I collected from 1985 to about 1992 and I still have my collection. I knew all along they had no real value, but I didn't care, I loved opening packs and collecting cards. I learned about players than I didn't get to see play. There are many cards I still remember may have no value in the real world, but they mean a lot to me. To me that's what card collecting is all about. I'm thinking of buying a box of old wax packs and re-living the experience of opening up packs and seeing what I get.
I hate when people ask me how much my collection is worth. I have no idea, but more importantly I just don't care. "Junk Wax" is a term, not a curse. It actually provides new generation with the ability to access the great pleasure that we had discovering these cards, many of which are all-time amazing designs.
@@sportscardprofessor Right there with you. The value for me is the experience, not what someone is willing to pay for it. Of course if I had something someone was willing to pay good money for I'd gladly sell it, but I'm not one to seek out that sort of thing. You're right about the old designs, even something as simple as the 1986 Topps set looked cool to me back then and still does today.
When we look back on this time from the future, I think it will be known as the "junk grading" era. I'm sure some folks will go and blame the grading companies for their own greed and hubris, just like they blamed the manufacturers back in the 90s.
It’s crazy how some of the most interesting things are so hard to find. Excellent information. That era was my introduction as a collector. I have 15,000 cards all from 1986-1993 (ages 6-13). I never understood why MY CARDS were never worth as much as other years. I got frustrated to the point of stopping collecting cards. I’m glad to know that the hobby is still going. I literally stopped collecting cards in 8th grade and somehow assumed the rest of the world stopped too 😂. Anyway, excellent stuff. KIU
Check those '86 and '87 cards out, they may have some value now. I was fortunate to begin at the end of that time (started in my teens), so I was part of the crazy 1990s quality explosion. I'm sorry that you weren't able to ride that same high.
@@brainiakuniversity Ebay is the worlds biggest, non-stop card show. I haven't purchased a new pack of cards in decades, it's just nonstop nostalgia. I'm a bit envious of your chance to discover that decade, but be careful with buying unopened boxes, the prices are currently way out of hand.
Only 1 minute in and I already love this video. I love your demeanor & approach/desire to educate from a first-hand perspective. Thank you a ton for sharing! I just subscribed and will definitely be looking at any other videos/future videos you have posted.
I found some old cards from the 80's and 90's that I had stored. Found some good ones. Bought 300 mixed wax packs and some foil packs. 87 to 92. Gum in the packs that had gum. Found a Topps Randy Johnson in mint and nicely centered. In the time I was collecting there was no grading services. Now we can tell what is gradeable and those old cards are pretty easy to estimate. Finding HOF Rookies is enjoyable. I've got a Ken Griffey Jr Homerun Ball that I caught in 1994. I have the VHS tape from Kansas City TV 5 that shows me catching it in right field at Royals Stadium and my 2 young sons ducking. I've got some old packs of basketball cards coming. I found some good Jordon cards in my old stash. And more. I have 5 Grandkids and they're all good in sports, because my sons train them like I did them. Daughter was an MVP in Softball from 13 through High School. I've got some videos on my channel. Not near as good as yours. Something to o. God Bless.
new to your channel. love some binders!!! this is how i do my sorting is putting together the binders collection. great stuff. thumbs up. i liked the junk wax for some of my favorites like ron gant and juan gonzalez. later on Jay, thanks for sharing!!!
As a guy who collected in junk wax era and recently got back in, it's confusing trying to figure out where things are heading, if how it is currently is good or bad etc, but I can't help but think that it seems absurd for a rookie today to have dozens of different rookie cards, in the same set, often 3-4 different rookie base cards in the base set and multiple inserts all w many different parallels. I know the numbers are still lower overall but seems like excess and only serves as bait for pack opening. "Yea I got a Luka green prizm black holo die cut rookie", and there's several combinations of the same card.. like how are these gonna hold up long term, hard to imagine all of them will be in demand even if numbered, seems overkill should be a base rookie and a few inserts. Not to mention the crazy amount of different sets each year... Just too much imo but we'll see.
I know what u mean. I think a very small handful of cards will hold value. I believe 1 will be the Luka prizm cards u mentioned. But not the other 95 percent of that set in 2018 prizm
Perfectly said, and definitely hits home as I had the mindset as a kid of "If I have a bunch of Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith rookies, when I'm grown up they'll sale for the same prices as a Jim Brown rookie." ...nope 🤨 Had a blast collecting, but it was quite the bummer when I found out what the "junk wax era" was all about when I first got back into the hobby. Great video!
@@sportscardprofessor Definitely. While I always wanted the cards to be valuable, my number one concern then and now is my love of the cards, and the history of the game. When we focus on that, it makes for a much more enjoyable experience. Keep up the great content!
This was a great video. I’m 42 and returned to the hobby with my son (8) and a big focus of ours is Junk Wax. Tons of nostalgia for me and inexpensive way to get him into the hobby. Thanks for posting. I subscribed
I think our parents were actually thinking, "I need my lawn mowed and other chores done. My child will do these tasks I can't pay anyone else to do for amounts I will pay IF he/she wants to buy cards."
This was a beautifully explained video. Had my attention more than business school does, this would be great to show to intro biz students in grade school tbh
Great job, Darren. I thought you did a great job of summarizing the situation. It's unbelievable to me that the companies are able to charge what they charge today and people will happily pay it. I wonder how much of it is because of autographs. Autos have existed in products for a long time, but they were incredibly rare. I never pulled one when I was a kid. But now we've got products which guarantee an auto or two per box. Some of these autos are worth a ton of money.
Thank you. I think that the modern price structure has to do with perceived rareness. People spend a lot of money on a graded PSA 9 because there are only two...although soon there could be 4, then 8, then twelve. The allure of uniqueness is different than what we experienced in the '80s/'90s. We knew there were thousands of every card (OK, not millions), even with the Lombardy Trophy Hologram. I was about getting our copy, not being the only one.
Amazing analysis of our generation’s history. I collected from 1980 through 1987. In 1988, at age 16, my interest waned as other priorities arose. I didn’t get back into it until 2000 only to discover the cards I had did not appreciate like I expected.
Sorry to hear that you missed the best years, though there's always time to catch up. I started in 1990, so I can only imagine what the '80s collecting felt like, but the amazement of seeing new Donruss designs and the first discovery of Sportflics must have been pretty cool.
@@sportscardprofessor Very cool time indeed! When Sportflics came out it introduced a fourth card company. However, if I recall correctly our monthly Becketts did not list them making trading problematic.
@@jayscards8640 They included the basic set for a few years, but not the rookie set or any of the other things Sportflics did. By '89 they were no longer seen as relevant.
You basically explained the 90s comics crash as well. X-Men #1 sold millions in the early 90s, then by the end of the 90s, top sellers were in the hundreds of thousands.
Yeah, comics rode the wave of the card boom. A lot of comic stores began as off-shoots of card shops. "The Death of Superman" didn't hold up too well compared to how it started out.
Thank you. Yeah, that's an interesting quirk to CZcams...once it's up, it's up for a long time. I wish they would allow you to edit the videos to ease the time-sensitivity problem.
I'm just thankful that my dad had the foresight to buy all these boxes during the late 90s for dirt cheap and for a good while between 2005-2009 my dad and I were opening up these boxes and building sets. And now looking at these sets 10 years later I can see that some of the cards have value like all my Jager rookie cards
Value ruins collecting. Ever watch someone open a $20 pack of cards and flip through 5 cards without any interest in what they are because they're looking for just that one card? I love the experience of opening a box and watching a set evolve, discovering the card designs, and seeing what names were chosen to fill the space between the stars. It is an experience that still allows me to feel like a kid.
@@sportscardprofessor i know. When I was younger and opening packs with my dad. Pretty much every player in the pack he'd tell me a bit about them and that made it much more interesting
@@DavidsSkillsandStuff I'd love to do that, but the videos would run kinda' long. Actually, that could be an interesting idea for a category. I'll play around with it, talking about the players who show up as stars for a while and then disappear.
@@waltercopus1485 Yeah, I have heard about it already. It is always a shocking thing to hear, the thought of what cardboard ended up sleeping with the fishes. Once I bought some Katrina-damaged boxes of cards where 40% was destroyed, and it got me thinking about what cards didn't survive that storm. Topps' need to destroy those 1960 cards was sadly necessary, but it still hurts to think about.
