Quick answer: Why do K-pop fans buy multiple copies of the same album?
- Random photocards work on an "it'll show up eventually" reward structure, so the urge to open just one more is hard to switch off. That's not a willpower problem.
- When you feel like you're only one or two cards away from your bias, you actually start buying faster. The same "speed up near the finish line" pattern shows up in studies on coffee-shop punch cards and car-wash loyalty cards.
- Buying more because you don't want to waste what you've already spent is the sunk cost effect. Money that's already gone isn't a reason for the next purchase.
- Trading and unboxing culture is a big part of the fun, but it can also quietly push up how much you buy.
- The realistic fix isn't quitting. It's setting rules ahead of time: a dedicated album budget, trying trades first, sleeping on it before you buy more.
(Quick context if you're new to this: most K-pop albums come with one randomly inserted "photocard," a small collectible photo of one member. Which member you get is luck of the draw.)
Picture comeback day, tearing open the shipping box. You open five albums one after another. Not a single card of your bias, and three of the same other member. Your brain says "okay, that's enough," but your hand is already opening the checkout page for more. You post a trade listing, check the lucky draw events, and start comparing pre-order benefits across different stores.
Then you look at your bank balance and it feels a little hollow. You stream the music anyway, you don't even own a CD player, and there are ten copies of the same album stacked in your room. When someone asks "why would you buy that many?", it stings a bit. This isn't about judging that feeling. But once you understand why it's so hard to stop, you can find ways to enjoy it within limits you set yourself, without having to quit.
You don't know when it'll show up, so you keep opening (variable-ratio reinforcement)
Behavioral psychologists Ferster and Skinner (1957) spent years testing how behavior changes depending on the rules for handing out rewards. The schedule that produced the most persistent behavior was the "variable ratio": the number of responses needed to get a reward changes every time. On average it might be one in ten, but this time it comes after two tries and the next time after twenty.
Under this schedule, the animals in the experiments responded quickly and without pausing, and kept going long after the rewards stopped. After all, the next one might be the winner.
Random photocards aren't an exact match for this experiment. Every album comes with a card, guaranteed. But the structure is similar in one way: you never know when the specific card you want will turn up. If you got it in three albums last time and you're on your tenth this time with nothing, your hopes for the next one actually go up. That's why "just one more" becomes the hardest moment to stop.
These days albums come in multiple versions, and each store adds its own exclusive photocards, so there's a lot more to pull for. Say a group has 5 members, there are 3 album versions, and 4 stores each have their own benefit cards. The list of cards to collect quickly hits the dozens. The longer the list, the more cards you "still haven't gotten," and the harder it is to find a stopping point.
Knowing this gives you fewer reasons to beat yourself up. You're inside a structure that's built to keep people responding.
Feeling one card away makes you rush (the goal-gradient effect)
The second reason is the "I've almost got them all" feeling. If you're completing a set of member cards and only one member is missing, that last card is often where you end up spending the most money and time.
Kivetz and colleagues (Kivetz, Urminsky, & Zheng, 2006) tested this with a coffee shop reward card. Customers who got a "buy ten, get one free" card came in for coffee at shorter and shorter intervals as they got closer to the free drink. The closer the goal, the more people hurry.
A car-wash experiment by Nunes and Drèze (2006) is even more interesting. One group got a card that needed 8 stamps. The other got a 10-stamp card with 2 stamps already filled in. Either way, they needed 8 more stamps. But a few months later, 19% of the first group had completed their cards, compared with 34% of the group whose cards came pre-stamped. Just feeling like you've already made some progress made people more motivated to finish.
Photocard sets work the same way. If you've got four out of five members, "I've come this far" follows naturally. One limitation: both studies were field studies with coffee-shop and car-wash customers in the US, so you have to be careful applying them directly to fandom. Still, they show this feeling isn't some weird obsession that only you have.
You can't stop because you've already spent so much (the sunk cost effect)
"Look how much I've already spent. If I stop now, it's all wasted." You've probably had that thought. Psychologists Arkes and Blumer (1985) explained it as the sunk cost effect.
Their well-known experiment involved season tickets for a university theater. People who came to buy tickets were randomly split up: one group paid full price, and the other groups got discounts. During the first half of the season, the people who paid full price showed up to more plays. Not because the plays were better, but because they'd paid more. It's also worth remembering that this difference faded in the second half of the season.
Apply that to albums. The fact that you've already bought twenty copies isn't a reason to buy the twenty-first. The money you spent on those twenty isn't coming back, whatever you decide next. And yet we buy one more to "get our money's worth." When you're deciding on the next purchase, the question isn't "how much have I spent so far?" It's "how much joy would this one album actually bring me right now?"
Trading and showing off your pulls is part of it too (the norm of reciprocity)
Buying multiple albums isn't always about solo collecting. Photocard trading is a huge part of fan culture. You swap your duplicates for someone else's bias, mail cards back and forth, and post proof when they arrive safely. The sense of connection that comes out of all that is one of the best parts of being a fan.
Sociologist Gouldner (1960) argued that the norm of reciprocity, "you give back what you receive," is widespread across human societies. Trading culture runs on it. To be a good trading partner, you need cards to offer, and to have cards to offer, you need to open more albums. And when you see someone unbox an entire case in their post, it can feel like you have to do at least that much to count as a real fan.
