I was coming towards the end of another repack for my weekly haiku series, so it was time to buy another pack. My go-to place has been the Dollar Tree, which usually has 30-card packs repacks available for a buck. I haven't seen these cards there in awhile. I hope they haven't stopped selling them. I was left with no other option but to but one of Fairfield's 100-count (plus a pack!) boxes for a reasonable $5. That should have provided me with enough 80's and 90's goodness to continue my series for a long time. Upon opening the box, I was met with something quite unexpected! There was very little junk wax to be found!
No classic wood-grain borders! No red with paint splatters! No gray with white pinstripes! Where are all the junk wax?
In fact, out of the 100 loose cards in the box (104 actually - bonus!) only 28 were produced before 2011. A whopping 73% of my repack was cards from the past decade:
2018: 4 cards
2017: 1 card
2016: 28 cards
2015: 8 cards
2014: 2 cards
2013: 25 cards
2012: 6 cards
2011: 2 cards
About half of the box was from Topps' 2016 and 2013 base sets! How weird is that? Not that I'm complaining - I didn't get back into collecting until a couple of years ago, so most of these modern cards will be new to my collection. Still, I was expecting the standard fare of late eighties/early nineties overindulgence.
To top it off, a lot of these newer cards were from parallel sets. Among the goodies I got were:
- A couple of framed parallels from Gypsy Queen
The blue Red Sox card was actually the front card showing on the package. No wonder why I picked this particular box, huh?
- A 2017 Leaf card of potential 2019 MVP Cody Bellinger
I didn't even know Leaf was still around!
- A bunch of 2016 All-Star Game stamped parallel Topps cards!
These were exclusive to a boxed set, weren't they?
That's pretty good for a repack I must say! I'm impressed. I'm tempted to go back to see if another box has similar cards.
I'll probably take one or two from each year of the modern stuff to go with the junk wax cards. That'll give me plenty of haiku material to work with!
Has anyone else noticed a decrease in "junk wax" era cards with their repacks?
I haven't bought one of those in ages - might have to take another look.
ReplyDeleteMy Dollar Tree hasn't had any packs of much of anything for about a year now. Sure they have had some of the kiddie stickers, the sheets of stickers with no set design or pattern, just the rainbows, stars and unicorns type things not stickers that belong to sets or albums. I forget the last time I saw any Avengers or Star Wars stickers there.
ReplyDeleteFairfield needs to come out to my local flea markets. They'll be able to find loads of Junk Wax Era cards.
ReplyDeletepeople on Twitter are always talking about us being in junk wax 2.0, what with all of the overproduced modern cards and what not, so maybe that's why there was so many newer sets in there?
ReplyDelete