I agree, as others have mentioned speculation and grading has driven the current market. FOMO (fear of missing out) drives it as well. People see the amount of money being spent on Trout, Brady, and Mahomes cards and think that every up and coming star has that potential, and they don't want to miss out.
Yeah, we felt that way about Ki-Jana, Leaf, Emmitt Smith (OK, we might have been on to something there), but never with the kind of money as today. Newer collectors haven't been through the ropes yet.
the junk slab era is a reference to how many base /commons got submitted for grading and when they all come back its gonna flood the market and drive the slabs down which will pull on other cards desired or not down //it isnt necessarily the same conditions that existed for the junk wax era//its just shifted over to the graded slabs
Thanks for explaining. I also thing there are younger collectors like me that can get a box of 1990 Topps box for $30 and get a Frank Thomas rookie card and Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cup card and we weren't around when a box like this came out so its great to open cheap backs and get some key rookies to add to our collection. Its nice opening a whole box of packs for the same price as 3 current packs. : )))
Yeah, that is a great gift to the overproduction. For people who only care about value this was a nightmare...but if you love cards this meant that anybody can have and enjoy these cards. OK, maybe not the Ken Griffey Jr UD rookie, but all the other at least.
Once again great video and a lot of truth about what was said. I agree there are a lot of similarities between the junk wax era and today however they are not the same. Just curious since I’m fairly new to the channel. Are those complete sets in binders?
Yeah, it was weird listening to the chatter a year ago about a new Junk Wax Era, and realizing that most people didn't quite understand the reason for the name. But when you live through something you can take it for granted that not everyone sees it the same way, so I'm glad that I can help enlighten those who missed the fun. Imagine what we'll be telling new collectors/investors a few decades from now.
Great video! I think it probably has to do with the rise of unboxing videos and their popularity across multiple social media platforms. People are trying to build an audience for unboxing cards in the way that some have built an audience for unboxing toys. So it may have less to do with the cards themselves and more to do with the discovery/opening process. That’s my gut re: junk wax prices rising again.
Every once in a while, I'll go on ebay and buy a box of 92 donruss hoping to pull a DK or an Elite card. DKs aren't worth much, but I still get that childlike thrill when I see that one miscolored sliver of the card when I peel open the pack!
Nice summation of the junk wax era and juxtaposition with today's very interesting and unique sportscard era. I wonder how the problem of too many boutique sets and online-only-released sets being released will impact future value.
That's one of the intriguing elements to this era. The late '80s/early 90s had a lot un-official cards sold at shows that were interesting but retained no value, and shop-at-home releases followed from actually official brands, but they were hard to keep track of and are more curios now, so I doubt that boutique etc. cards will hold up down the road. Right now there are too many different cards and variations for any of them to retain value 10 years from now. There are always 5-10 cards which are THE cards to have, and the rest fill in the collecting gap. That's true of Manning, Brees, well just about anyone not named LeBron (Brady doesn't count since he had too few cards). So, which cards will be the cards? We now have a new audience that are forming themselves as collectors/investors and we have yet to see how they will look at these cards down the road. I doubt they will maintain the same enthusiasm, so we will see what cards everyone hangs on to.
Another aspect is name-brand feel. It used to be that if someone created a card without the team logos it was cheap, but now in the gamer world a lot of fans are less interested in the team identifiers and are thus open to cards that look generic. NFL Properties and its other sport equivalents used to determine who could make "real" cards, but that is currently not the case. I don't see how future fans will still like those airbrushed cards, and will probably gravitate to only the cards with the official team jersey cards. I couldn't forecast that since I still think anything airbrushed is second rate.
@@Rainbowsedge That was pretty inevitable. Fanatics is not a card brand, so they had no intrinsic market recognition (even Panini rode the Playoff/Donruss brand names for years). They also don't know how to design cards. It is the fresh enthusiasm that Fanatics brings that should help the brand, but I don't know how the industry will evolve in the near-term, or how NFTs will reshape investing, so I think we're more likely to see a card market affect rather than a brand change affect. At least Fanatics is a high-roller organization who wants to invest rather than just carry-on.
Collecting since 1975, went through the junk wax era. This isn't like it. There were no real insert cards of value then. Many bought boxes and boxes of Donruss for $2 a box at Walgreens looking for a 91 Elite or the Cal Ripken Autos, nothing else. I think part of the problem is you use the word 'collector' for those guys standing and waiting at Walmart to strip the shelves each week. They aren't collectors. They are speculators, many with no real job since they can stand there for hours and then flip the cards. Collectors disappeared in the late 80's. I was one of them. Now I am back, collecting vintage only, avoiding the speculators looking for only key inserts and a fast buck. My take, good video, Tony
Thank you. As a collector from the '90s I can say that a few of us did emerge in the years following, but it was a lot harder with the sheer bulk of available cards. It helps to be focused on a subject, and I drew the line at 2000...then again at 2015. It's tough competing with the financially minded, I'm just trying to finish sets.
@@sportscardprofessor One thing that's always confused me, as recently as 2015-16, was that you could buy a complete Topps baseball set for that year. What is the point of collecting if you can just buy a whole box? There's no "trying to complete a set" or rarity. It's just "tada, here you go."
@@Rainbowsedge Ah, the effect of inserts and parallels. In 1990 a complete set of Topps/Fleer/Donruss set you back a fair chunk of money, plus it was a one-time investment. As a kid you could drop 50c to $1 from time to time and piece a set together...plus that "trading card" aspect still applied. Try dropping $15-$20 at that time and you're rolling in some dough. By the mid '90s every set came with inserts and parallels, and that's what we were going after. Thus if you just wanted the set Topps was fine giving you an easy option, in such a case you probably weren't interested in investing $50-$100 to wade through all the extra stuff if $35-$40 got the set in one shot.
Whew 😅 thank you for not shouting throughout the video like…. “Hey what’s going today guys!” And then keeping that same volume throughout. Thank you for not doing that
Good question. I've been fascinated watching how that video has aged, both good and bad. We're still in the midst of the backslide, so we have yet to see what the hobby will finally look like, but the general nature of the recent bubble is that people were just spending way too much for cards. In the Junk Wax boom we were not paying too high of prices, it's just that there was almost no value increase. Right now card sales are insanely overinflated and there will not be a demand for these cards in the future to match. Are the cards overprinted? No. They're too expensive. I did a video last year called "Rare Cards, the mistake of Modern Collectors" that gets into it a lot better.
7 months ago this may have been right, but right now it is obvious that the cards are being massively overproduced, overvalued, and we're in a bubble that will burst. Very obvious. A crash is coming.
I've been to card shows where people will buy a $300 box of Bowman Chrome open up the packs to get the autograph card in the parallel cards and they throw the rest of the cards in the trash seeing trash cans full of cards get thrown out
The kids who collected cards in the 80s-90s are now parents and have that same sense of nostalgia. and want to share the joy of baseball collecting to their kids.
I'm 33. I started collecting when I was in grade school. I stopped collecting soon after. I guess because many kids weren't into the hobby after Pokémon/Yugioh died out. But I got back into during covid because of my brother. I do have some of my older stuff. If my cards were worth a million,I wouldn't sell it.The story behind how I obtained it matters most to me.
Oh, there is a junk wax era approaching but it's not the card companies to blame this time. Presently we're headed towards a "PSA Junk Era" where cards from the junk wax era are being professionally graded en masse, predictably receiving 9's and 10's with populations in the tens of thousands for some particular cards... Yea, that is not sustainable, not when grading fees are $20 bucks a card and a PSA 9 or 10 is the rule and not the exception.. Look, I highly doubt that a card like an 1989 Upper Deck Griffey Jr Rookie is going to hold it's $5,000 dollar value when there are literally 8,000+ PSA 10's.. No those cards are going to plummet significantly.. We're either going to see them fall from grace or we will see their raw counterparts go up drastically in value to close the gap... Look, the difference between a raw 89 UD Ken Griffey Jr Rookie and a PSA 10 does NOT justify the margin in value when you can buy a raw copy for $50 bucks or a PSA 10 for $2,500 and the raw card looks exactly the same and could grade a PSA 10....... None of it is sustainable, practical or even fundamentally economically sound - because clearly supply and demand is not determining the value of the card when there are literally tens of thousands of them in a 9 or 10 - no the value of the card is arbitrary at best.
