I opened the EQL app on a Tuesday morning to check my result on the 2026 Topps Midnight Football drop, and there it was again. Not selected. I scrolled down my activity page out of habit, and the word just kept repeating. Not selected, not selected, not selected. On the page in front of me right now, I can count two entries marked Won Fair and nineteen marked Not Selected. Twenty-one drops, two wins. The two I actually got were the 2023 Topps Chrome Sapphire Baseball release, which is the oldest entry on my page, and the 2026 Topps Chrome Disney Sapphire in July of this year. Everything in between and everything since has been a wall of losses.
If you collect and you have entered a Topps drop through EQL in the last year, you already know the feeling. You set an alarm, you enter during the window, you get the confirmation email, and then you wait for a result that is almost always the same. I kept telling myself this was bad luck until I started wondering whether the whole thing was built to feel this way. Is the demand really that high? Is Topps holding back too much product? Is the public getting whatever is left after breakers take the real inventory? Is EQL even legit, or is something gamed on their side? I went and did the homework, and the honest answers are more boring and more uncomfortable than the conspiracy version, which is usually how these things go.
The short version is this. EQL is a real company, and the lottery itself is almost certainly fair in the narrow sense it claims to be. You keep losing because the math is brutal, because the "you are due" mechanic is real but tiny, and because the biggest lever sits upstream in how much product exists and where it goes before the public drop ever opens. A fair raffle and good odds are two completely different things, and Topps EQL has quietly become the place where collectors learn that lesson.
What is Topps EQL, and why did Topps start using it?
Topps EQL is a timed lottery that Topps runs on its hottest online releases instead of a normal first-come, first-served checkout. EQL is the Australian technology company behind it, and Topps uses the platform to cut down on bots, site crashes, and instant sellouts.
EQL was founded in 2021 in Melbourne by three former Google employees, and in 2022 it raised twenty-five million Australian dollars from investors that included Insight Partners and AirTree Ventures. Before trading cards, the platform was running sneaker and streetwear launches for brands like Nike, Crocs, Stanley, and Foot Locker, along with the Nike x Tiffany sneaker and a Royal Australian Mint coin set. The entire business is built around what EQL calls hype commerce, meaning launches where short-term demand massively outruns supply.
Topps moved its most in-demand releases onto EQL for a reason any operator understands. When a hot box goes live on a standard checkout, the site gets slammed, a queue forms, and automated buying tools clear the shelf before a regular person has finished typing a card number. A timed draw spreads that traffic out and gives Topps a window to screen entries before anything gets allocated. Topps frames it simply, saying the system is there to slow down bots and create a fairer launch.
One detail is worth sitting with. EQL's 2022 funding round included the family office of Michael Rubin, who founded and runs Fanatics, and Fanatics owns Topps. The company Topps picked to run its fair lottery is one that Topps's own parent is connected to. That does not mean the draw is rigged, and I have found nothing that suggests the numbers are fixed. It is just a fact worth holding onto when any company asks you to trust a process it will not show you.
How does a Topps EQL drop actually work?
You enter during a window that usually runs about an hour, and after it closes, every entry is assigned a random number. Product then sells in numerical order, starting at one and counting up, until it is gone.
Here is the part that trips people up. Entering in the first minute does nothing, and entering in the last minute does nothing. As long as you get in before the window closes, you are in the same pool as everyone else. After the window ends, EQL assigns the numbers. If ten thousand people entered, every entry gets a number somewhere between one and ten thousand, and the person holding number one buys first. If there are two thousand boxes and you drew number 6,400, you were never going to get one, no matter how fast you clicked. Baseball America laid out this exact mechanic in its breakdown of how the platform actually works, and it is the single most misunderstood thing about EQL. You are not racing anyone. You are buying a lottery ticket and waiting to see your number.
One more wrinkle matters. Selected entrants get charged automatically, so your payment method has to be valid and ready, and buyers can usually purchase more than one box. Somebody near the front of the line taking a big chunk of the stock is completely allowed, which quietly shrinks the pool for everyone behind them.
If I keep losing, do my odds actually get better next time?
A little, through something EQL calls the EQLizer score, but far less than most collectors assume. EQL is explicit that no number of losses ever earns you a guaranteed win.
The EQLizer score is tied to a specific brand or retailer, and it resets toward the starting point when you win. Each loss earns you extra randomized entries for future drops at that same retailer, and EQL uses whichever of your numbers lands better. In EQL's own explanation of why you have not won yet, the company says persistence is rewarded over time, but it also says it will not over-reward those who miss out, so first-time entrants still get a real shot. The line that matters most is this: "there is no amount of losses with EQL that will get you an automatic or guaranteed win." EQL even says that depending on how hot a release is, extra entries still might not hit on your second, third, or fifth try.
I had assumed that after this many losses I was basically owed one. I am not. There is no counter filling up toward a free win. The one concrete threshold EQL does name is almost funny in context. If you lose more than one hundred times in a row at a single retailer, you can email their support, and they will review your account. One hundred losses in a row. That is the number they picked as the point where something might be worth looking at, which tells you everything about how normal my pile of Not Selected results actually is.
Is Topps EQL rigged, or is the demand just that high?
The demand really is that high. EQL says its hot launches draw twenty-five to one hundred times more entries than there is product, which means losing is the default outcome for almost everyone, on almost every drop.
Sit with that ratio for a second. If a release pulls fifty times more entries than boxes, then ninety-eight percent of entrants lose by design, and nobody did anything wrong. A fair coin can land tails twenty times in a row and still be a fair coin. The problem is that our brains do not accept twenty straight losses as fair, so we start looking for the trick. I did exactly that. The honest finding is that the lottery doing the choosing is almost certainly clean. What feels rigged is the gap between a process that is fair and a process that gives you decent odds, and those are not the same thing. EQL can run a spotless raffle, and you can still lose fifteen in a row, because fairness was never a promise about your chances.
