Magic The Gathering - Aetherdrift - Play - Booster Box

The set is fine, not a lot of high value cards but it's not nearly as bad flavor-wise as I think most people reacted. Sometimes embracing silliness is okay, and I'd much rather be doing race cars than third party superheroes 😅

I ordered 3 boxes and they arrived sealed and intact, but it did get a bit banged up in transit. Nothing egregious and I've certainly received booster boxes in worse condition! That said, I'm very unimpressed with the packing decisions in terms of shipping protection. The outer box itself got seriously damaged, every corner was crushed, and one of the four sides of the box had clearly been impacted heavily by something. I completely understand rough package handling is NOT directly Card POP'S fault! You can't control how shipping companies handle your packages, though in this case it was pretty shockingly rough.

You DO have control over how you secure items within the box, though. The booster boxes were shoved against one side of a much larger box with only brown paper wadded in for padding. No padding between the booster boxes and the outer wall of the package. There was definitely enough room for the contents to move a bit during transit, but the real problem is that it's mostly sheer luck that the inner booster boxes weren't more heavily damaged. Because they were directly against one of the sides, all it would have taken was one big impact to the box on the side they were pressed up against, and they would have gone from slightly banged up to seriously damaged.

I don't mean to harp on about it too long so I'll leave it there, but having done a lot of shipping myself, it really doesn't take too much extra time, money, or effort to safely secure something that is a collector item, just in case your shipper decides to play "kick the box" with your package. And I know that when I receive a really well packed box, it gives me a lot of confidence to buy again from the same seller.