). 8 out of 12 meant the odds were in my favor to try my hand at bloxing. I didn't get everything that I wanted, but the excitement of buying them, waiting for them to arrive, opening them and the thrill of getting exactly what I wanted, made the extra money worth it. In my opinion, you can't get that Vinylmation excitement unless you blind box. While it might be cheaper and/or more cost effective to buy from the secondary market sometimes, I don't believe you can get that same thrill using that collecting method. Having said that, I don't condemn buying vinyls from eBay, that's just my take on why I still blind box, when other methods could work out cheaper.