Why Did VeeFriends Sell Their Hobby Boxes for $1?

Sometimes a pricing error is just a mistake. Other times, it’s a million-dollar whoopsie that has a company literally calling buyers and asking them to please please please cancel their orders. Earlier this week, VeeFriends, the NFT-turned-physical-collectibles brand from entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, listed their 2025 Topps Chrome Hobby Box 1 at a 99% discount. Resellers who caught it jumped on what looked like either the world’s best Black Friday deal or an obvious pricing mistake.

VeeFriends launched in 2021 as an NFT project with 10,255 unique character tokens. Each NFT came with access to VeeCon, Gary Vee’s annual conference. The project expanded into physical collectibles through partnerships with Topps, bringing the cartoon characters into traditional trading card format. The Chrome series represents premium hobby boxes with refractor parallels, autographs, and other chase cards that collectors go wild for.

The 2025 Topps VeeFriends Chrome Hobby Box 1 normally retails for $99 and contains four cards per pack with six packs per box. The product attracts both VeeFriends collectors and traditional sports card flippers who understand Topps’ reputation for quality chrome cards.

For about ten minutes on November 21, sharp-eyed resellers noticed something peculiar on the VeeFriends’ webstore. The hobby boxes were inexplicably marked down to $1. In that brief span, hundreds of orders poured in.

Nobody was totally sure if this was an intentional surprise sale (brands do wild promotions sometimes) or a straight-up error. Most were expecting the usual outcome on outrageous price errors: canceled orders and a quick refund.

Instead, they began receiving “shipped” notifications a few days later. VeeFriends was too late to catch the error and was unable to cancel the orders in time. Instead, they’re reaching out to buyers individually via email and phone, asking people to voluntarily cancel or offering to buy the boxes back. Some buyers report getting voicemails from company reps explaining the situation.

It does seem like Vaynerchuk is taking the goof in stride. It’s not clear how this happened, but getting fired over Thanksgiving would be pretty shitty.

The estimated loss here is potentially north of a million dollars depending on how many orders went through. That’s not chump change, even for a brand backed by Gary Vee’s empire.

Current eBay sold listings show the 2025 Topps VeeFriends Chrome Hobby Box 1 moving for $500 to $600. That’s already strong for a $99 retail product, but when you factor in the $1 cost basis, resellers who got their orders confirmed are looking at 500X returns before fees.

After eBay’s fees, a $525 sale nets about $456. Subtract the $1 purchase price and you’re walking away with $455 profit per box. If you copped multiple boxes at $1 each, multiply that accordingly.

Gary Vee claimed the mistake was a combination of human error and an update to their Shopify. Either way, the potential upside is massive. In RC Elite, members reported thousands of dollars in profit, with one in particular claiming this error netted them $42,000.

For context, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen major pricing errors in the collectibles space. Target famously had Nintendo Switch OLED units ring up for $50 instead of $350 in 2023. Most of those orders got canceled, but some shipped. The difference here is VeeFriends is a smaller operation dealing with a specialized collector base they probably don’t want to alienate.

If your order shipped, you’re probably in the clear. Companies rarely pursue legal action to recover shipped merchandise from pricing errors unless we’re talking about truly massive fraud. Selling your boxes on eBay or holding them for potential appreciation both make sense here.

If you’re getting contacted by VeeFriends requesting cancellation, you’re under no obligation to comply. They may offer buybacks, but taking a few bucks rather than listing on eBay seems pretty silly. After all, Gary Vee himself has already tipped his hat to the resellers.

The bigger lesson here is that pricing errors on collectibles, especially trading cards with established secondary markets, can create absolutely massive returns. The key is acting fast when you spot them and understanding that fulfillment is never guaranteed until the package arrives at your door.