I like to be honest with myself about the ignorance I had early on in...well, whatever. As a kid, or as a new discoverer, you tend to be amazed by the rules that are being fabricated by an unfamiliar audience, like new speaking habits, that do not necessarily translate well down the road. I learned a lot of lessons by suffering my mistakes, because that's how they became real to me. A new audience is now exploring a world of limits that mirror what Baby Boomers and their kids (us GenXers) explored in the '80s, and it doesn't make sense because there is a component that they don't know how to see. At the end of the day the party will end, and it will again be about us collectors, and I'm curious to see what affects the current frenzy leaves as a permanent mark on the hobby.
It's because of the grading companies people think if they can get tens on the rookie cards and major cards that is when the cards go up in value but the majority of those cards are still junk you can put together in the 80s and most of them are really cheap
Watched your vid, very good effort. I was on the front line of the hobby at the time and still on the front line today so I have two “counterpoints” for you. 1) I disagree with your conclusion that people “opened too much”. Supply on its own is not enough to justify worth...you have to factor in demand. In the junk wax era when every year the hobby expanded, no one opened “too many” packs. Maybe a ton of people have opened a bunch of cards but they kept those cards. Magic The Gathering is a good example...tons of cards opened but no one is selling so cards keep going up overall, especially for the Commander format. The reason why the junk wax era hit was because the hobby demand shrank because an entire group of hobbyists quit within 3 years, starting in 1992 (not 1991). You identified Pro Set, had the right set yet missed the point...Pro Set became saturated because unscrupulous people ordered it chasing the hologram card...they searched cases with metal detectors and unloaded the hitless boxes for under cost, flooding the market. The next year in 1992, all of the major brands had insert chase cards that needed cases to be opened to complete a set. This killed 90% of the set builders in the hobby and the next year, with even crazier low odds chase cards, the rest of the set builders left for good. Basically the creation and escalation of insert cards killed over half the hobby’s collector demand and only team/player collectors were left. 2) The reason so many boxes are going up, especially junk wax era boxes is because those sets have a bunch of HOF, top 50 all time players, especially basketball and hockey, and people are looking for PSA gradable pack fresh copies of key RCs. Same reason why 1990 Impel Marvel exploded. The nostalgia reasons you supplied for the yuppies applies again for 80s/90s kids...childhood nostalgia of investors...Griffey Jr, Jagr, Shaq, etc. The big time stars of 1990-91 their cards along with all time greats of that era in Gretzky and Jordan lead the way.
@@vendora1 I’ve heard a lot of people give that same unthinking comment. 1) there is a heavy resistance from people like yourself who refuse to believe cards in that era won’t be worth anything so you guys don’t send those cards in for grading...especially when calculating the higher grading fee in; 2) just about every set from that era is condition sensitive...it’s tough to pull PSA 10s and it’s tough for those cards to have survived 30 years as junk cards and stay pristine; 3) you underestimate demand...the collector base was something like 10 to 100 times bigger then and these late 80s and early 90s cards are the most famous...I hope you’re right because if the price tanks, people like me are going to go all in on them. It’s the same reason why Magic The Gathering cards are unlikely to ever be worthless...the players are so nostalgic for old cards, we would buy them up if they dropped to .1% of their original value. The current demand is not as elastic as you think. You look at the surge of ‘21, Feb and March...how did the prices climb so high on old cards of retired players? It’s because the demand was there the whole time it just needed extra cash in pockets to fuel it.
@@Rorschachqp i go by what the market is doing not what i think it will do or wont do //so no its not an unthinking comment //heavy resistance? i own slabbed cards fella -- im just realistic about the going ons of the hobby and what the trends are and right now it isnt in the sellers favor // example 2021 prizm basketball 2200 a box only guy worth getting was lamelo and he was 2/3 of the value of the box to make your money back you need to hit 1 of his and 3 to 4 others then get em graded but everyone else that bought a box is doing the same thing // thus his base isnt worth shit graded //thats reality man //especially when everyone thats wants one HAS one //who are you selling it to then ? jfc//uh no plenty of boxes still left from junk wax era and when i was a teenager i put the cards into 9 pocket pages and into a binder with penny sleeve //they are not condition sensitive as far as miscuts printing errors sure are but people LIKE error cards smfh and they literally made hundreds of millions of those cards the demand even if it was 1000x bigger would still have to absorb all those cards jfc man you are not getting rich off those cards period grow up and when the slabs of these come back and collectors already have them and the flippers and daytraders aand speculators are gone --whats left man? learn how the market is not what you think its should be
Excellent recap of the era. What's going on now isn't another junk wax era, and it's hard to understand just what is going on. I've heard that well, it's because of COVID, people have too much money and time. Well, people didn't make more money during COVID - most stayed the same or made less. So then its, well people aren't going out to eat or to the movies as often, so they have more disposable income. Seriously - how much were some people paying for dinners or movies that we now see the prices we do? Flash forward 15 years, to when Mike Trout's career numbers are set and he's safely ensconced in Cooperstown (and he's without a ring, if he stays in LA) - does anyone really believe his 2011 Topps Update is going to sell for 1K? I will bet the Nolan Ryan rookie I just bought at an extremely inflated price to finish my '68 set that the Trout rookie will be hovering around $50 or so by then. And a word about that Ryan rookie - each day eBay lists another dozen of them - there's a virtual glut of them out there, many in top shape and at high grades, yet the prices are outrageous. What we have now, I think (and I really don't intend to sound mean) is a lot of people with more money than sense in the hobby. Whether I'm right or wrong can be judged in another 10-15 years when we revisit these prices.
I explored some of that in a now-aged video analyzing the Lock-Down Era, and got into that a bit. Let me know what points you'd add to that exploration.
@@sportscardprofessor I just watched your earlier video - very thought provoking. I always knew old-fashioned gambling was a big part of what is going on, but I never considered the absence of sports forcing fantasy players/gamblers into other venues like cards - I think that was a great observation.
All that "junk" was thrown out.. there is value in those sets. All the players now going into hall of fame now. Add a new generation looking for simplicity, what is left is being bought now
I'm not saying there's nothing to love about them, but after you've opened 4 boxes of 1989 Donruss you'll better appreciate the term. The great advantage to the missing value is the fact that these cards are still readily available for new collectors to find and enjoy. There isn't much of a place for new collectors in the hobby right now, and here is a playground whose gates are still open.
My friend runs a card shop here in St Louis and he still has cases of the 80s Fleer and Donruss baseball cards and cases of the late 80s and early to mid-90s Topps cards nobody wants to they would have to throw out 99% of what was produced to ever get a value on those cards maybe in a thousand years they might go up a little bit
Sort of, but not nearly at the same level. The current market is smaller, so the numbers seem large today, but collectors have a different expectation for the market.
@@sportscardprofessor I don't know I've seen too many people throwing their new cards in the trash only to keep the autographed cards and parallel cards that's the only thing collectors want I seen them at shows to throw the regular cards in the trash in most dealers I talked to said they're just trash they're not going to be worth anything too many of them printed they need to cut the print by about 90% of what it is today and then you'll be lucky if those cards have any value my friend runs a card shop and he has so many sets of baseball cards from the last 30 years piled up in the shop and nobody wants to buy them
The hobby right now is being driven by PSA investors who cut their teeth on baseball and 9.8 comics. For over five (really over ten) years the hockey market is driven by UD Young Guns, slightly short printed base cards of rookies in the flagship brand, which feels true to collectors both from the junk era with 90-91 UD Young Guns, and the old skool O Pee Cher gum card collectors converging on base rookies as true RCs. The card to lead the charge was 05-06 UD Sidney Crosby YG. In baseball, the key card was the paper 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout. Before that card, Chrome and auto Bowmans were king. Now, the paper Topps RC is the true RC. When you see PSA 10s being bought, you can tell which school of thought they come from as an investor by if they pay for the paper PSA 10 RC or they are paying for the Chrome/Prizm PSA 10. In hockey, chrome is junk.
