Just ordered today:

1988 Topps American Baseball Wax Box

42 packs, 5 cards each

Picked up two wax boxes for just under $42 delivered.

Also picked up another 1987 Topps Wax Box for my son (he wants to build a set) - $18.15 delivered.

So, I actually ended up buying one full and one almost full wax box of the "1988 Topps American Baseball", for a total of 90 packs.

90 packs, 5 cards per pack

These packs all have gum in them, too. Not the pink US gum, but a smaller, softer, Irish gum. I'm still not trying it (it IS over 30 years old), but it at least looks edible.

The gum did stain one card per pack, though, with a few exceptions.

So, 90 packs x 4 cards per pack is 360 cards.

There are 88 cards in the set, so with perfect collation, we'd get 4 sets. I know we won't but we'll see what we do get.

These are some decent looking cards. They're poorly centered left to right. I guess Topps wasn't looking to put it's best foot forward across the pond!

Here's the 1987 Topps Wax Box we picked up.

My son opened it all in one night, but has been dragging his feet on sorting the cards.

So, that means from a collecting standpoint, he's caught up to 99% of the rest of us. :)

I've started listing 4 card lots of the '89 Donruss cards on eBay with a starting bid of $1.49 delivered.

If they don't sell, I''ll put them as BIN for the same price for 30 days.

If they still don't sell, they'll go into the paper shredder and then the compost pile.

I figure it's a good way to get whatever value out of these cards there is, and get rid of the rest in an eco-friendly manner.

I had no idea donruss griffeys were going for that much. I bought 3 or 4 for like 40 bucks each a while back along with some fleer, score, and topps traded.

- Just as sure you shouldn't eat the yellow snow, don't eat the brown gum.


=

Wow, the 1988 Topps American Baseball ended up having terrible collation. \

360 cards in the packs, and 88 cards in the set. I came up 2 cards short of a complete set. Some of the cards I had 7 or 8 of, but then some 1-2, and two cards I didn't get at all.

I'll be attempting to sell some extras off cheap on eBay. If I get any takers, maybe I"ll order the two missing cards off Sportlots to say I have the set!

Got a package in the mail today from board member Just_Collect containing some unopened boxes for my son and I! We had messaged back and forth, but I hadn't told my little guy cards were on the way until they arrived today on our doorstep.

He was super excited, and immediately starting tearing in!

Here's a photo of the haul. Thank you so much Just_Collect!

A couple photos mid-opening!

A few thoughts from opening these boxes:

• He enjoyed the Bowman Chrome cards ("These are so SHINY")
• The Pop-Up Donruss cards were a hit, too - He's got about 20 popped up on his desk right now
• An unexpected one - the 1992 Topps came with a scratch off game card in each pack. That ended up being quite the diversion as we figured out how to play the game. He had a lot of fun with them.
• I vaguely remember those game cards being the reason that the market remains flooded with 1992 Topps Gold "Winners" cards (I believe it involved something really high tech like holding the game card up to a bright light).

After a pack opening frenzy earlier today (about a box worth of packs remain for another day, plus lots of sorting), my son went to my folks house for a sleepover.

Grandpa has a wood stove in the basement, so I sent my son over with a box of empty card boxes and wax pack wrappers from our adventures.

Wax pack wrappers aren't recyclable, compostable, or good for much else...but they can provide a few BTU's to help starve off the last bit of winter!

That is correct. As I remember it the early redeemers got real Gold cards, but as the trick got out Topps did the winners cards to not ruin the value of the Gold cards, as they were selling a factory set for a decent chunk of change. The regular Gold cards were quite scarce in packs, only 1 per box.

Thanks for the reminder....that makes sense.

We pulled a McGwire gold card out of this box. That would have been a pretty awesome pull back in 1992!

Update:

Sold the two complete Cramer sets and empty wax box on eBay today for $54.99 plus $13.65 ($68.64 total).

I've also sold a few more singles, so this particular "investment" turned out pretty well. For the record, all the other junk wax I "invested" in did NOT turn out to be good investments from a monetary standpoint. :D

Limited to one person each on the planet......lol