Sports Cards and Memories: Box Breaks: 4 Boxes of 2018 Certified Football

So one of the things that had people buzzing about Certified this year (and why the price of these boxes went up $10-$20) was it was the first product to feature Tom Brady autos in 2 years. Granted, there are only like 10 autos in the entire product (and they're stickers) but it was enough to get people excited along with this year's top rookies. I, of course, easily swayed, decided to jump in the action as well. At least I didn't pay $120 or more for these boxes, hell I didn't even pay $100. I was able to still get these boxes at $94 a pop. Anyways, I didn't buy them for the Brady's specifically (though certainly doesn't hurt to have a chance to pull them) I tried them because I absolutely LOVE the Rookie Auto Patches in Certified. The Patches are usually so big and multicolored, they look super nice. I have a Kamara from last year and I love it. So I decided to take a chance here and see if I could pull any good rookies. So here's what I got

Box 1

Certified Seal Of Approval
Todd Gurley
Cam Newton
Deshaun Watson
Matthew Stafford

Seal of Approval Mirror Red
Mike Evans (#04/99)

Certified Diamonds
Antonio Gates
Charles Haley

Certified Champions
Derrick Brooks

Gold Team
Michael Strahan
Brian Urlacher

Rookies
Quenton Nelson (#756/999)
Duke Dawson (#116/199)

Rookies Mirror Orange
Marcus Davenport (#205/225)

Base Mirror
Robert Woods (#194/499)

Red Mirror
Jordan Reed (#65/99)

Gold Mirror
Ryan Tannehill (#7/25)

Immortals
Warren Sapp (#678/999)

Immortals Base Mirror
Ty Law (#435/999)

Certified Gamers Orange Mirror
Dez Bryant (#42/149)

New Generation Jersey Card Orange Mirror
Nick Chubb (#11/399)

Gridiron Signatures
Mike Hughes (#53/99)

Freshman Fabric Auto/Patch
Dante Pettis (#87/149)

Box 2

Certified Seal of Approval
Tom Brady
Carson Wentz
Antonio Brown
Dak Prescott

Certified Diamonds
Tony Romo
Tyreek Hill
Warren Moon

Certified Champions
Barry Switzer

Gold Team
Tom Brady
Jimmy Garoppolo

Rookies
Daron Payne (#249/499)
Denzel Ward (867/999)

Rookies Mirror Orange
Braxton Berrios (#167/225)

Base Mirror
Julius Peppers (#303/499)
Jamal Adams (237/499)

Immortals
Randall McDaniel (#583/999)

Immortals Mirror Red
Dan Dierdorf (#17/99)

New Generation Jersey Mirror Orange
James Washington (#45/399)
Mark Walton (#326/399)

Gridiron Signatures Mirror Purple
Arden Key (#3/10)

Freshman Fabric Auto/Patch
Josh Allen (#107/175)

Box 3
Certified Seal Of Approval
Derek Carr
Odell Beckham Jr.
Russell Wilson

Certified Diamonds
Kurt Warner
Kwon Alexander
Malcolm Butler

Certified Champions
Ed Reed
Marcus Allen

Gold Team
Jimmy Garoppolo

Gold Team Mirror Blue
Baker Mayfield (#1/50)

Immortals
Shaun Alexander (#990/999)

Immortals Base Mirror
Barry Sanders (#374/499)

Rookies
Harrison Phillips (#217/999)
Mike Hughes (#505/999)

Base Mirror
Blake Bortles (#388/499)
Joe Flacco (#040/499)

Orange Mirror
Jalen Ramsey (#94/225)

Red Mirror
Kelvin Benjamin (#17/99)

New Generation Jersey
Nyheim Hines

Clutch Performers Jersey Orange Mirror
JuJu Smith-Schuster (#102/199)

Rookie Roll Call Auto
Kyle Lauletta (#92/99)

Freshman Fabric Auto/Patch
Kalen Ballage (#374/499)

Box 4

Certified Seal Of Approval Adam Thielen
Derek Carr
Russell Wilson
Odell Beckham Jr.