A big part of the problem now is too much limited product. Super short printed "base" cards that nobody can get. Too many gimmicks and inserts and parallels.
I think it's more about random rarity. If everyone has a one-of-one then they're not special, there aren't many cards that everyone can focus on. Tom Brady has a few must-have rookies, as with LeBron James and Derek Jeter. You could tear through packs and run into them. Now it's ripping an expensive pack and being curious if there's anything at all. You want to treasure whatever special card you get, only because it's special and rare...and a reward for the expense.
I believe we are in a new junk wax era because the Market is oversaturated with graded cards. Plus, ultra modern cards have a much higher percentage of getting gem 10 grades. It will be very hard to maintain value long term if everyone already has Gem 10 Mike Trouts, Zion Williamson and Luka cards.
I still think it's different. The problem before was not cost related, it was based on demand. Right now the prices are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of wack and create an artificial perception of value. I'll put it this way, in the '90s the Junk Wax cards did not go up in value, while modern cards will all be plummeting in value.
Late 80 s up until 2002 card collections are the best.... players from the 80s..... I want those H.O.F ers....they continued playing well into mid 2000s... I like junk .
You can tell it was mass production when you have card shops card shows and cards being sold at Walmart and Target and hard telling where else gas stations that's mass production modern cars are not a good investment buy them because you enjoy the hob if you want cards that are worth money by the 50s 60s and 70s stuff
I think people use the term junk wax era in the modern sense is in regard to graded cards. Late 80s early 90s, we had no grading, it was all raw cards, and they had no value because of that. Grading completely saved the hobby. But now it's reversed. The cards produced now are in lower numbers, but so much higher quality. Pick any popular modern player and look at the population counts of thier gem cards. It's ridiculous. There are thousands and thousands of them. Way more than any from the junk wax era. Luca prizm PSA 10's? That's the new junk wax
I definitely think that's part of it, but it comes down to expectations. When you pay $200 for a pack you expect to get a huge value, and when you don't you feel cheated. This begs the question of why you spent so much in the first place. Investors are flinging around thousands of dollars for inflated costs, and can't understand why there's so much of the same thing around. There is no market right now, just speculation.
@@sportscardprofessor "There is no market right now, just speculation." OMG that could apply to so many things. It's the perfect way to explain why I'm not buying into crypto right now, for example. Going to write that down!
I think the reason we had empty shelves was due to extreme greed. Everyone was making money in mid 2020 thru 2021. You had to really suck to not be making profit. Now a year later I am seeing mostly stocked shelves except for the top sets. Some of the psa pop reports don't look good. I sold some of mine due to these high numbers.
I made this video in Fall 2020, and within about 6 months the shelves all got restocked (except for Target and Walmart). It took some time for the manufacturers to catch up, but they responded appropriately. There still isn't the hoarding problem that we had 32 years ago.
@@sportscardprofessor Because the packs are so high. I remember buying that box of 89 donrus for 8 dollars back in early 90s. There was also 90 fleer Basketball for about the same.
Packs of cards are to expensive for me to get,all these card packs have all these different special cards in different groups,your odds of you getting a special card is rediculous,do they even sell cheap cards that kids can enjoy cards you can put in the spokes of their tires that they don't have to worry about how much they will be worth in 20 to 30 years lol.
The lack of access for kids is my biggest problem with the current card market. They actually do create cards for kids, but investors are buying them up in big raids at Walmart and Target, so they're not accessible. Even junk wax boxes are selling for fortunes right now with this investor feeding frenzy.
Are you kidding?? There is so much current Topps out there, people literally throw them away and only keep the “hits”. The base cards being made now are worthless no matter who is on them
This video aged well for about two months and then the current deluge of product hit the market. Most of what I said still holds up, but it sure could have been presented better.
@@sportscardprofessor I love all the videos you made about the 90s stuff in the eraand that I love so much. Back then you literally had maybe three or so rookie cards. Now these guys have over 1000 rookie cards and there’s only so much hobby dollars to go around, so most of them will not be worth anything and there’s no specific cards to point to anymore. It is so saturated that I have gotten out of modern collecting and gone back into collecting the stuff I love in the highest grade that I can afford.
I don't acknowledge anything after 2015. I just don't see anything interesting about modern cards. That said I don't need modern cards, I'm still struggling to know the ins and outs of '90s cards. It will never end.@@brentrichards4699
@@sportscardprofessor Do you think junk wax era cards could one day become scarce? I was born in 2000 but I inherited so many cards and hall of fame rookies from this era. I wish I could've gotten my hands on some NBA Fleer 1986 boxes haha. That wouldn't be junk to me!
@@Strutz3E Man, '86 Fleer wasn't junk in 1990 when I started, but I wish it had been so that I could have gotten packs of it. As for scarcity, no they will never go that direction. If you're looking for value, that will only be on an individual basis. The first 3 Fleer basketball sets were always valuable since the hobby took off in 1990, '89-90 took a few years, and only now has anyone ever cared about '90-91. I think that enthusiasm will die off soon. But if you only appreciate the value side of cards there isn't much hope for that era. If, like myself, you enjoy cards themselves then Junk Wax offers you a unique opportunity to get some great sets for cheap. My Best Of/Worst Of videos show just how much I love card designs, and the Junk Wax Era featured some of the best. So to me it's largely not junk, but overly common. That said, it is amazing that the Griffey RC is still so valuable since Upper Deck printed like 1,000,000 copies of it, so it's not really rare. The question is, what do you enjoy about cards?
@@sportscardprofessor If I were to tell you why I like cards, I would end up writing you an essay. But that's also the epitome of why this hobby is so unique!
@@Strutz3E Yeah, I'm lucky enough to have an entire channel to slowly unfurl my passion. Everyone has a different relationship with the hobby, and that's why giving advice to new collectors is tough..."how do you enjoy cards?" The key is to enjoy it as is right for you, that's all that matters.
Lol. Thought maybe he was a fingerstyle guitarist but they're long on both hands. Maybe some other type of musician, I imagine they probably serve some sort of purpose for him.
I collected from 1985 to about 1992 and I still have my collection. I knew all along they had no real value, but I didn't care, I loved opening packs and collecting cards. I learned about players than I didn't get to see play. There are many cards I still remember may have no value in the real world, but they mean a lot to me. To me that's what card collecting is all about. I'm thinking of buying a box of old wax packs and re-living the experience of opening up packs and seeing what I get.
I hate when people ask me how much my collection is worth. I have no idea, but more importantly I just don't care. "Junk Wax" is a term, not a curse. It actually provides new generation with the ability to access the great pleasure that we had discovering these cards, many of which are all-time amazing designs.
@@sportscardprofessor Right there with you. The value for me is the experience, not what someone is willing to pay for it. Of course if I had something someone was willing to pay good money for I'd gladly sell it, but I'm not one to seek out that sort of thing. You're right about the old designs, even something as simple as the 1986 Topps set looked cool to me back then and still does today.
Certain players have value tough so its literally junk as referred as
I call it the mass-produced area
When we look back on this time from the future, I think it will be known as the "junk grading" era. I'm sure some folks will go and blame the grading companies for their own greed and hubris, just like they blamed the manufacturers back in the 90s.
I love that name. There is a flood of high-graded cards that will be dragging valuable rarity down soon. That's going to be fascinating to watch.
"Junk Slab Era", otherwise completely agree.
Sir, we want that full blown documentary on the wax era
It’s crazy how some of the most interesting things are so hard to find. Excellent information. That era was my introduction as a collector. I have 15,000 cards all from 1986-1993 (ages 6-13). I never understood why MY CARDS were never worth as much as other years. I got frustrated to the point of stopping collecting cards. I’m glad to know that the hobby is still going. I literally stopped collecting cards in 8th grade and somehow assumed the rest of the world stopped too 😂. Anyway, excellent stuff. KIU
Check those '86 and '87 cards out, they may have some value now. I was fortunate to begin at the end of that time (started in my teens), so I was part of the crazy 1990s quality explosion. I'm sorry that you weren't able to ride that same high.
@@sportscardprofessor I may pick up the hobby again. I have a nephew now so maybe I’ll be able to pass it on to him. Revisit those high quality 90’s.
