I Joined a "High End" Group Break and Ended up With Two Cards!

 A couple of weeks ago, I decided to plunk down some of my hard-earned money in another one of The Iron Lion's online high-end group breaks.  Truth be told, I'm not 100% sure what made me decide to join in this particular break.  The main reason that I did is that the cost wasn't actually all that high for a product that I'd never be able to afford on my own.  

Like most Iron Lion breaks, the break I joined was for a random team.  I generally avoid breaks where I don't get to pick my own team, but like I said, for some reason I ended up joining this break anyhow.

Thanks to the randomization, I ended up with the Houston Astros as my team in a case break (or maybe it was a half-case break, I forget now) of 2020 Topps Five Star baseball.  The Astros wouldn't be my first choice (obviously the Reds would be) but if you are going to get a random team in a break involving products from 2018-2020, the Astros are a pretty good choice.  As luck would have it, being the owner of Houston worked out okay for me.

I ended up with not one, but two hits from the break.  Considering there was something like a total of 20 cards in the break (exact numbers escape me but I know it wasn't much), I figured I'd be lucky to get one card, let alone two!

All of the cards in 2020 Five Star are hits - and both of my cards happened to be of the autographed variety.  First, I scored this Abraham Toro rookie auto.

I don't know much about Toro but a quick look at baseballreference.com tells me he is sporting a rather pitiful .146 batting average this year through 82 at bats with the Astros.  Ouch.  His autograph also leaves little to be desired if you ask me.

While I would have been happy to get a single card from the break, the group break gods actually smiled on me more with the last card of the break!

That's a gorgeous Five Star Golden Graphs autograph of Jeff Bagwell in gold ink #/40.  It was super cool to land this particular card, especially since it was the final card from the break and I had already resigned myself to having overspent for a single autograph of rookie I had never heard of!  

Ultimately, participating in any sort of group break is a gamble of sorts*.  For higher end breaks, the gamble is much more pronounced - you can hit it really big but most often you'll either get shutout entirely or end up with a single, mostly worthless card.  For this particular break, I hit it perfect - more than one card and something cool that I'd never otherwise have owned!  

*This is a big reason why I try to keep almost all of my breaks on my Facebook  group break page super affordable if I can.  The potential payout may be less but the potential risk is also a lot less.  Plus, I break fun stuff where things like base cards and basic inserts are the main draw, not crazy gold ink autographs!

Speaking of owning, while I do like the look of the Bagwell card a lot I have to admit that he's one of my all-time least favorite Astros (he and Berkman always crushed the Reds and I still harbor a grudge).  Thus, I ended up posting both the Bagwell and the Toro on eBay last night.  If you have any interest in either, I'd love for you to consider placing a bid...though if bidding gets too high then I might be tempted to join in even more higher end breaks and that's probably a bad idea given the Law of Averages!