Junk Wax

A lapsed collector looks back on the hobby.

These aren’t actually my cards, but they prove my point about junk wax. Cards from my childhood are so lacking in value that numerous people have donated their old collections to help get my sons’ collections started.

I grew up in the era of junk wax. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, I’m not referring to a manscaping product or anything like that. I’m talking about baseball cards.

I’m not a collector these days, but that wasn’t the case when I was a kid. I loved baseball cards back then. And football and basketball too, but there’s something about baseball cards that stands out. Baseball has lost a lot of ground on other sports since I was a kid, but in the realm of cards, it still stands alone.

I’ve touched on this subject before when I wrote about my obsession with Mark McGwire’s 1984 Topps Team USA rookie card, though it’s been a long time. We had a baseball card shop in the town where I grew up called My Three Sons, and despite the crusty old grump who owned it, the shop was one of my favorite places to visit. We bought the new issue of Beckett’s every month to see how much our favorite cards’ value had fluctuated, because we were all convinced the Ken Griffey Jr. or Gregg Jefferies card we had hidden away in a hard case at home was going to make us rich someday.

We had good reason to think so too. Even back then, it wasn’t uncommon to hear news stories about an ancient Honus Wagner or Babe Ruth card that sold for millions at auction. And we knew enough to protect our investments. Whenever my aunt came home to visit, she would always complain about my grandma cleaning out the attic and tossing the Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays cards she collected as a kid. And she had a point. Those cards would have been worth a pretty penny.

The problem for our generation was exactly that. Everyone knew how those cards had appreciated in value over the years, and no one wanted to miss out on the equivalent cards of our era. In other words, everybody I knew collected baseball cards, which only inspired the manufacturers to make more cards. Makes sense, right? They were raking in the cash in the ‘80s and early-‘90s, at least until the bubble popped.

And why did the bubble pop? It wasn’t the strike killing enthusiasm for the sport or steroids and the sanctimonious shaming of players that followed. No, it was overproduction, plain and simple. I had binders and binders of cards in cellophane sheets, and those were just my good cards. Only God knows how many boxes of “commons” I had stacked in my closet and the basement, not to mention an untold number of cards that were unceremoniously tossed aside for good when it became obvious the player was never going to produce the kind of numbers to instill it with value.

Nor was I the only one who went all-in, and no matter how good a player was, it’s difficult for their card to amass much value when the market is flooded. I may have found economics class a snooze in school, but even I picked up on the basics of supply and demand. A few cards did manage to buck the odds, though many of them were special editions or error cards, or possessed some other unusual trait that made them somewhat rare.

That’s the junk wax era in a nutshell. I’m a nerd in a lot of ways. I love sports, movies, music, books, video games, etc. In other words, I’ve got manic collector written all over me in a lot of ways, but I don’t really have a collectible hobby as an adult. Not one that I take seriously anyway. I won’t lie, the idea of collecting something on the side sounds fun, but I’ve never picked anything up. And I can’t help but wonder if its because of the way baseball cards went bust.

Perhaps I shouldn’t use the word bust. Monetarily speaking, the word fits. But I think it would be insincere to categorize my collecting experience in that way. Money counts for a lot in this world, more than it should, but I’ve never considered myself the shallow type who thinks in financial terms alone. I had a lot of fun collecting baseball cards as a kid, so I thought it might strike a chord with my readers if I quickly touched on some of my favorite memories concerning the various card companies.

Topps

Topps was the standard bearer for my generation. It had a long, storied history, and it was by far the most prevalent and easy-to-find card of the era. You didn’t have to go to a card shop to find them. They were at Walmart or on the counter at the local grocery store, and a pack of them didn’t break the bank either.

Like I mentioned in my previous piece, I was obsessed with getting a mint condition version of Mark McGwire’s 1984 Topps Team USA rookie card, but that set was before my time. Over the years, I accumulated cards from 1984 through various means, but nothing of significant value. I believe I had a George Brett, but it wasn’t worth much. Even so, it was always a highlight when I got a Royals player, especially if it was Brett, Willie Wilson, Bret Saberhagen, and later, Bo Jackson.

Bo Jackson’s rookie was in the 1986 set, which was also the first set I collected extensively. I don’t think I ever got a Bo card though. I’ve read online that a lot of people don’t love the layout of these cards with their thick black border and large lettering with the team name on top, but I loved them. That could be simple nostalgia talking, considering what the set meant to me, but it was more than that. The black really made the colors pop. A very cool card, in my opinion.

The following year, with its wood-grained borders, was a more muted look, but equally effective for me. This was at the height of my collecting, and I have a lot of fond memories of those cards. Daryl Motley from the Royals to the Braves for example, which became my first traded card, and I finally got my hands on Mark McGwire’s proper rookie card for the A’s. Not quite as meaningful to me as the Team USA card, but arguably a much sharper card.