Certified Seal Of Approval Mirror Purple
T.Y. Hilton (#3/10)

Certified Diamonds
Dak Prescott
Curtis Martin

Certified Champions
Marcus Allen

Gold Team
Michael Strahan
Brian Urlacher

Immortals Mirror Blue
Roger Staubach (#45/50)

Rookies
Harold Landry (#556/999)

Rookies Base Mirror
Justin Reid (#058/499)

Base Mirror
Doug Baldwin (#481/499)
Chandler Jones (#476/499)

Mirror Orange
Derek Carr (#32/225)

Mirror Red
Blake Bortles (#38/99)

New Generation Jersey
Josh Allen

Certified Gamers Red
Jordan Reed (#21/99)

Certified Potential Autographs Blue Mirror
Trey Quinn (#13/50)

Freshman Fabric Auto/Patch Orange
J-Mon Moore (#060/349)

Overall Thoughts: Well...that was pretty brutal. A couple of items to cover. I absolutely love the mirror parallels, especially of the inserts. The Mike Evans and Roger Staubach parallels I pulled look awesome because they tie to the team colors. Also the Gold Team inserts are REALLY SHARP LOOKING. The best looking insert in this product. Once again, collation reared its ugly head as it's a staple of Panini products. I only bought 4 boxes and was pulling plenty of triples of the base cards and doubles of the inserts. I understand it's a small base set (100 cards) but typically in each pack you only really get 3 base cards (you seem to get a numbered card and insert as your other 2 cards) in a 5 card pack. Also pulling doubles of inserts is equally maddening since those insert sets have so many players. Collation issues will always knock a break down for me in my opinion because 9 times out of 10 it's never in your favor. Again, the Mirror Orange mem cards are great looking, but mem cards these days are pretty much worthless, so unless you pull a low numbered rookie patch or a super duper star (i.e. Rodgers/Brady) you'll basically never get a mem card worth more than $10 tops and those are two of your "hits". This product has too many lower tier garbage autograph sets. There's 2 or 3 autograph sets in the product where you can literally pull NO ONE worth anything. They didn't even bother to like SP or Super SP a rookie in those sets, the Certified Potential and Gridiron Signatures sets are basically full of low level rookies (or defensive players) that no one wants to collect so if you see you pulled one of those, you know it's not really an good no matter the numbering. I pulled an Arden Key Auto numbered to 10..but seriously who cares if it's of an a )defensive player and b)3rd round pick that no one really collects. All 4 "secondary" autos were below than average pulls. The Freshman Fabric cards are still awesome looking. I thought pulling the Josh Allen would've saved my break, but I was surprised to see how low he sells for. It's still an awesome looking card and I'm keeping it regardless. The other 3 rookie patches though..ugh. I already sold the Dante Pettis and the J'Mon Moore is one of the worst autographs ever (he literally just signed a J). All in all it's a sobering reminder of why I don't do much football to begin with. There just really aren't many guys outside of the tippy top rookies who have value.

Success/Failure?- One of the new things I'm doing starting with this break is grading the break on the return you get from investment. I understand getting 100% or more on breaks is very rare but still in my opinion a successful break should average around a 50% ROI (and that's being VERY generous to me). So what I do, is I look at the notable cards I pulled (hits, numbered inserts, rookies etc) and use past sales (or actual sales in case I do sell them) to value them and see approximately how much of a return I would get if I were to hypothetically sell everything. If a break gets to 50% or more I'll deem it successful, if below, it's a failure. So how did Certified stack up? Well I was in this break for $376 ($94 per box) and I estimate that total value of the cards I pulled was about $166 which meant I had a ROI of a little over 44%. That makes this break a failure in my eyes. It would've been even WORSE had I bought these at current prices. I don't recommend busting this at current prices at ALL.

Grade-FAIL

Here are pics of the cards