What is the most valuable card you have that you pulled from a wax pack as a child?

[obcbobd]

Must be the 69 Jackson RC. I bought a few packs of 68s but never got a Ryan.

[JustinD]

Honestly growing up as a kid of the late 70s and early 80s, I don't remember getting very excited about the valuable pulls I had when I actually pulled them.

I would get excited about the big names I recognized and any and all Tigers. Rose, Ryan, Yaz, Jackson...those were the excitement. I had piles of 85' McGwire's don't remember treating them any different than Johnny Grubb as he was unknown to me. The big excitement was getting that yearly price guide the next year and digging through the card to find what rookies were gaining momentum.

I think my best win as a kid was not all the baseball rookies I had stockpiled but going into a tiny little card shop in Frankenmuth Michigan on a family trip and finding the black-markered overstock boxes of 1984/85 Topps Hockey. My brother and I didn't collect hockey and knew little about it. However, we were young and valued quantity over quality, just how many sets could we build as these discarded boxes were marked at a lowly 5 bucks each and we had saved a few weeks of chore money.

We each bought 3 boxes, ripped them and they sat. Then we went into a LCS in western Michigan and saw the Yzermans at 40+ a piece. Let alone the other great rookies in that set. Due to the size of that set, we had 30-40 yzermans, and piles of the other RCs. We ran the trading game for years just dumping dups at prime demand. At dollars on return, that was a windfall for a couple of paperboys, lol.

[ClementeFanOh]

Interesting thread resurrection. The funny thing in my case is that, despite
my baseball leanings, my two most valuable pulls as a kid were the 76 Topps
Walter Payton rookie and the 80-81 Topps Bird/Magic/Erving. Sadly, neither
are still with me. Trent King

[bnorth]

I never collected as a kid. In the early 90s I pulled some chrome Mantle insert that was worth a couple hundred at the time. I looked it up a few years ago and it is now a few dollar card. Still have it someplace.

Pulled a lot of Bill Ripken F Face cards back in the day. Those are by far the coolest.

[fkm_bky]

Nothing too special for me. Ricky Henderson rookie as a kid, and then a Tom Brady numbered rookie as an "adult". Didn't think much about the Brady at the time and slid it into a binder. Found it about a year and a half ago and it helped me fund a T206 M. Brown purchase

Fun thread!

Bill

[slidekellyslide]

Originally Posted by ClementeFanOh

Interesting thread resurrection. The funny thing in my case is that, despite
my baseball leanings, my two most valuable pulls as a kid were the 76 Topps
Walter Payton rookie and the 80-81 Topps Bird/Magic/Erving. Sadly, neither
are still with me. Trent King

Like a few others I also pulled the Bird/Magic rookie, but I did what Topps wanted kids to do and took the cards apart. I was 13, and where I live there were no card stores or shows, I had no idea that a nationwide hobby existed. How could you put this set together without taking the cards apart?

[abothebear]

I spent a lot of my allowance on packs. I still have most of my childhood collection. i don’t think any of those cards are more than $8 today. Some of my better ones from the mid-80s are dinged up too much to be anything. Oh! I just remembered I have a Jerry Rice RC from a pack that survived the satchel bag I kept my football cards in. It’s probably worth around $25-$30.
35 years, almost a dollar per year in value gain! So glad I bought all those packs!

[jethrod3]

I was just thinking....
Given that my wife is always reminding me that I still act like a child, I think it's totally valid for me to count the time a couple of years after we were married and she attended a National with me in 1994. At that show, I walked up to Mark Murphy's table, bought a 1986 Fleer basketball pack out of a freshly opened box, and proceeded to pull a Jordan rookie card. And of course I proceeded to act like a child opening a prized present on Christmas morning. Thus, I think this card should count!

[ejharrington]

Gretzky rookies

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by slidekellyslide

Like a few others I also pulled the Bird/Magic rookie, but I did what Topps wanted kids to do and took the cards apart. How could you put this set together without taking the cards apart?

Ditto, except at that time I did know that, as a collector, I should not separate them at the perforations. But I still did it.

Brian