Later editions tended to run a little bland, but my cousins and I each got a completed set of the 1989 Topps run for Christmas that year, which was a very big deal for us. That was our first complete set, and I believe it was the only one I ever owned. It was still in my parents’ basement when I moved out, though it had been picked over and was no longer complete. In the ensuing years, it was lost, which is too bad. I wish I still had it for sentimental value.

I don’t care if others disagree, I love the look of these cards.

Upper Deck

Upper Deck was the new kid on the block back in the day, and they had a level of flash the other companies couldn’t match. Their cards were smooth and glossy, and the backs generally had pictures alongside the stats, in addition to the usual snapshot on the front. They were a little pricier than the other brands, but their influence is still felt today. Modern cards look more like Upper Deck than any other card of the junk wax era.

Ken Griffey Jr.’s rookie card was the holy grail of Upper Deck cards, and I pursued it as fervently as anyone else, but I never did get my hands on it. I guess that explains why it was so valuable. It was much harder to obtain than most cards of the day. I did, however, find an old George Brett Upper Deck card from his last season in a random box about a decade ago. The card wasn’t worth anything, but I kept it hung up in my office until I switched jobs last summer. Maybe I need to dig it out of the box I packed up and display it at my current job. What could it hurt?

Donruss

I never got Griffey’s Upper Deck rookie, but I did have his Rated Rookie Donruss card. Rated Rookies were a big deal,* and I was always a big fan of Donruss. They weren’t as flashy as Upper Deck, but they felt a little more exclusive than Topps. I have no idea if that was actually true, but that’s how it felt where I lived.

*So were Topps’ Future Stars. Those two companies knew how to do rookie cards right.

Donruss weren’t difficult to find in my hometown, but they were harder to track down than Topps, and usually worth the effort. Both the 1987 and 1989 designs stood out to me. The latter boasted Griffey’s rookie, and the former sported another nice-looking McGwire rookie. It also had Greg Maddux’s rookie card with the Cubs, which was another of my favorite cards. He’s even got the mustache that betrays his true deviousness. I loved it.

Score and Fleer

I’m going to save some time and combine these two companies, mostly because they blend together in my mind. They weren’t poverty cards you had to cut out from the back of a cereal box or anything like that, but they were definitely a step down to me. Back then, there was no such thing as a bad baseball card to me. I was never going to turn down a pack, but I never sought these brands out.

Fleer is probably most famous (or infamous) for producing Billy Ripken’s “Fuck Face” card. The mere fact that it exists brings a kind of juvenile joy to me I can’t fully express in words, but I never owned that card. In fact, I don’t remember owning any memorable Fleer or Score cards, which is why I have such a meh reaction to them.

Bowman

The last company I’ll touch on is Bowman. I remember being vaguely aware they were a historic card company, similar to Topps, and while I’m sure there are plenty of people who liked their cards, I didn’t know any of them. And I certainly wasn’t a fan either.

The common complaint with Bowman, and my main beef with them, was they were bigger than other cards. This meant the top of the card stuck out of the slots in the cellophane pages, which was both aesthetically displeasing and functionally annoying. Of course, I never had any valuable Bowman cards to worry about the corners getting damaged, but the principle was enough to turn me against them. On a more positive note, I did think they put out some cool retro cards, but it was never enough to win me over. I thought their modern cards were colorless and drab.

Suffice to say, there were no Bowmans in my collection when I sold my cards in my early twenties. It was a rash decision, and one I’d probably not make if I could do it all over again, but I also won’t pretend I’m filled with serious regret. I was hard up for cash, and selling the cards did little to help me. The most valuable cards were the Griffey Rated Rookie and a couple of football cards,* and I left the shop in Lawrence, Kansas, which was nowhere near as cool as My Three Sons, feeling disappointed.

*Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith rookies.

Every now and then, I consider the possibility of taking up the hobby again. The card companies have learned from their mistakes. They’re producing some really cool and creative cards, and they’re reining themselves in when it comes to production, which means these cards might actually be worth something someday. Unfortunately, they’ve also priced out kids in the process.

Baseball card packs are ridiculously expensive today, and you only get about eight cards a pop now, roughly half of what we used to get. I know people pay a lot more to get their grass mowed these days, but it has to be hard for a kid to afford the hobby, and that’s too bad. Because there’s something synonymous with baseball cards and childhood, which is why I hesitate to get back into it. No matter how much I want it to, I know it won’t ever feel the same.

Even if I somehow managed to get my hands on that Team USA Big Mac or a Bo Jackson rookie.

---

Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. Did you collect cards as a kid? Are you still collecting? Share your thoughts on the hobby in the comments below.