Late 1970’s rack packs with stars “showing”

[Belfast1933]

I’m wondering if we have any experienced collectors of unopened rack packs with stars/rookies showing who might be willing to share their advice to a prospective newbie on this part of the hobby.

To be more specific, I’m wondering how to reliably find unopened rack packs from the mid to late 70s (when I first started collecting myself) with minor stars and second-tier Hall of Fame players showing - Don Sutton, Gaylord Perry, Dennis Eckersley, etc.

I’m not interested, no offense, in those “Christmas packs”. Not sure what to make of those other than to say, that’s not what I bought when I was a kid!

I just thought it might be a cool and unique new way for me to add to my Hall of Fame collection and display.

Appreciate any advice on the subject!

Jeff

[ALR-bishop]

I am just a wax pack guy but if I was looking to buy unopened and real Topps rack packs from the 70s I would try to contact the poster grote on the PSA/CU boards

https://forums.collectors.com/discus...mment_11881865

[Jetsfan]

There is also a “Vintage Wax and Packs” forum on Facebook with lots of helpful folks.

[Bigdaddy]

Stretching the OP's post a bit, and I'm not sure if this was the case in the 1970's, but during the 1980's Topps had a very predictable order to the cards that were in the rack packs.

For example, if you had a 1984 rack pack, then you could deduce that Donnie Baseball was the third card after Mario Soto, Roy Smalley and Tim Raines (for example, not the real order). So if you saw any of those guys on the top, you would know there would be a Mattingly in that stack. And you could do the same for the cards showing on the back. Going through some stuff recently, I found notes on 3x5 cards with the order of cards before and after certain high demand cards for several 1980's Topps issues.

Bottom line, even though the packs may not be opened, they may have already been cherry picked for the high dollar cards, thanks to Topps predictability in distribution.

[steve B]

And with pre-searched stuff very rarely you get lucky.

I bought a cello box at a flea market. The seller said it was from a dealers inventory, and he had a bunch of packs with stars showing. The box was cheap since he knew the dealer had searched stuff and put all the packs with stars showing together.

I should have bought more. Whoever it was also put the sequenced packs with stars on the inside together, which looked like just his rejects with all commons on the front. A nice surprise to open when all I was after was cheap commons to get closer to finishing the set.
Unfortunately is was something like 88 or 89 Topps...