How this works, in plain terms.

What is a break?

A breaker buys sealed sports card product — a box, several boxes, a case, or several cases — and opens it live on stream. Before they open it, they sell the teams: one spot per team in that sport.

Whoever holds a team keeps every card of that team that comes out of the product. You are not buying a specific card, and you are not buying a share of the whole box. You are buying one team, across everything that gets opened.

So what am I actually paying for?

One team, for the whole of that break. If the breaker is opening six boxes, your team is yours across all six. That is why the number of boxes matters so much: the same twenty-two dollars buys six times as much product in a six-box break as in a one-box break. The figures here are shown per box, so breaks of different sizes can be compared fairly.

Random, pick-your-team, what is the difference?

Random

Every spot costs the same and teams are drawn at the end. You are paying for a place in the draw, not for a team — so the price is about the product, not about who you end up with.

Pick your team

Each team is priced and sold separately, so a strong team costs more. This is where the team-by-team upside is worth looking at, because you are choosing.

Pick two / division

Variants on the same idea — more than one team per spot, or teams grouped. Priced like pick-your-team.

What do people mean by wax, hits and the ceiling?

Wax

The sealed product itself. "What the wax cost" means what the breaker paid for the boxes.

Hit

An autograph, a relic or a serial-numbered card — the cards that carry most of a break's value.

Ceiling

The rarest card a team could produce out of that product. Not what you will get; the top of what is possible.

What is “cost / spot”?

Roughly what each spot needs to sell for so the breaker covers the sealed product, shipping and the platform’s fees. If spots are selling well above it, the room is paying a premium; if they are selling near or below it, spots are cheap for that product. Pick a break size at the top of the catalogue to see it for that many boxes.

It is a guide to what a break costs to run, not a price anybody has paid.

What does the box price mean?

What it costs right now to buy that sealed box from a shop or marketplace, with shipping where we have it. Where shipping is not in a figure, the line under it says so. Where a price is for a whole case, the page says that too.

Why is the spot price higher than the box cost per team?

Because that is what a break is. The breaker is carrying the cost, the risk and the work of opening it, and the room is paying a premium for that. We show the cost and the going rate side by side and leave the judgement to you — how much of a premium is worth paying is your call.

How current is any of this?

Figures update as new breaks and listings come in, and prices carry a date where it matters. A product nobody has broken recently has older figures. Prices can change quickly, and any figure can be wrong or late, so treat them as a guide rather than a promise. Nothing here is financial advice.

Is this a card price guide?

No. We do not put a value on individual cards. You cannot choose which cards come out of a break; you can only choose which team, at which price, so that is what we focus on.

What is "worth chasing"?

How many cards on a team’s list are genuinely rare — numbered cards, autographs, relics and cards with long published odds. One rare card in a huge set is a lottery ticket; thirty chase cards is a reason to want that team.

Alongside it we show the rarest card your team could produce and its odds, where the set’s maker has published them.

What are my odds of hitting?

Where a set’s maker publishes odds for a card — "1 in 8,505 packs" — we show them. They describe the product as a whole, not your spot, so they are not a prediction of what your team will get. We do not estimate pull rates or expected value.

Why do I keep seeing a dash?

A dash means we do not have enough to show that figure yet, and we would rather show nothing than a guess. Tap or hover the dash and it tells you why.

Some figures also need an account, and on a plan with a daily limit they fill in one product at a time. Once the day’s look-ups are used, those columns go quiet and say so; the cost figures stay where they are.

What can I see without signing in?

The whole catalogue — every product’s name, sport, format, release date and how many cards are on its list — the release calendar and who is worth watching. Prices need an account: what a sealed box and a case cost, what a break of any size costs, and what a spot needs to sell for to cover it. A free account is enough to see them.

A plan adds what spots have actually been selling for, the usual range, what breaks take per box, and which way prices are moving. What a plan costs.

Why does a product have no teams listed?

Because we do not have a checklist for it yet. The team list and the rarest-card figures are built from the checklist, so they appear once it does. The product page tells you if one is on its way.

What does the breaker console show me?

Your recent breaks: what the spots took, what the platform kept in fees, what the sealed product cost, and what was left. Nobody else can see it, and you cannot see anybody else’s.

How do I link my stream?

Enter the handle you go live under on the console. We check the handle is really yours before the console opens — usually the same day — so nobody else can read your numbers.

What is “break-even per spot”?

What a break needs to average per team to cover the sealed product, shipping and fees. You can see it before you open, which is when it is useful.

Shipping is yours to set: put a figure per box in settings and it is included across your console. Leave it blank and the page says where shipping is not included.

Are the fees right for my account?

Your fee tier and rates are yours to set in settings, and every figure on your console follows them. Product pages show the standard figure for everybody, with your own beside it where your settings differ.

Some of my breaks show only a handful of spots seen.

For some breaks we only have part of the sales, so we leave the take, fees and profit blank rather than show a total that is too low. The cost and break-even for those breaks are still shown.

Which sports?

Football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer, and every other sport with cards — racing, wrestling, MMA, boxing, tennis, golf and the Olympics — team breaks only. Player breaks are not covered.

Which products?

Boxes and cases. Blasters, hangers, megas and fat packs are a different market, so they are not included.

Why is a set I know missing?

We cover what is actually being broken, not every set ever printed. A set appears once breaks of it start.

Do I need a card to start?

No. The free trial starts on the collector side; one setting in Settings moves it to the breaker side and its console. If you do nothing at the end of it the account drops to the free tier — it does not charge you and it does not delete anything.

How do I sign in?

With an email address and a password. Where Google sign-in is offered on the sign-in page you can use that instead, and you can manage both from settings.

How do I cancel?

From settings, which opens Stripe's own billing page — cards, invoices and cancellation all live there. This site never sees your card details. Cancelling drops you to free at the end of the period; nothing is deleted.

Where do the prices come from?

Cardonomics uses its own software to record what happens in live breaks on Whatnot — the spots sold, their prices and the break titles — and box prices from shop and marketplace listings.

If you sell or buy in breaks and want to be removed, email [email protected].

Do you publish who bought what?

No. Buyer identity is never shown anywhere on this site.

Can other people see what my breaks took?

No. Nobody using this site can see another seller’s takings, spot prices, viewer counts or individual breaks. You see your own, once your handle is verified, and nobody else’s at all.

What is published is a market figure for a product, and only once enough different sellers have broken it that no single seller’s prices can be picked out. Where sellers are named at all, on Who to watch, it carries no money.

What about my data?

Your settings, your plan and any stream you have linked. You can download a copy of your account data or delete the account outright from settings, and the privacy policy says what is kept and for how long.