Quote:
Originally Posted by 1963Topps Set
1980s cards in high grade will be very easy to come by as values skyrocketed and everyone went directly to saving their cards. No playground flipping, no bike spokes, no throwing out, right into top loaders or plastic sheets and binders.
As for PSA, they changed the game all right. Now you can spend thousands on a 10 which would otherwise be a 2 dollar low number common.
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+1 on this.
Collectors (and non-collectors) became very much aware of baseball cards and their values in the late 1970s-early 1980s and people began to horde cards; i.e. the "rookie card craze" (early issues of Baseball Card magazine from 1982 on had articles dedicated to "best rookie picks" for later sets), and by the time the "junk wax era" began, millions and millions of baseball cards were being produced by Topps, Fleer, and Donruss, and later Upper Deck, Score, etc. When I was collecting new product as a kid in the mid-1970s, I could only find wax packs at the neighborhood 7-11, and by the early 1980s, when Donruss and Fleer entered the market, this expanded to the neighborhood drug stores as well. By the late 1980s, I saw wax packs almost everywhere; 7-11s, convenience stores, gas stations, drug stores, local big "box" stores such as Walmart and Target, etc...
So, back to the OP query, I think the junk wax era began in the late 1980s, possibly 1987 or thereabouts. One can still get unopened wax boxes from the 1987, 1988 and up period for relatively cheap prices today, compared to late 1970s-early 1980s wax box prices.
Many collectors do like the third party grading, and I guess for some, that would make collecting late 1980s cards in top graded condition a collectible challenge (whereas otherwise not for raw cards of that era). I have never used TPG; guess I'm old school and prefer to put my cards in plastic sheets and look through them from time-to-time.