The Junk Wax Era- when did it start?

[steve B]

Originally Posted by mortimer brewster

I purchased a baseball book back in 1978, written in 1976. In the book Cy Berger mentioned that Topps sold 500 Million baseball cards in 1975. With a 660 card set you can do the math.

To me the wax era officially began with the introduction of Pro Set in 1988 (football) then score etc.


I remember in 1991 buying a pack of Upper Deck baseball cards at my local Vix drug store. When I opened a pack, right in the middle was a pro set card. Packs were pretty much tamper proof. Were they using the same print facilities? If I remember the President of Pro Set was a shady character.

There was a company that advertised in the Thomas Register* that they offered secure random packing for trading cards.



*At the time an enormous yellow pages of sorts mostly for manufacturing. Like bigger than an encyclopedia.

[West]

I too would be interested in hearing of any production numbers that people have found. Specifically for Topps in the junk era '87-'94. Someone mentioned the population figure of a billion cards for Topps in the mid-80's. Would love to see a source for this.

According to the novel "Card Sharks" UD made 125,000 cases, which is approx. 1.4 billion cards, in the inaugural 1989 set. I'm not sure how accurate that is, but it was referenced in the book. As some may remember, there were rumors of extra press runs of star players and Griffey going straight to the dealers.

But let's say Topps made a billion cards of say, '90 topps. After you divide by 792, that makes 1.25 million of each card in the set. My guess is that the actual population was closer to 5-10 million of each card. That would make the total print run somewhere between 4-8 billion cards. That seems like an absurd number, yet just from what I see for unopened availability I feel like the production continued to grow each year from 1987-1992. I know the production figures were quite heavily guarded but does anyone have any info we could use to sort of indirectly piece this together?

[toad strangler]

Great thread. Need some updated thoughts! Early 80's to mid 80's cases are vanishing. Sure there are many hording it but it's getting tougher to find and very expensive 1985 on down. 1986 Topps wax cases, with virtually no anchor rookie card, command a grand now. Sorry Cecil Fielder lol

[wdwfan]

I agree with this. I've started looking for boxes, rack packs, unopened sets, cases (of Traded/The Rookies sets), Glossy/Tiffany sets, etc. from the 1980s-1990s, and they're expensive. The asking prices are expensive at least. But I'm going to try and start picking a few of those things up.

Originally Posted by toad strangler

Great thread. Need some updated thoughts! Early 80's to mid 80's cases are vanishing. Sure there are many hording it but it's getting tougher to find and very expensive 1985 on down. 1986 Topps wax cases, with virtually no anchor rookie card, command a grand now. Sorry Cecil Fielder lol

[Exhibitman]

The other issues that are starting to rise are the mid-nineties premium issues with either insert cards or serial #d cards. That $200K Select Jeter is the biggest one but high end limited edition cards of the era have a loyal following and are getting pricey. I used to pull them regularly from the cheapo bins and junk wax tables at the National but found relatively few available this past year at the show. The unopened has gone up. If there are decent inserts or parallels in the issue, it isn't a $20 box anymore.

On a tangential but somewhat related note, last year I purchased an unopened box of 2013 Panini Golden Age. It was really cheap (I think about $15) and I was hoping for a signed Bad News Bears card. I got one



but I also pulled a redemption card for a signed Stan Lee card. It was long expired but many states make it illegal to terminate redemptions or require valuables to go through the escheat process. I went to the Panini site and plugged in the code and it showed as active. Four months later my card arrived. So those old redemption cards may still be honored.

[steve B]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

The other issues that are starting to rise are the mid-nineties premium issues with either insert cards or serial #d cards. That $200K Select Jeter is the biggest one but high end limited edition cards of the era have a loyal following and are getting pricey. I used to pull them regularly from the cheapo bins and junk wax tables at the National but found relatively few available this past year at the show. The unopened has gone up. If there are decent inserts or parallels in the issue, it isn't a $20 box anymore.

On a tangential but somewhat related note, last year I purchased an unopened box of 2013 Panini Golden Age. It was really cheap (I think about $15) and I was hoping for a signed Bad News Bears card. I got one



but I also pulled a redemption card for a signed Stan Lee card. It was long expired but many states make it illegal to terminate redemptions or require valuables to go through the escheat process. I went to the Panini site and plugged in the code and it showed as active. Four months later my card arrived. So those old redemption cards may still be honored.

That's really cool.

I had the opposite experience with redemptions. I had a few sort of nice ones, and sent them in before the expiration. They never came. And the companies are now long out of business.

[Orioles1954]

1986 - Junk started
1987 - It really started ramping up
1988 - Junk wax overdrive