@@brainiakuniversity Ebay is the worlds biggest, non-stop card show. I haven't purchased a new pack of cards in decades, it's just nonstop nostalgia. I'm a bit envious of your chance to discover that decade, but be careful with buying unopened boxes, the prices are currently way out of hand.
@@sportscardprofessor excellent advice. Thank you
Late 80s/early 90s is fire now.
Only 1 minute in and I already love this video. I love your demeanor & approach/desire to educate from a first-hand perspective. Thank you a ton for sharing! I just subscribed and will definitely be looking at any other videos/future videos you have posted.
I found some old cards from the 80's and 90's that I had stored. Found some good ones. Bought 300 mixed wax packs and some foil packs. 87 to 92. Gum in the packs that had gum. Found a Topps Randy Johnson in mint and nicely centered. In the time I was collecting there was no grading services. Now we can tell what is gradeable and those old cards are pretty easy to estimate. Finding HOF Rookies is enjoyable. I've got a Ken Griffey Jr Homerun Ball that I caught in 1994. I have the VHS tape from Kansas City TV 5 that shows me catching it in right field at Royals Stadium and my 2 young sons ducking. I've got some old packs of basketball cards coming. I found some good Jordon cards in my old stash. And more. I have 5 Grandkids and they're all good in sports, because my sons train them like I did them. Daughter was an MVP in Softball from 13 through High School. I've got some videos on my channel. Not near as good as yours. Something to o. God Bless.
you've clearly explained the junk wax era in less than 15 mins man! awesome!
new to your channel. love some binders!!! this is how i do my sorting is putting together the binders collection. great stuff. thumbs up. i liked the junk wax for some of my favorites like ron gant and juan gonzalez. later on Jay, thanks for sharing!!!
Welcome aboard, binders rule.
As a guy who collected in junk wax era and recently got back in, it's confusing trying to figure out where things are heading, if how it is currently is good or bad etc, but I can't help but think that it seems absurd for a rookie today to have dozens of different rookie cards, in the same set, often 3-4 different rookie base cards in the base set and multiple inserts all w many different parallels. I know the numbers are still lower overall but seems like excess and only serves as bait for pack opening. "Yea I got a Luka green prizm black holo die cut rookie", and there's several combinations of the same card.. like how are these gonna hold up long term, hard to imagine all of them will be in demand even if numbered, seems overkill should be a base rookie and a few inserts. Not to mention the crazy amount of different sets each year... Just too much imo but we'll see.
I know what u mean. I think a very small handful of cards will hold value. I believe 1 will be the Luka prizm cards u mentioned. But not the other 95 percent of that set in 2018 prizm
Excellent insight, well told. Thanks!
Great video. Very informative!
Perfectly said, and definitely hits home as I had the mindset as a kid of "If I have a bunch of Barry Sanders and Emmitt Smith rookies, when I'm grown up they'll sale for the same prices as a Jim Brown rookie." ...nope 🤨 Had a blast collecting, but it was quite the bummer when I found out what the "junk wax era" was all about when I first got back into the hobby. Great video!
I'm really glad I've never cared about the value, that means it's equally fun at all times.
@@sportscardprofessor Definitely. While I always wanted the cards to be valuable, my number one concern then and now is my love of the cards, and the history of the game. When we focus on that, it makes for a much more enjoyable experience. Keep up the great content!
@@bearcards3497 Glad you continue to enjoy it, and Bear Down.
@@sportscardprofessor Bear Down! 😊
You brought me back 1987 and my Dad telling me about the investment side of Baseball cards
This was a great video. I’m 42 and returned to the hobby with my son (8) and a big focus of ours is Junk Wax. Tons of nostalgia for me and inexpensive way to get him into the hobby. Thanks for posting. I subscribed
Thank dude. I hope you enjoy my looks at cards from your era.
Just subscribed after watching for only a couple minutes. Great content & delivery!
Awesome, I hope the rest of the minutes lived up to the mark.
I think our parents were actually thinking, "I need my lawn mowed and other chores done. My child will do these tasks I can't pay anyone else to do for amounts I will pay IF he/she wants to buy cards."
Love the content!
wow expected a explination of wax era got an amazing veiw point on the 50's and how it changed the card game subbed
I remember being in my early teens and seeing pallets of baseball cards near the checkout lanes at Price Club in 89/90 (now known as Costco).
It is amazing just how many of these unopened boxes are widely available even today.
This was a beautifully explained video. Had my attention more than business school does, this would be great to show to intro biz students in grade school tbh
Thank you. For a lot of people cards have definitely been their intro to economics and stock trading.
The Sports Card Professor i can definitely see that being the case
Great job, Darren. I thought you did a great job of summarizing the situation. It's unbelievable to me that the companies are able to charge what they charge today and people will happily pay it. I wonder how much of it is because of autographs. Autos have existed in products for a long time, but they were incredibly rare. I never pulled one when I was a kid. But now we've got products which guarantee an auto or two per box. Some of these autos are worth a ton of money.
Thank you. I think that the modern price structure has to do with perceived rareness. People spend a lot of money on a graded PSA 9 because there are only two...although soon there could be 4, then 8, then twelve. The allure of uniqueness is different than what we experienced in the '80s/'90s. We knew there were thousands of every card (OK, not millions), even with the Lombardy Trophy Hologram. I was about getting our copy, not being the only one.
Amazing analysis of our generation’s history. I collected from 1980 through 1987. In 1988, at age 16, my interest waned as other priorities arose. I didn’t get back into it until 2000 only to discover the cards I had did not appreciate like I expected.
Sorry to hear that you missed the best years, though there's always time to catch up. I started in 1990, so I can only imagine what the '80s collecting felt like, but the amazement of seeing new Donruss designs and the first discovery of Sportflics must have been pretty cool.
@@sportscardprofessor Very cool time indeed! When Sportflics came out it introduced a fourth card company. However, if I recall correctly our monthly Becketts did not list them making trading problematic.
@@jayscards8640 They included the basic set for a few years, but not the rookie set or any of the other things Sportflics did. By '89 they were no longer seen as relevant.
Cool explanation
Great vid my man
This explanation earned you a subscription
Awesome. Hope that's not the only video that works for you.
You basically explained the 90s comics crash as well. X-Men #1 sold millions in the early 90s, then by the end of the 90s, top sellers were in the hundreds of thousands.
Yeah, comics rode the wave of the card boom. A lot of comic stores began as off-shoots of card shops. "The Death of Superman" didn't hold up too well compared to how it started out.
On the other hand, X-Force #1 with Deadpool card is a $30 book now.
This was extremely insightful and made perfect sense about boomers creating a collectibles market reminiscing on a time they romanticized
Old video but Incredibly informative!!
Thank you. Yeah, that's an interesting quirk to CZcams...once it's up, it's up for a long time. I wish they would allow you to edit the videos to ease the time-sensitivity problem.
I'm just thankful that my dad had the foresight to buy all these boxes during the late 90s for dirt cheap and for a good while between 2005-2009 my dad and I were opening up these boxes and building sets. And now looking at these sets 10 years later I can see that some of the cards have value like all my Jager rookie cards
Value ruins collecting. Ever watch someone open a $20 pack of cards and flip through 5 cards without any interest in what they are because they're looking for just that one card? I love the experience of opening a box and watching a set evolve, discovering the card designs, and seeing what names were chosen to fill the space between the stars. It is an experience that still allows me to feel like a kid.
@@sportscardprofessor i know. When I was younger and opening packs with my dad. Pretty much every player in the pack he'd tell me a bit about them and that made it much more interesting
@@DavidsSkillsandStuff I'd love to do that, but the videos would run kinda' long. Actually, that could be an interesting idea for a category. I'll play around with it, talking about the players who show up as stars for a while and then disappear.
You sir are exacty correct. I lived thru exactly what you are explaining. In 1960 Topps dumped crates (millions) of cards in the Atlantic Ocean.
Man, I just got indigestion at the thought of that.
@@sportscardprofessor look it up. Dumping of 1960 Topps in ocean. I remember that.
@@waltercopus1485 Yeah, I have heard about it already. It is always a shocking thing to hear, the thought of what cardboard ended up sleeping with the fishes. Once I bought some Katrina-damaged boxes of cards where 40% was destroyed, and it got me thinking about what cards didn't survive that storm. Topps' need to destroy those 1960 cards was sadly necessary, but it still hurts to think about.
