Hobby Box question
 

I just bought a couple late 80's Topps hobby boxes which is the first time I've ever bought hobby boxes. I have always had my doubts about cards staying mint for that long in those flimsy cardboard boxes and when I got them my suspicions were correct. At least two corners on every single card were dinged and it wasn't from the shipping. Obviously not a huge financial loss, but I'm just wondering if this is a fairly common occurrence in hobby boxes or if I just got a bad batch. I can't say I'll be running out to buy more soon (if ever again) but I'd like to know the odds I'm up against in the future.

I've contemplated buying some boxes of 80s wax myself. I'll be curious to hear others' experiences, although I'm not too concerned about condition, really

I think if you opened a wax box and every single card was dinged, you'd be at least a little disappointed.....

A couple of years ago I bought a bunch of 80s and 90s wax to relive some childhood memories. The boxes I bought from reputable dealers tended to be in great shape and most of the cards would grade 9, perhaps even 10. Some random ones off eBay from non-dealers tended to be in various conditions, some even clearly resealed/previously searched. Overall though, most of the boxes yielded pack-fresh cards.

The biggest problem is what to do with all of the cards once you open the packs. I threw away several boxes of commons, donated a ton and still have a lot of HOFs/stars from the 80s and 90s just sitting here - straight from pack into top loader and I can't seem to get rid of them.

Jason,
I'm guessing you're around 35, as am I. This stuff, believe it or not, will come around. It's all cyclical. When our generation is 55 or 60, they will clamor for the those childhood moments you speak of. I predict 80's wax will make a big comeback. It will, however, be the last generation to do so.

Hobby Box
 

Just curious...did you get any "star" cards? Or what you might have anticipated? One of the items collectors look for when trying to determine if a box has been opened and pre-sorted is if the star cards were pulled.

I think that might go a long way towards answering your question.


Z Wheat

Yes, I found stars but Im not sure that searching would have anything to do with it anyway. In hobby boxes, the corners of the cards sit tight right up against the inside corners of the thin, flimsy box. I have to assume that corner damage is prevalent in a large percentage of them, particularly as they get older and handled more.

Ok, I wasn't aware there were specific hobby boxes in the late 80's. And unfortunately I bought a lot of cards in the late 80's

What did I miss?


Steve B

I'm thinking it's just a misuse of terminology. There weren't "hobby" boxes back then, just boxes.

Vendor box?
 

You might be talking about vendor boxes. If the cards were not in packs it was a vendor box. I bought a vendor box of 1983 topps this year. The cards were mostly exmt condition due to the corner damage.

Even this isn't infallible. The collation in the 80s was atrocious. I've opened 5 straight boxes of 1987 O-Pee-Chee that I knew were 100% legit without getting a single Barry Bonds card. On the other hand, I've opened a single box of 1985 Leaf that yielded five Roger Clemens and four Kirby Pucketts. I've seen a few collectors accuse a seller of resealing wax simply because they opened two boxes and didn't get a particular star card. You can't judge wax on whether you got the best card in the set.

The best thing to do is to learn what to look for in sealed wax so you can spot bad wax before you open it. Cellos and rack packs are an entirely different story as sequencing is available and many people are resealing those. I wouldn't buy vintage cellos or racks unless they came from a reputable dealer and it was a fresh box pulled from a sealed case.

A lot of times it really is not the companies collation. Sometimes certain players cards just were not inserted into certain products. From personal experience I know Score would pull the star players and sell them in huge lots directly to large dealers. Leaving the packs with mainly commons. It has been too long to remember the year but if you say you pulled a Don Mattingly out of a Score pack that year you are a liar or really lucky as most got pulled.

Ive discussed these issues with dozens of collectors and card shop owners. All shop owners revealed the wax secret of 86-91, when the world invested their futures and money in cards.

What was explained to me, were these sort of algorythms (spelling right?) in which various card manufacturers would place random cards in their wax wrapped packs, including 89 upper deck. Shop owners and dealers would mostly do trial and error, til they found which pack had a particular card in it. For example, some shop owners today, will actually admit that in 89, they knew which upper deck pack would have the griffey. Pull the pack, replace it, and easily re-seal the box. So, those "sealed" boxes of 89 upper deck, are quite likely to be "re-sealed".

Fathers, uncles, dealers, topps, fleer, other manufacturers, fanatics, investors, shop owners, kmart managers, everyone, they all raped the hobby in attempts to make it into the best industry before Windows93 and cell phones.

In my 30s, I dont agree wax will come back. An 88topps wrapper will never be like the 51 pack wrapper. Not even when our kids are grandparents. I hope Im wrong. 50s cards are worth a lot because #1, not many were printed. #2, baby boomers were coming of age all at the same time. #3, all those kids grew up and either went to Vietnam or college. #4, their moms threw all their "kid" stuff away when they left for war or school.

80s thru 00s has not seen any of that. Nobody born between 1969 to 1989 has experienced what the baby boomers did in the 50s and 60s. Thus, our cards arent worth the cost of cardboard they've been printed on. But I still like them, whether worthless or not.

Sorry to ramble, interesting topic.

Sent from my LS670 using Tapatalk 2

That's a big part of it as far as packs and boxes go.

If you've got a case it's possible to keep track and figure out the sequence, with small sets it only took a box, maybe two. I had a box of 82 Topps/coke/Brighams Red Sox, and all the packs were sequenced the same. One particular common always had Yaz in the middle. Knowing this was nice towards the end of the promotion when they'd let you pick a pack out of a box rather than the staff controlling them. Almost as good as the end of the 78 Papa Ginos discs. - My little brother asked the waitress if they had a card he needed instead of the one he already had 10 of. She brought the whole bucketful over and left them at the table:D

The first hints of changes was the 83 test packs, I think tested in response to one of the product tampering cases.
After that it was the whole open a wax box keep the stars, reseal and return it to the store thing, which went along with figuring out the sequence.
(I never stooped that low. Why bother when the same box would be sold 6 months later for below dealer cost so they could raise cash for the next wave of products?)

All of that led to modern sealed packs and shrink wrap with company logos.

Steve B

I don't remember this with the Griffey but this definitely was the case with the UD Jordan baseball card a few years later. I watched a guy pull the exact pack out of multiple boxes. If it was a fresh box, the pack with the Jordan was in the same spot every time. Everyone knew about the sequencing within packs but that was the first time I saw the foil packs cheated by location within the box. I bought very little of those cards because I always assumed an open box had been searched.

To the OP, I've had that happen to me as well and it's frustrating, even if it was cheap. A few years back I got a deal on 2 boxes from each of the three 92 Stadium Club series. I loved those back in the day so I thought I'd build the set for fun. The 4 boxes from Series 1 and 2 were great. Every card in the 2 Series 3 boxes had a smashed upper left corner. No damage on the boxes. I still never finished that Series 3 set!