This was DEFINITELY true of MTG in the Legends era (95ish). We did it all the time when the FLGS would crack open a box after we figured it out. Well to be fair, after we figured it out, everyone insisted on the box being dumped and randomly re-arranged after that....jmpowell wrote: ↑Sun Jan 21, 2024 4:04 pm Some people in the collectibles market will do sketchy things to “sealed” product. Reportedly, some of the old 1990s collectible card games weren’t really random—if you knew the formula, you could crack open a sealed booster box, open just one pack, and based on the rare card in that pack you could deduce which rare cards were in the other packs based on the packs’ position in the box. People would pull the packs with the high-value cards, then put the box out on the shelf to sell the other boosters by the pack.
NONE of us would buy Legends packs unless we were standing there when the FLGS took the wrapper off the box after that fateful day. There were exactly 3 types of Legends boxes.
You could literally open the pack on the top left and then accurately predict the ENTIRE BOX. It was insane. Every freaking card exactly put in all the packs throughout the case the exact same way. We went back and proved Antiquities, Arabian did it. Dark did it. Each of these had two types of boxes.
They broke this pattern with Ice Age. It also didn't occur in Unlimited or Revised. Can't comment on Alpha/Beta as the availability of those were zero when we figured this out. I know a guy who bought Arabian sealed boxes and cherry picked packs out of them and made SERIOUS money doing it....on BBS boards long before the internet at large even had thought about being created.
As for shaking...that's fair...if its the consumer doing the shaking. The moment the FLGS starts weighing/shaking before a customer can touch the product and then pulling based on that result? That's tampering and probably illegal. This comment about them opening and re-sealing is DEFINITELY illegal.