Are the boxes going to breakers before the public lottery even opens?
This is the most serious complaint collectors have, and it is the one I find most credible. Topps does not publish its print runs or its allocation, but the public EQL pool is only ever whatever is left after retailers and breakers take their share, so the lottery you are entering may be far smaller than it looks.
The group break world runs on cases, not single boxes, and a large breaker needs volume to fill hundreds of spots in a single stream. One widely shared breakdown of the EQL system argues that EQL distributes what remains after those allocations have already been made, and points to a product like Topps Sapphire Basketball, where the print run is estimated at roughly five to ten thousand boxes while breakers reportedly receive dozens of cases apiece. Those are collector estimates, not numbers Topps has confirmed, and that is exactly the issue. Nobody outside Topps can see how the pie gets cut, so the public is left guessing why the slice feels so thin.
I want to be careful here, because I cannot prove the breaker allocation is the reason I keep losing. What I can say is that I am clearly not the only one asking. Multiple collectors and hobby outlets have written the same post I am writing, right down to the identical "we went 0 for 4" result. When that many people independently land on the same frustration, the demand side is real, and the supply side is opaque enough that the suspicion is reasonable. This is the same dynamic that makes the resale market so ugly across collectibles, the kind of controlled scarcity I wrote about in the StubHub and mass scalping piece. Limited supply plus hidden allocation is how you end up buying the thing at a multiple on eBay a week later.
Are bots still getting through and gaming the system?
Probably not, and this is the part of my own theory that did not survive the research. The evidence suggests bots are the one thing EQL has actually handled well.
EQL says it analyzes thousands of signals per entry to catch cheating, and it blocks entries from bots, from multiple accounts, and from people entering on someone else's behalf. For the 2025 Cactus Jack release with Topps, EQL claimed zero bot interference, and while that is their number and not independently audited, every outlet I read credits the platform with removing the speed-based buying that used to define these launches. The uncomfortable conclusion is that the thing beating me is not a bot. It is scarcity and allocation wearing the costume of a rigged game. I wanted the villain to be a script, because a script can be fixed. A print run decision made months ago in an office is a lot harder to be mad at.
What would actually fix the EQL experience?
Transparency would fix most of it. Topps and EQL cannot manufacture product that does not exist, but they could show the print run and the size of the public allocation for each drop, and a huge amount of the anger would drain out even if the odds never moved.
Most of the frustration is not really about losing. It is about losing without information. When you enter blind, get a Not Selected with no sense of how many boxes were ever available to the public, and watch the same release appear on eBay at triple retail, every loss reads as a con. Give collectors the real numbers, say this drop had two thousand public boxes against ninety thousand entries, and suddenly the lottery stops feeling like a trick and starts feeling like what it is, which is long odds honestly stated. I build automations and systems for a living, and the first rule of keeping people's trust in a black box is that you have to open it once in a while. EQL has built the fair part. The transparent part is the piece still missing.
Frequently asked questions
What is Topps EQL?
Topps EQL is a timed online lottery that Topps uses to sell its highest demand card releases. EQL is an Australian technology company that assigns every entrant a random number after the entry window closes, then sells product in number order until it runs out.
How does a Topps EQL drop work?
You enter during a window that usually lasts about an hour. After it closes, every entry gets a random number, and boxes sell starting from number one and counting up. Entering early gives you no advantage, since all that matters is the number you draw.
Does losing a Topps EQL drop improve your odds next time?
Slightly. EQL's EQLizer score gives you extra randomized entries after a loss at the same retailer, but EQL states clearly that no number of losses ever guarantees a win, and the boost is small on hot releases.
How many EQL drops can you lose in a row?
There is no cap and no automatic win waiting at the end. EQL says that if you lose more than one hundred times in a row at a single retailer, you can contact its support team for an account review.
Why does it feel like breakers get all the boxes?
Topps does not disclose print runs or how inventory is split, and the public EQL pool is only what remains after retailers and breakers receive their allocation. Collectors widely believe that leaves a small public share, though Topps has not confirmed the figures.
Is Topps EQL rigged?
There is no evidence the draw itself is manipulated. The reason most people lose is that EQL reports twenty-five to one hundred times more entries than available product, so losing is the expected outcome rather than a sign of a fixed game.
Final Thoughts
I came into this wanting EQL to be the bad guy, because a broken raffle would at least explain my twenty-one entries and two wins. The research took that away from me. The lottery is fair, the bot filtering works, and the "you are due" feeling I was leaning on does not actually exist in the math. What is left is harder to argue with and harder to fix: there are far more of us than there is product, and the people who decide how much gets made and where it goes do not show their work.
That is the real story of Topps EQL. It did not make the scarcity, and it cannot solve it. It just moved the disappointment from a checkout page you lost in half a second to a lottery result that arrives a few hours later, and it made that disappointment feel fair enough that most of us keep entering anyway. I will keep entering too. I just will not pretend I am owed the next one.
Interested in learning more? Check out these reads:
Read about the hidden mechanics of resale and scarcity in StubHub CEO and Mass Scalping: What SEC Filings Reveal About Eric Baker and Andro Capital.
See why live selling is reshaping the card and collectibles market in Whatnot Just Raised $545 Million: What a $20 Billion Valuation Tells Us About Live Commerce.
For a look at building your own systems instead of trusting someone else's, read Why I Built Our AI Automation Agent Myself Instead of Delegating It.
