Below are the Wow! Wax listings from June 2018. Check out the current Wow! here.
(Over the next little while, I’m going to be unfurling a set of experimental types of posts to see if they strike any cardboard chords. Let me know what you think, and I’ll adjust as we go. Also, note that these listings contain affiliate links, which means if you click over to eBay or Amazon and buy something, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra charge to you.)
1987 Donruss Rack Packs (12)
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Remember those great Donruss rack packs from the 1980s that let you nab up almost 50 cards in a single swoop? The once chock full of Rated Rookies and Diamond King and puzzle pieces and all sorts of Donruss-y goodness?
Well, if you do … you’re one up on me.
I bought plenty of Topps rack packs in my day.
And I remember some Fleer racks from 1986, with their blue borders tempting me to open them in search of a Curt Ford rookie card.
I definitely carried around a few metric tons of 1988 Donruss bubble-pack racks for years after I got them at a closeout sale in the early 1990s.
But regular old rack packs from other Donruss sets?
Nope. They didn’t exist as far as I remembered, until I saw this eBay listing.
Here we have 12 “Value Packs” of 1987 Donruss baseball cards, each pack offering up 45 cards. Among the players on top are Don Mattingly, Pete Rose, Roger Clemens, and Mike Schmidt, a group which seemed like a surefire Hall of Fame foursome when these cards were issued but ultimately landed only Schmitty in Cooperstown.
Anyway, these may say “Value Pack” on the front, but they’re rack packs.
And that makes them noteworthy in my book, seeing as how they didn’t exist before today.
Cool stuff, even if it is “junk wax.”
Check out the full eBay listing (affiliate link).
1992 Topps Stadium Club 2nd Series Unopened Box
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By 1991, the baseball card hobby had mostly moved on from grainy photos, bad cardstock, and affordable new packs.
Even so, the 1991 Topps Stadium Club issue took things up another notch with full-bleed photos so sharp they almost hurt to look at, thick Kodak paper you could build a shed with, and a per-pack price that would make Donald Trump blush (OK, not really).
Player selection was pretty solid, too, especially if you liked rookie cards — and who didn’t?
That was especially true of the 2nd series (cards 301-600), where you could find rookies of Wes Chamberlain, Pedro Munoz, Phil Plantier, and Jeff Bagwell among many others.
As you might expect, Bagwell was hot early on, but no one was hotter than Plantier, the Boston Red Sox slugger who was going to hit 100 home runs a year. That didn’t quite pan out, but the young masher and his rookie card brethren helped drive Stadium Club II into the stratosphere that summer 27 years ago.
We know now that there is plenty of Stadium Club to go around, and Bagwell is the lone remaining BIG rookie from the set.
Even so, it’s fun to reminisce, and this eBay lot lets you do that with an unopened box of 1991 Stadium Club 2nd Series card for less than $20.
Check out the full eBay listing (affiliate link).
1985 Topps Baseball Photo Rub-Downs Unopened Packs (14)
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Topps got a bad rap in the 1980s for not changing fast enough, for not making their cards more sophisticated and fancier.
Collectors wanted premium white cardstock, crystal clear photos, and limited print runs — Topps just wasn’t willing to give that to us most of the time.
But they have always been willing to experiment, and that means hobby backlogs are jam-packed with quirky little issues like 1985 Topps Baseball Photo Rub-Downs.
Issued in “sheets” that showcased bits and pieces of three or four players and their teams, rub-downs let you move your heroes around.
How? By placing them facedown on a surface and rubbing the backside with a coin.
You could put them on folders … books … lockers … your kid brother’s forehead.
Cheesy, sure, but also awesome.
The rub-downs came in packs of two sheets each, along with a stick of bubble gum (of course). In all, 112 players are featured in the set.
This eBay lot offers 14 packs of rub-downs for a $3.99 Buy-It-Now price.
Now, you probably don’t carry a Trapper Keeper anymore, but wouldn’t these look great pasted to your iPad or on your annual review at work?
Check out the full eBay listing (affiliate link).
1981 Fleer Unopened Vending Box (500 cards)
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Growing up, I always fantasized about buying a vending case of baseball cards and instantly adding 12,000 perfect cards to my collection — just think of 15 perfect rookie cards each of Mark McGwire, Eric Davis, Dwight Gooden, and Benny Distefano!
Back then, those dreams were restricted to Topps cards. I never even knew there was another option.
I mean, somewhere along the line, I must have heard or read that Fleer made vending boxes from 1981-1985, but I don’t ever remember seeing one.
Until now.
This eBay lot (affiliate link) offers up an unopened 500-count vending box of 1981 Fleer cards, with a Packing Order of 1. Apparently, if you were to buy and sort one of each available packing orders (1, 2, 3, 4), you would have been assured of completing three full sets of the 660-card inaugural issue.
If you dig around a bit, you’ll find that the hobby cognoscenti have some advice about what to expect from 1981 Fleer wax and vending boxes.
Fascinating stuff!
At any rate, this box makes a great display piece and is a tangible bit of hobby history that is still “new” 37 years after it was born.
Check out the full eBay listing (affiliate link).
1982 Topps Kmart 20th Anniversary AL & NL MVPs Unopened Sets (10)
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One of the really fun things about picking up the hobby here on the Internet in the 21st century is the ability to see — and create, if you have it in you — cards that never were (CTNW, for our purposes).
Every day, on Pinterest and elsewhere, I run into “cards” that don’t really exist but that should, if the universe were a fair and just place.
The first time I saw a CTNW, though, was long before I ever knew what a click was and about the time I was breaking my thumb on my Atari joystick.
One of my friends had come into possession of a 1962 Topps Maury Wills that neither of us could find in any sort of price guide or reference book. That must have meant, we surmised, that it was priceless.
I soon learned this phantom was part of a 44-card issue that Topps made for Kmart’s 20th Anniversary, depicting Topps cards from each AL and NL MVP from 1962 through 1981, plus a checklist and a few highlight cards thrown in.
Card-in-card technology, if you will. Meta, dude.
Topps had to create the Wills card from whole cloth because they didn’t issue him one in 1962.
They also mocked up a 1975 Topps Fred Lynn single card that didn’t exist, because the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP that summer had shared his rookie card with three other gents.
I was lucky enough to acquire a full boxed set of those 1982 Kmart cards, and they were a source of endless fascination and confusion. Was that a real 1962 Topps Mantle?
I wasn’t so sure, honestly, but for the buck or so I paid for the set, the speculation was exquisite cheap fun.
Thanks to a huge print run, this set that paved the way for a billion other boxed sets in the 1980s is still exquisite cheap fun, as evidenced by this eBay lot of 10 full, unopened sets.
If you end up with some of this historic cardboard, just remember that’s not a real 1973 Topps Jeff Burroughs.
I think.
Check out the full eBay listing (affiliate link).
1983 Topps Baseball Foldouts Unopened Box
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Topps baseball cards didn’t change a whole lot during the early years after Fleer and Donruss broke their monopoly in 1980, but the king of the hill sure did show a willingness to experiment.
Especially when it came to test issues and oddball sets outside of their base releases.
In 1983, for example, they piloted a colored cellophane pack that looked like their normal wax pack but aimed to prevent the problem of unscrupulous types opening the cards, cherrypicking the best ones, then resealing the remainder.
These were the so-called “Michigan” packs.
That same summer, 1983 Topps Baseball Foldouts provided a stunning visual display of the top players in the game. Each foldout consisted of 17 oversized photos of the top (you guessed it) 17 active players in five statistical categories: home runs, stolen bases,