I agree, as others have mentioned speculation and grading has driven the current market. FOMO (fear of missing out) drives it as well. People see the amount of money being spent on Trout, Brady, and Mahomes cards and think that every up and coming star has that potential, and they don't want to miss out.
Yeah, we felt that way about Ki-Jana, Leaf, Emmitt Smith (OK, we might have been on to something there), but never with the kind of money as today. Newer collectors haven't been through the ropes yet.
the junk slab era is a reference to how many base /commons got submitted for grading and when they all come back its gonna flood the market and drive the slabs down which will pull on other cards desired or not down //it isnt necessarily the same conditions that existed for the junk wax era//its just shifted over to the graded slabs
Thanks for explaining. I also thing there are younger collectors like me that can get a box of 1990 Topps box for $30 and get a Frank Thomas rookie card and Ken Griffey Jr. rookie cup card and we weren't around when a box like this came out so its great to open cheap backs and get some key rookies to add to our collection. Its nice opening a whole box of packs for the same price as 3 current packs. : )))
Yeah, that is a great gift to the overproduction. For people who only care about value this was a nightmare...but if you love cards this meant that anybody can have and enjoy these cards. OK, maybe not the Ken Griffey Jr UD rookie, but all the other at least.
Great video I subbed!!
Once again great video and a lot of truth about what was said. I agree there are a lot of similarities between the junk wax era and today however they are not the same. Just curious since I’m fairly new to the channel. Are those complete sets in binders?
Mostly. I've got a lot of inserts and parallels to go, but by in large they are complete sets.
@@sportscardprofessor that’s awesome. Makes a great background. I love your channel. I’m presently watching a lot of your videos
@@NikkisCards Feel free to watch all of them. A second watch would be a great idea too.
Thanks. I was trying to learn what this was about. I collected as a kid from 93 to 96 maybe. I have some left nothing worth any thing though.
Yeah, it was weird listening to the chatter a year ago about a new Junk Wax Era, and realizing that most people didn't quite understand the reason for the name. But when you live through something you can take it for granted that not everyone sees it the same way, so I'm glad that I can help enlighten those who missed the fun. Imagine what we'll be telling new collectors/investors a few decades from now.
Great video! I think it probably has to do with the rise of unboxing videos and their popularity across multiple social media platforms. People are trying to build an audience for unboxing cards in the way that some have built an audience for unboxing toys. So it may have less to do with the cards themselves and more to do with the discovery/opening process. That’s my gut re: junk wax prices rising again.
Yeah, but I think that grading is equally responsible. $1000 for 1989-90 Fleer?
Every once in a while, I'll go on ebay and buy a box of 92 donruss hoping to pull a DK or an Elite card. DKs aren't worth much, but I still get that childlike thrill when I see that one miscolored sliver of the card when I peel open the pack!
I'm 100% with you on that. Pulling an insert like those is amazing any time.
Thanks for the knowledge, subs for you 😊
Nice summation of the junk wax era and juxtaposition with today's very interesting and unique sportscard era. I wonder how the problem of too many boutique sets and online-only-released sets being released will impact future value.
That's one of the intriguing elements to this era. The late '80s/early 90s had a lot un-official cards sold at shows that were interesting but retained no value, and shop-at-home releases followed from actually official brands, but they were hard to keep track of and are more curios now, so I doubt that boutique etc. cards will hold up down the road. Right now there are too many different cards and variations for any of them to retain value 10 years from now. There are always 5-10 cards which are THE cards to have, and the rest fill in the collecting gap. That's true of Manning, Brees, well just about anyone not named LeBron (Brady doesn't count since he had too few cards). So, which cards will be the cards? We now have a new audience that are forming themselves as collectors/investors and we have yet to see how they will look at these cards down the road. I doubt they will maintain the same enthusiasm, so we will see what cards everyone hangs on to.
Another aspect is name-brand feel. It used to be that if someone created a card without the team logos it was cheap, but now in the gamer world a lot of fans are less interested in the team identifiers and are thus open to cards that look generic. NFL Properties and its other sport equivalents used to determine who could make "real" cards, but that is currently not the case. I don't see how future fans will still like those airbrushed cards, and will probably gravitate to only the cards with the official team jersey cards. I couldn't forecast that since I still think anything airbrushed is second rate.
@@sportscardprofessor Any thoughts on the recent Fanatics purchase of Topps and how that will affect "official" cards and brand cache?
@@Rainbowsedge That was pretty inevitable. Fanatics is not a card brand, so they had no intrinsic market recognition (even Panini rode the Playoff/Donruss brand names for years). They also don't know how to design cards. It is the fresh enthusiasm that Fanatics brings that should help the brand, but I don't know how the industry will evolve in the near-term, or how NFTs will reshape investing, so I think we're more likely to see a card market affect rather than a brand change affect. At least Fanatics is a high-roller organization who wants to invest rather than just carry-on.
Collecting since 1975, went through the junk wax era. This isn't like it. There were no real insert cards of value then. Many bought boxes and boxes of Donruss for $2 a box at Walgreens looking for a 91 Elite or the Cal Ripken Autos, nothing else. I think part of the problem is you use the word 'collector' for those guys standing and waiting at Walmart to strip the shelves each week. They aren't collectors. They are speculators, many with no real job since they can stand there for hours and then flip the cards. Collectors disappeared in the late 80's. I was one of them. Now I am back, collecting vintage only, avoiding the speculators looking for only key inserts and a fast buck. My take, good video, Tony
Thank you. As a collector from the '90s I can say that a few of us did emerge in the years following, but it was a lot harder with the sheer bulk of available cards. It helps to be focused on a subject, and I drew the line at 2000...then again at 2015. It's tough competing with the financially minded, I'm just trying to finish sets.
@@sportscardprofessor One thing that's always confused me, as recently as 2015-16, was that you could buy a complete Topps baseball set for that year. What is the point of collecting if you can just buy a whole box? There's no "trying to complete a set" or rarity. It's just "tada, here you go."
@@Rainbowsedge Ah, the effect of inserts and parallels. In 1990 a complete set of Topps/Fleer/Donruss set you back a fair chunk of money, plus it was a one-time investment. As a kid you could drop 50c to $1 from time to time and piece a set together...plus that "trading card" aspect still applied. Try dropping $15-$20 at that time and you're rolling in some dough.
By the mid '90s every set came with inserts and parallels, and that's what we were going after. Thus if you just wanted the set Topps was fine giving you an easy option, in such a case you probably weren't interested in investing $50-$100 to wade through all the extra stuff if $35-$40 got the set in one shot.
Whew 😅 thank you for not shouting throughout the video like…. “Hey what’s going today guys!” And then keeping that same volume throughout.
Thank you for not doing that
It sure makes you wonder why they feel the need to do that.
It's been 2 years. What are your thoughts now? What ended up happening or is currently happening?
Good question. I've been fascinated watching how that video has aged, both good and bad. We're still in the midst of the backslide, so we have yet to see what the hobby will finally look like, but the general nature of the recent bubble is that people were just spending way too much for cards. In the Junk Wax boom we were not paying too high of prices, it's just that there was almost no value increase. Right now card sales are insanely overinflated and there will not be a demand for these cards in the future to match. Are the cards overprinted? No. They're too expensive.
I did a video last year called "Rare Cards, the mistake of Modern Collectors" that gets into it a lot better.
7 months ago this may have been right, but right now it is obvious that the cards are being massively overproduced, overvalued, and we're in a bubble that will burst. Very obvious. A crash is coming.
I've been to card shows where people will buy a $300 box of Bowman Chrome open up the packs to get the autograph card in the parallel cards and they throw the rest of the cards in the trash seeing trash cans full of cards get thrown out
The kids who collected cards in the 80s-90s are now parents and have that same sense of nostalgia. and want to share the joy of baseball collecting to their kids.
Very true. Ironically it's a lot easier for us to share our same cards with our kids rather than their own generation of cards.
I'm 33. I started collecting when I was in grade school. I stopped collecting soon after. I guess because many kids weren't into the hobby after Pokémon/Yugioh died out. But I got back into during covid because of my brother. I do have some of my older stuff. If my cards were worth a million,I wouldn't sell it.The story behind how I obtained it matters most to me.