None of this is bad. But it's worth noticing the moment "I need to buy more so I can trade" turns into "I need to buy more to be taken seriously." Scrolling through other fans' unboxing posts can turn into endless comparison, which looks a lot like the infinite-scroll structure covered in short-form video addiction and dopamine detox.
Random pulls and gambling: how similar are they?
This part needs a careful touch. People often point out that random photocards resemble loot boxes in video games. You pay money and get something without knowing what's inside.
Zendle and Cairns (2018) surveyed 7,422 gamers and found that the more people spent on loot boxes, the higher their problem gambling scores. That link was stronger than for ordinary in-game purchases with no randomness involved. Because this was a survey, it doesn't show that loot boxes cause gambling problems. It's possible that people already vulnerable to gambling were more drawn to loot boxes. And albums that include photocards are different from game items, since you're getting a physical album.
So you can't say "buying lots of albums = gambling." But it's good to know the mental pull of betting on "the next one" might feel similar. If you notice any of these signs, it's a good time to pause and take a look:
- You're covering this month's living expenses because of album purchases.
- You've bought albums on a payment plan or with a small loan.
- You downplay how much you spent when family or friends ask.
- When you finally pull your bias, you feel empty before you feel happy.
- Not buying makes you so anxious you can't sleep.
If album buying has already left you in debt, or you're consistently short on living expenses, you don't have to sort it out alone. In the US, a nonprofit credit counselor (for example, through the NFCC) can help you work through debt. If you want to stop buying but can't, and it's starting to disrupt your daily life, talking with a mental health professional is another option.
Budget rules for enjoying it on your own terms
Behavioral economist Thaler (1999) described "mental accounting," the way people sort money into separate mental accounts for different purposes. It usually gets introduced as an irrational habit, but you can flip it into something useful. If you set fandom money aside on its own, you can spend it guilt-free inside that account without it leaking into everything else.
Before setting any rules, let's do some math. Assume each of 5 members' cards is equally likely to show up. The chance of pulling your bias from one album is 20%. The chance of opening five albums and never getting them is 0.8 multiplied by itself five times, about 33%. That means about one in three people will open five albums and still not get their bias. Even with ten albums, about 11% still come up empty. And to collect all five members as a full set, you'd need 11.4 albums on average, so more than 11. Those numbers assume one card per album and equal odds for every member. If some members' cards are printed in smaller quantities, it can take longer.
Knowing these numbers ahead of time makes it easier to think "okay, this can just happen" instead of "ugh, bad luck this time."
Here are some rules you can try right away. You don't need all of them. Picking one or two is plenty.
- Set a comeback budget first. For example: "$75 for this comeback, albums included." Keeping it on a separate account or debit card works even better.
- Decide how many albums you'll buy before you start, and screenshot that number. If you decide after opening, sunk cost gets a say.
- If you don't get your bias, look into trading or buying the single card before buying more albums. Do the math and that's often cheaper.
- Put extra purchases in your cart and wait a night. If you still want it the next morning, it's not too late to buy.
- Have a line ready for when a group order organizer or a friend says "let's split a whole box!" Something like "I'm out of budget this time, I'll pass!" is plenty. If saying no is especially hard for you, check out the psychology of setting boundaries.
- About a month after the comeback wraps, jot down in your notes app how many albums you bought and which moments stuck with you. Use that record to set your next comeback budget.
That last rule helps more than you'd think. After a month, the rush of unboxing has settled, and what's left is what you actually enjoyed. You might find that entering one fansign lottery meant more to you than ten albums, or that the fan friend you met through a trade was the best part. As those notes pile up, you'll slowly see where your fandom budget does the most for you.
Plenty of fans also give away or donate the albums they've already opened. It won't get your money back, but it can take the edge off the guilt every time you look at the pile of boxes.
It's okay if you break your rules sometimes. Just draw the line again for the next comeback. What matters isn't how much you spent, but whether you spent it the way you decided to.
Curious what fandom is filling for you?
Dig one layer deeper into why you buy albums, and you usually find needs like connection, feeling recognized, and having a joy that's just yours. How much one photocard fills those needs is different for everyone.
The Emotional Needs Test looks at the signals that make you feel loved, safe, and understood in relationships. The result isn't a diagnosis. Use it as a starting point for thinking about which parts of you your fandom is taking care of.
Wanting to buy multiple albums isn't strange. There are just several forces at work at once: uncertain rewards, the feeling of being almost done, money already spent, and the fans you share it all with.
So instead of being hard on yourself, set one number before the next comeback. Every album you open inside that number is yours to enjoy fully, right down to those few seconds of excitement as you peel off the shrink wrap.
References
- Ferster, C. B., & Skinner, B. F. (1957). Schedules of Reinforcement. Appleton-Century-Crofts.
- Kivetz, R., Urminsky, O., & Zheng, Y. (2006). The goal-gradient hypothesis resurrected: Purchase acceleration, illusionary goal progress, and customer retention. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(1), 39–58. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.43.1.39
- Nunes, J. C., & Drèze, X. (2006). The endowed progress effect: How artificial advancement increases effort. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(4), 504–512. https://doi.org/10.1086/500480
- Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985). The psychology of sunk cost. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35(1), 124–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(85)90049-4
- Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623
- Zendle, D., & Cairns, P. (2018). Video game loot boxes are linked to problem gambling: Results of a large-scale survey. PLOS ONE, 13(11), e0206767. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0206767
- Thaler, R. H. (1999). Mental accounting matters. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12(3), 183–206.
