Hobby Box question

[steve B]

Originally Posted by RedlegsFan

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

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