Sunday, February 26, 2017

The Junk Wax Dilemma

I have had a lot of fun over the past month sorting out a bunch of cards that I had from the junk wax era.  Loads of 1980s and early 1990s Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, and Donruss sets.  There were so many great sets, whether we are going to talk about some of the cool designs.....



like the black borders around the tops of the 1986 Topps cards to some of the really great names in the game who played during that era.......


I don't care that the cards are more or less worthless in terms of money, it's still cool to see players like Barry Bonds, Cal Ripken, Kirby Puckett, Ozzie Smith, and a young Ken Griffey Jr..  In sorting out these sets one of the problems I have run into is the fact that a few of these inexpensive sets are incomplete.  Some of the sets I am literally a card or two away from finishing off and I will have no problem tracking down the cards.  Others not so much.

Take the 1990 Upper Deck set.  I am just about 100 cards short of finishing off the 700 card set.  I am sure that I could probably find the card easily, but it's hard to justify spending too much money on cards from this set.  For example, one of the cards that I am missing is Gary Pettis.  I could buy a copy of his card for $0.30 off of a site like COMC.


However, if you multiply that out by 100 it will likely cost me about $30 to finish off the set buying single cards.  Pretty sure the entire set is not worth $30, but at the same time it seems a waste to just ignore the fact that I have already assembled the majority of the set.  What to do? 

The set is rather cheap to buy, but so are the boxes.  While I have been trying to little down my collection in recent years, the funnest way to find the last 100 cards for this set is clearly to open a few boxes....


In fact, I bought two of them since the boxes were 2 for $12.  I am a sucker for a good deal.  Plus this box brings back some great memories from my middle school years.  These were the best baseball cards around.  So much to love about this set even if it did not turn out to be as good as the original 1989 Upper Deck set.


72 foil packs of fun.  I started working on the first box earlier this weekend.  I have already pulled the Kevin Maas, second year Griffey, the cool Nolan Ryan commemorative card.  Lots of other cool cards too, check out this pair of rookie cards that came out of my first pack of cards....


There are plenty of other cool cards in the set too.  I really like these types of cards.......


What are these called?  Wade Boggs has a card like this too.  I am going to have to finish opening up the box and then go ahead and see how close I am to completing the set.  Again, I am not sure that I really need seven to eight hundred Upper Deck cards from the junk wax era, but I cannot think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than reliving a cool baseball card product.

9 comments:

  1. Ripping old wax is fun! hope you pull a few of your needs. Funny how much junk is out there but so hard to find for a few cents per card. Good luck!

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    Replies
    1. It's been a blast working on these cards today, definitely going this route on other junk wax sets.

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  2. That's what trading is for. I don't, at this point, have much UD junk wax, but there are some junk wax sets I have lots of dupes in. Hope you can find a trading partner for the set you're trying to complete.

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    Replies
    1. I have done a bunch of trading to finish off sets before in the past, but never had much luck doing it with junk wax era cards.

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  3. I like your thought process. It's much more fun to just buy a couple of boxes for $12 and finish off the set than to spend $30 on COMC. I'm working to inventory all of my cards so that when I see folks are working on sets like this, I can send them their way.

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    Replies
    1. I am trying to get mine into sets at the moment, I can only dream of having an organized inventory of cards.

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  4. Multiple exposure shots on the Blyleven and Boggs cards.

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    Replies
    1. I knew it had a technical name, thank you for the help on the terminology.

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  5. A. I have totally fallen in love with the 1986 design. Hated it back in the day... but not anymore.

    B. I've been in the same boat when it comes to building junk wax sets. You made a great choice by picking up those boxes. Have fun ripping into those packs!

    C. And I hope you pull all 100 cards you need for your set.

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