What is a razz? To razz is to playfully tease someone, but in the world of trading cards it means something totally different. Sports card trading has seen a massive resurgence and technology means that collectors can razz sports cards like never before. Let’s find out more about razzing.
What Is a Razz?
Razzing is a term for a sports card raffle, or lottery. The organizer of a razz will list an item offered up for participants to win, which in this case is sports cards. There are some minor variations to razzing but typically an organizer lists the amount of spots and the price of each spot.
How Do You Razz Sports Cards?
Most sports card razzing is done through Facebook invite-only groups. To razz a sports card with a value of $90, an organizer would ‘line’ 9 spots @ $10 each, or 18 spots @ $5 each, for example. In the event 9 spots at $10 each are fully lined by the organizer, payment option details, usually PayPal, are shared for payment to be made. The entire system relies on trusting the other party that they won’t just run away with your money. Reputation is a huge part of razzing.
Once lines are filled and payments are made, the organizer will tag an admin in the Facebook group to run the razz. A F acebook Live or screen recording will be done by the admin by putting all lines into a random number generator such as random.org and the name on top is the winner of the razz. The winner then sends a message with their address and the item then shipped off. Admins are generally tipped for their services by the organizer.
How Do You Win a Razz?
A common randomizer tool used to determine the winner of a razz is Random.Org. When razzing sports cards, a pair of dice is typically rolled with the randomizing tool to pre-determine how many times a razz list is randomized. Once it’s run the predetermined amount it times, the winner is the name that finishes on top.
Is Razzing Illegal
Razzing sports cards can be murky. As per Facebook’s terms and conditions on gambling, ‘Pages, Groups and Events must not promote online gambling, or gaming where anything of monetary value (including digital currencies) is required to play and anything of monetary value forms part of the prize, without our prior written permission’.
Because razzing is against Facebook’s policies it’s done in private within invite-only groups. It may also be considered illegal depending on your jurisdiction and be considered a lottery however, the use of the word ‘razzing’ can make it a grey area.
Razzing Scammers
Be warned that there is a heightened risk of being scammed so if you do choose to participate in a razz or razz break make sure it’s with a group you can trust. Rest assured that the sports card community does come down hard on scammers. Whether it’s legal or not, some members post pictures of peoples homes, personal phone numbers and physical addresses of those who scam people in the community.