A trading card series has 200 different cards in it, which are sold in 5-card packages.

Each package has a random sampling of the cards (assume that any card of the 200 has an equal chance of being in a package).

On the average, how many packages will need to be bought to collect the complete series if...

A: all the cards in a package will always be different

B: a package can have repeats

Eamon, I am anything but a math fan, which is evident from the lack of a solution to this problem to this day.

I just thought that my lack of mathematical skill shouldn't preclude others from seeing this challenging problem. Perhaps one day, someone will come along and solve it :)

Posted by levik on 2002-05-26 12:27:41