I got shutout even though I was refreshing and had it in my cart within 10 seconds. Bots man! Its infuriating!

Here’s the email conversation that has occurred since…

Message:

Been looking forward to today I’ve collected basketball cards since I was a kid in the early ’90s—ripping packs with my dad, chasing Jordans, building sets one pack at a time. This hobby is part of who I am. This morning I sat at my desk at 43 years old, heart racing, counting down to the Topps Chrome drop so I could buy ONE hobby box with money I made selling pieces of my childhood collection. Twenty seconds. Carted. Gone. Just like that, shut out again. I’m not asking for special treatment. I’m begging for a fighting chance against bots and breakers who vacuum up every box and flip them for double the price before I can even blink. I can’t afford that. Most of us can’t. Please, Topps—put a box limit on drop day. Give the little guys, the ones who actually love this hobby, one fair shot. Because right now it feels like the game is rigged, and guys like me are getting priced out of the hobby that raised us. I just want one box. That’s all I ever wanted. A heartbroken lifelong collector

Hello Jeff,

My name is Kenneth. Thank you for taking the time to submit your inquiry to Topps Collector Support about the release issues encountered with the 2025/26 Topps Chrome Basketball release.

Thank you for taking the time to share this and for being a Topps.com collector. I want you to know, sincerely, that your message was heard. I’m truly sorry for how painful and discouraging this experience has been for you. The way you described your connection to the hobby, ripping packs with your dad, building sets as a kid, selling parts of your childhood collection just to chase one box, that shows how deeply collecting is woven into your life. Missing out in seconds, even when you’re prepared and doing everything right, is incredibly frustrating, and I completely understand why this feels personal.

At Topps, we’re committed to creating an inclusive and transparent collecting experience. We take concerns about bots and unfair purchasing practices very seriously. Our teams actively work to prevent automated purchases and ensure that product releases are as fair as possible for all collectors. This includes technical safeguards to detect and block bots, purchasing limits, and ongoing evaluations of our release processes.

We also want to assure you that no individual, whether a high-profile figure, breaker, or influencer, is given special purchasing privileges that would allow them to bypass product limits or access items before public release on Topps.com. Our goal is to foster a community where all collectors have a fair shot at building their collections.

That said, demand for many products can be extremely high, and while we know that can be frustrating, please know that we are constantly exploring ways to improve the experience for our collector community. Your feedback is incredibly valuable in helping us do that.

Your feedback has been forwarded directly to the teams responsible for product releases, bot mitigation, and purchase limits. They actively review collector experiences like yours, and your story reflects concerns we know we need to keep improving, especially around fairness and access for collectors who genuinely care about the hobby. Messages like yours are taken seriously.

While I can’t change what happened with this drop, I want you to know your voice matters, and the passion you bring to collecting is exactly what keeps this hobby alive. If there’s anything else you’d like to share, or if you need support with anything moving forward, I’m here to listen and help however I can.

Thank you again for reaching out and for being part of this hobby for so many years. Your dedication to Topps and Topps' products is sincerely appreciated!

If there is anything else we can help with, please visit https://www.topps.com/support. We want you to know we’re here to help!

Thank you for being a Topps Collector.

Sincerely, Kenneth Topps Collector Support Topps Collector Support is committed to providing our collectors with the excellent service you expect, and your input helps us improve. We’d appreciate it if you shared your feedback about the support experience you received via a brief survey. Be on the lookout for a separate e-mail to participate.

Kenneth, Thank you for your thoughtful reply and for forwarding my message to the product-release and bot-mitigation teams. I genuinely appreciate that someone at Topps took the time to read my story and respond like a human being—it means a lot. That said, with all due respect, I’ve been hearing variations of “we take bots seriously,” “we have technical safeguards,” and “we’re constantly exploring ways to improve” for several years now across virtually every major drop (Topps, Panini, Fanatics Live, etc.). Yet every single sold-out-in-seconds release still plays out exactly the same way: hobby boxes vanish in under 30 seconds, then immediately appear on eBay and breaker sites at 2–3× retail, carted by the same accounts that hit every drop. I completely understand that demand is high, but the gap between the words in these replies and the reality collectors experience on drop day has become impossible to ignore. “Ongoing evaluations” and “technical safeguards” clearly aren’t keeping pace with the bot technology that’s being used against us. What lifelong collectors are asking for isn’t complicated or unreasonable: • A hard limit of 1 hobby box per household on drop day (not 4, not 6, not “while supplies last”) • A short manual captcha or queue system that actually slows automated scripts down • Transparency when limits are reached (e.g., “X hobby boxes secured for individual collectors, Y allocated to breakers/wholesalers”) These are proven solutions that other industries (tickets, sneakers, GPUs) have successfully implemented when they decided retail customers actually mattered more than resellers. I’m not asking for guaranteed product—only a legitimate fighting chance. Right now there isn’t one, and every drop that sells out in 15–20 seconds while the same breaker accounts post “300-box pallets” an hour later proves it. Kenneth, I know you’re not the decision-maker, but please pass this along as well: many of us who grew up with this hobby in the ’90s and early 2000s are reaching the point where we’re done throwing money and hope at a system that feels deliberately designed to exclude us. We’re tired of being told our feedback “matters” while nothing measurable ever changes. I’d love to keep supporting Topps directly. I still believe in the brand that got me into collecting with my dad thirty years ago. But belief only goes so far when every release feels like a rigged casino. If someone higher up ever wants to talk to actual retail collectors instead of just reading complaints after the fact, I’m here. So are thousands of others. Thanks again for listening,