Oh, there is a junk wax era approaching but it's not the card companies to blame this time. Presently we're headed towards a "PSA Junk Era" where cards from the junk wax era are being professionally graded en masse, predictably receiving 9's and 10's with populations in the tens of thousands for some particular cards... Yea, that is not sustainable, not when grading fees are $20 bucks a card and a PSA 9 or 10 is the rule and not the exception..
Look, I highly doubt that a card like an 1989 Upper Deck Griffey Jr Rookie is going to hold it's $5,000 dollar value when there are literally 8,000+ PSA 10's.. No those cards are going to plummet significantly.. We're either going to see them fall from grace or we will see their raw counterparts go up drastically in value to close the gap... Look, the difference between a raw 89 UD Ken Griffey Jr Rookie and a PSA 10 does NOT justify the margin in value when you can buy a raw copy for $50 bucks or a PSA 10 for $2,500 and the raw card looks exactly the same and could grade a PSA 10....... None of it is sustainable, practical or even fundamentally economically sound - because clearly supply and demand is not determining the value of the card when there are literally tens of thousands of them in a 9 or 10 - no the value of the card is arbitrary at best.
I like to be honest with myself about the ignorance I had early on in...well, whatever. As a kid, or as a new discoverer, you tend to be amazed by the rules that are being fabricated by an unfamiliar audience, like new speaking habits, that do not necessarily translate well down the road. I learned a lot of lessons by suffering my mistakes, because that's how they became real to me. A new audience is now exploring a world of limits that mirror what Baby Boomers and their kids (us GenXers) explored in the '80s, and it doesn't make sense because there is a component that they don't know how to see. At the end of the day the party will end, and it will again be about us collectors, and I'm curious to see what affects the current frenzy leaves as a permanent mark on the hobby.
It's because of the grading companies people think if they can get tens on the rookie cards and major cards that is when the cards go up in value but the majority of those cards are still junk you can put together in the 80s and most of them are really cheap
The only way you know what's printed if you have to have the card companies tell you honestly what they printed show you the print runs
Watched your vid, very good effort. I was on the front line of the hobby at the time and still on the front line today so I have two “counterpoints” for you. 1) I disagree with your conclusion that people “opened too much”. Supply on its own is not enough to justify worth...you have to factor in demand. In the junk wax era when every year the hobby expanded, no one opened “too many” packs. Maybe a ton of people have opened a bunch of cards but they kept those cards. Magic The Gathering is a good example...tons of cards opened but no one is selling so cards keep going up overall, especially for the Commander format. The reason why the junk wax era hit was because the hobby demand shrank because an entire group of hobbyists quit within 3 years, starting in 1992 (not 1991). You identified Pro Set, had the right set yet missed the point...Pro Set became saturated because unscrupulous people ordered it chasing the hologram card...they searched cases with metal detectors and unloaded the hitless boxes for under cost, flooding the market. The next year in 1992, all of the major brands had insert chase cards that needed cases to be opened to complete a set. This killed 90% of the set builders in the hobby and the next year, with even crazier low odds chase cards, the rest of the set builders left for good. Basically the creation and escalation of insert cards killed over half the hobby’s collector demand and only team/player collectors were left. 2) The reason so many boxes are going up, especially junk wax era boxes is because those sets have a bunch of HOF, top 50 all time players, especially basketball and hockey, and people are looking for PSA gradable pack fresh copies of key RCs. Same reason why 1990 Impel Marvel exploded. The nostalgia reasons you supplied for the yuppies applies again for 80s/90s kids...childhood nostalgia of investors...Griffey Jr, Jagr, Shaq, etc. The big time stars of 1990-91 their cards along with all time greats of that era in Gretzky and Jordan lead the way.
even those cards are 60% down from the highs and will go lower once all the slabs hit the market
@@vendora1 I’ve heard a lot of people give that same unthinking comment. 1) there is a heavy resistance from people like yourself who refuse to believe cards in that era won’t be worth anything so you guys don’t send those cards in for grading...especially when calculating the higher grading fee in; 2) just about every set from that era is condition sensitive...it’s tough to pull PSA 10s and it’s tough for those cards to have survived 30 years as junk cards and stay pristine; 3) you underestimate demand...the collector base was something like 10 to 100 times bigger then and these late 80s and early 90s cards are the most famous...I hope you’re right because if the price tanks, people like me are going to go all in on them. It’s the same reason why Magic The Gathering cards are unlikely to ever be worthless...the players are so nostalgic for old cards, we would buy them up if they dropped to .1% of their original value. The current demand is not as elastic as you think. You look at the surge of ‘21, Feb and March...how did the prices climb so high on old cards of retired players? It’s because the demand was there the whole time it just needed extra cash in pockets to fuel it.
@@Rorschachqp i go by what the market is doing not what i think it will do or wont do //so no its not an unthinking comment //heavy resistance? i own slabbed cards fella -- im just realistic about the going ons of the hobby and what the trends are and right now it isnt in the sellers favor // example 2021 prizm basketball 2200 a box only guy worth getting was lamelo and he was 2/3 of the value of the box to make your money back you need to hit 1 of his and 3 to 4 others then get em graded but everyone else that bought a box is doing the same thing // thus his base isnt worth shit graded //thats reality man //especially when everyone thats wants one HAS one //who are you selling it to then ? jfc//uh no plenty of boxes still left from junk wax era and when i was a teenager i put the cards into 9 pocket pages and into a binder with penny sleeve //they are not condition sensitive as far as miscuts printing errors sure are but people LIKE error cards smfh and they literally made hundreds of millions of those cards the demand even if it was 1000x bigger would still have to absorb all those cards jfc man you are not getting rich off those cards period grow up and when the slabs of these come back and collectors already have them and the flippers and daytraders aand speculators are gone --whats left man? learn how the market is not what you think its should be
Excellent recap of the era. What's going on now isn't another junk wax era, and it's hard to understand just what is going on. I've heard that well, it's because of COVID, people have too much money and time. Well, people didn't make more money during COVID - most stayed the same or made less. So then its, well people aren't going out to eat or to the movies as often, so they have more disposable income. Seriously - how much were some people paying for dinners or movies that we now see the prices we do? Flash forward 15 years, to when Mike Trout's career numbers are set and he's safely ensconced in Cooperstown (and he's without a ring, if he stays in LA) - does anyone really believe his 2011 Topps Update is going to sell for 1K? I will bet the Nolan Ryan rookie I just bought at an extremely inflated price to finish my '68 set that the Trout rookie will be hovering around $50 or so by then. And a word about that Ryan rookie - each day eBay lists another dozen of them - there's a virtual glut of them out there, many in top shape and at high grades, yet the prices are outrageous. What we have now, I think (and I really don't intend to sound mean) is a lot of people with more money than sense in the hobby. Whether I'm right or wrong can be judged in another 10-15 years when we revisit these prices.
I explored some of that in a now-aged video analyzing the Lock-Down Era, and got into that a bit. Let me know what points you'd add to that exploration.
@@sportscardprofessor I just watched your earlier video - very thought provoking. I always knew old-fashioned gambling was a big part of what is going on, but I never considered the absence of sports forcing fantasy players/gamblers into other venues like cards - I think that was a great observation.
@@markpekrul4393 Thank you. To me that seems like the only missing link in the value explosion.
All that "junk" was thrown out.. there is value in those sets. All the players now going into hall of fame now. Add a new generation looking for simplicity, what is left is being bought now
I'm not saying there's nothing to love about them, but after you've opened 4 boxes of 1989 Donruss you'll better appreciate the term. The great advantage to the missing value is the fact that these cards are still readily available for new collectors to find and enjoy. There isn't much of a place for new collectors in the hobby right now, and here is a playground whose gates are still open.
Some people say we're still in the junk wax era
My friend runs a card shop here in St Louis and he still has cases of the 80s Fleer and Donruss baseball cards and cases of the late 80s and early to mid-90s Topps cards nobody wants to they would have to throw out 99% of what was produced to ever get a value on those cards maybe in a thousand years they might go up a little bit
Is there still mass-producing cards today
Sort of, but not nearly at the same level. The current market is smaller, so the numbers seem large today, but collectors have a different expectation for the market.
