2015 Topps Hobby vs Retail

For the 2015T Hobby vs Retail we have pitted a Hanger Pack and 3 Looseys from a big box store against a Jumbo Pack and 3 Hobby Packs from a Card show. Both purchases were similar in price.

The Retail came to $16, The PA Tax and Target Red Card discount are almost a push which brings everything back to near list price. The Hobby offering was $11 for the Jumbo and $2 each for the Hobby Packs. The dealer unexpectedly charged tax on the purchase pushing the sale to $18.

Here is the scorecard:

 

Retail 
$16 - 1 Hanger & 3 Looseys

5 - Phillies (4 Base - Best = Chooch, 1 Robin Roberts insert)
84 - Unique Base Cards (23% - includes 4 Phils above)
    Best = Stanton, Puig, George Springer, Felix Hernandez
10 - Inserts (including aforementioned Roberts)
 -2 Archetypes (Aaron, Ryan)
 -2 First HR (Mattingly, Matt Carpenter
 -2 Highlight of the year (1968 Catfish, 1973 Ryan)
 -1 Jackie Robinson story
 -1 Inspired Play (Pirates Stargell-McCutchen)
 -1 Free Agent (Fisk)
 -1 Baseball History (1955 Robin Roberts)
1 - Variation (Greg Holland - Gatorade)
13 - Duplicates
102 Total Cards

Hobby
$18 - 1 Jumbo and 3 Hobby
1 - Phillies Card (Bastardo)
68 - Unique Base Card (19%)
     Best = Pence WS, Posey, Springer, Tom Koehler
9 - Inserts
 -2 Archetypes (Puig Jeter)
 -2 Highlight of the Year (1965 Marichal, 2001 Ripken JR)
 -1 Inspired (Pirates AGAIN)
 -1 Free Agent (Dawson)
 -1 Baseball History (1957 Red Schoendienst)
 -1 First Pitch (Keflezighi)
 -1 Call Your Shot (Is anybody using these)
1 - Buy Back (1978 Topps #361 Chris Knapp)
2 - Duplicates
80 Total Cards

The Verdict
Retail Wins NO CONTEST. This isn't even close. Breakdown
Phils Card - RETAIL - Wins on Number, Talent and Inserts
Base Cards -  RETAIL - Volume and Talent
Inserts - HOBBY - The first pitch puts Hobby over but barely
Hit - RETAIL - Buy back of Chris Knapp, and it is in garbage condition for a 1978 card.

There it is Retail tops Hobby in a route.

Collation
The cards came from four different sources (Hanger, Loosey, Hobby Jumbo, Hobby Pack) so there are no conclusion one can draw on collation other than that within each of those 4 segments the draw was fine.

Unfortunately there was heavy duplication across platforms. In addition to the 15 cards duplicated within each market there 18 across the two sets (plus one insert).

This means I picked up 34 duplicates from a bounty of 182 cards or 18.6%.  The number of unique base between bother purchases was 134 cards (38%). Had I been lucky enough to have no Duplicates I would have picked up 167 cards (47.6%)

Sources and Links
2015 Topps Index
Cardboard Connection