@@sportscardprofessor I don't know I've seen too many people throwing their new cards in the trash only to keep the autographed cards and parallel cards that's the only thing collectors want I seen them at shows to throw the regular cards in the trash in most dealers I talked to said they're just trash they're not going to be worth anything too many of them printed they need to cut the print by about 90% of what it is today and then you'll be lucky if those cards have any value my friend runs a card shop and he has so many sets of baseball cards from the last 30 years piled up in the shop and nobody wants to buy them
The hobby right now is being driven by PSA investors who cut their teeth on baseball and 9.8 comics. For over five (really over ten) years the hockey market is driven by UD Young Guns, slightly short printed base cards of rookies in the flagship brand, which feels true to collectors both from the junk era with 90-91 UD Young Guns, and the old skool O Pee Cher gum card collectors converging on base rookies as true RCs. The card to lead the charge was 05-06 UD Sidney Crosby YG. In baseball, the key card was the paper 2011 Topps Update Mike Trout. Before that card, Chrome and auto Bowmans were king. Now, the paper Topps RC is the true RC. When you see PSA 10s being bought, you can tell which school of thought they come from as an investor by if they pay for the paper PSA 10 RC or they are paying for the Chrome/Prizm PSA 10. In hockey, chrome is junk.
A big part of the problem now is too much limited product. Super short printed "base" cards that nobody can get. Too many gimmicks and inserts and parallels.
I think it's more about random rarity. If everyone has a one-of-one then they're not special, there aren't many cards that everyone can focus on. Tom Brady has a few must-have rookies, as with LeBron James and Derek Jeter. You could tear through packs and run into them. Now it's ripping an expensive pack and being curious if there's anything at all. You want to treasure whatever special card you get, only because it's special and rare...and a reward for the expense.
I believe we are in a new junk wax era because the Market is oversaturated with graded cards. Plus, ultra modern cards have a much higher percentage of getting gem 10 grades. It will be very hard to maintain value long term if everyone already has Gem 10 Mike Trouts, Zion Williamson and Luka cards.
I still think it's different. The problem before was not cost related, it was based on demand. Right now the prices are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out of wack and create an artificial perception of value. I'll put it this way, in the '90s the Junk Wax cards did not go up in value, while modern cards will all be plummeting in value.
Late 80 s up until 2002 card collections are the best.... players from the 80s..... I want those H.O.F ers....they continued playing well into mid 2000s... I like junk .
I'm perfectly fine with most people overlooking these cards. Makes it easier for me to enjoy them.
You can tell it was mass production when you have card shops card shows and cards being sold at Walmart and Target and hard telling where else gas stations that's mass production modern cars are not a good investment buy them because you enjoy the hob if you want cards that are worth money by the 50s 60s and 70s stuff
Toys made back in the fifties were actually made of steel and were quality stuff that's made now is a lot of plastic
I think people use the term junk wax era in the modern sense is in regard to graded cards. Late 80s early 90s, we had no grading, it was all raw cards, and they had no value because of that. Grading completely saved the hobby. But now it's reversed. The cards produced now are in lower numbers, but so much higher quality. Pick any popular modern player and look at the population counts of thier gem cards. It's ridiculous. There are thousands and thousands of them. Way more than any from the junk wax era. Luca prizm PSA 10's? That's the new junk wax
I definitely think that's part of it, but it comes down to expectations. When you pay $200 for a pack you expect to get a huge value, and when you don't you feel cheated. This begs the question of why you spent so much in the first place. Investors are flinging around thousands of dollars for inflated costs, and can't understand why there's so much of the same thing around. There is no market right now, just speculation.
@@sportscardprofessor exactly
@@sportscardprofessor "There is no market right now, just speculation." OMG that could apply to so many things. It's the perfect way to explain why I'm not buying into crypto right now, for example. Going to write that down!
Junk slab era
I think the reason we had empty shelves was due to extreme greed. Everyone was making money in mid 2020 thru 2021. You had to really suck to not be making profit. Now a year later I am seeing mostly stocked shelves except for the top sets. Some of the psa pop reports don't look good. I sold some of mine due to these high numbers.
I made this video in Fall 2020, and within about 6 months the shelves all got restocked (except for Target and Walmart). It took some time for the manufacturers to catch up, but they responded appropriately. There still isn't the hoarding problem that we had 32 years ago.
@@sportscardprofessor Because the packs are so high. I remember buying that box of 89 donrus for 8 dollars back in early 90s. There was also 90 fleer Basketball for about the same.
this is what will happen now in 2021...greedy ppl thinks that their cards will go up hahah! tnx Logan Paul..
Topps still prints to many cards and thay make way to many sets something like 25 different sets
Packs of cards are to expensive for me to get,all these card packs have all these different special cards in different groups,your odds of you getting a special card is rediculous,do they even sell cheap cards that kids can enjoy cards you can put in the spokes of their tires that they don't have to worry about how much they will be worth in 20 to 30 years lol.
The lack of access for kids is my biggest problem with the current card market. They actually do create cards for kids, but investors are buying them up in big raids at Walmart and Target, so they're not accessible. Even junk wax boxes are selling for fortunes right now with this investor feeding frenzy.
Are you kidding?? There is so much current Topps out there, people literally throw them away and only keep the “hits”. The base cards being made now are worthless no matter who is on them
This video aged well for about two months and then the current deluge of product hit the market. Most of what I said still holds up, but it sure could have been presented better.
@@sportscardprofessor I love all the videos you made about the 90s stuff in the eraand that I love so much. Back then you literally had maybe three or so rookie cards. Now these guys have over 1000 rookie cards and there’s only so much hobby dollars to go around, so most of them will not be worth anything and there’s no specific cards to point to anymore. It is so saturated that I have gotten out of modern collecting and gone back into collecting the stuff I love in the highest grade that I can afford.
I don't acknowledge anything after 2015. I just don't see anything interesting about modern cards. That said I don't need modern cards, I'm still struggling to know the ins and outs of '90s cards. It will never end.@@brentrichards4699
picked up some boxes of cards from a thrift store, they're all junk wax haha :(
Junk Wax deserves love too, not much, but some love.
@@sportscardprofessor Do you think junk wax era cards could one day become scarce? I was born in 2000 but I inherited so many cards and hall of fame rookies from this era. I wish I could've gotten my hands on some NBA Fleer 1986 boxes haha. That wouldn't be junk to me!
@@Strutz3E Man, '86 Fleer wasn't junk in 1990 when I started, but I wish it had been so that I could have gotten packs of it.
As for scarcity, no they will never go that direction. If you're looking for value, that will only be on an individual basis. The first 3 Fleer basketball sets were always valuable since the hobby took off in 1990, '89-90 took a few years, and only now has anyone ever cared about '90-91. I think that enthusiasm will die off soon. But if you only appreciate the value side of cards there isn't much hope for that era.
If, like myself, you enjoy cards themselves then Junk Wax offers you a unique opportunity to get some great sets for cheap. My Best Of/Worst Of videos show just how much I love card designs, and the Junk Wax Era featured some of the best. So to me it's largely not junk, but overly common. That said, it is amazing that the Griffey RC is still so valuable since Upper Deck printed like 1,000,000 copies of it, so it's not really rare. The question is, what do you enjoy about cards?
@@sportscardprofessor If I were to tell you why I like cards, I would end up writing you an essay. But that's also the epitome of why this hobby is so unique!
@@Strutz3E Yeah, I'm lucky enough to have an entire channel to slowly unfurl my passion. Everyone has a different relationship with the hobby, and that's why giving advice to new collectors is tough..."how do you enjoy cards?" The key is to enjoy it as is right for you, that's all that matters.
Same problem with the comics. Industry got greedy and oversaturated.
Like the video, but man you gotta trim your finger nails. Longest I've seen on a dude.
Right. You nailed it!!!
Lol. Thought maybe he was a fingerstyle guitarist but they're long on both hands. Maybe some other type of musician, I imagine they probably serve some sort of purpose for him.
@@0ptimal maybe into the white powder🤪
It should be called Rip off era
Oooooooh, man I love that. I think I'll start using it from now on. Thank you.
your analysis is WEAK SONN