At the recently concluded 2018 National Sports Collectors Convention, I appeared on the Beckett Fat Packs (or is it just one word like "Fatpacks"?) podcast. Joining me, along with host Eric Norton, was my good friend, and a man who I am convinced is my long-lost Kanadian brother, David "Long Fly Ball" Wright.
We give our takes on how the NSCC can take a page from its past by "adding value" to The National experience with seminars, discussions, and social activities. We also give our state of The Hobby and how legalized sports gambling might affect the nascent group breaking industry. All with plenty of pro wrestling references thrown-in, for good measure. (Skip ahead to the 32:45 mark for our segment)
I also assisted Eric and Jeff The Pack Geek in ripping open a 1987 Donruss waxbox. Yes, the collation was shitty, but at least we got Bipped.
Showing posts with label junk wax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label junk wax. Show all posts
Friday, August 10, 2018
Monday, May 05, 2014
Well, I finally did it.
I did it. After holding out for two years, I (willingly) bought 2012 Topps Baseball. As much as I hate the insert bloat, bland design, and intelligence-insulting gimcracks, I just couldn't turn down a good deal; especially on a product that, for all intents and purposes, has become a Junk Wax product.
And so this past Saturday, at a cramped Days Inn ballroom in Lancaster, PA, I forked over $13 and bought 26 Hobby loosies of 2012 Topps Baseball Series One.
No, you are not seeing things. I bought 26 packs of 2012 Topps One for a fourth of their $1.99/pack MSRP. I suppose there wasn't enough "added value," huh? Or squirrels?
Anyway, as feared, the product ranges from mediocre (base set) at best, to bland and soulless (inserts) at worst. Take a look at the piss-poor design of these inserts.
You can tell that these cards are designed first as BIG MOJO HITZZZ!!!1!!, then retconned into inserts with a team logo and/or seal; and that big-ass logo/seal makes them look like shit.
And what's with all the "Gold" anyway? Gold Standard, Golden Moments, Gold Futures, Golden Greats? What's the point of having all these inserts anyway? Just about every pack I opened had two inserts in it. Does anyone at Topps seriously think that this "adds value?" Do they understand the concept of Diminishing Marginal Utility?
I did manage to pull this purely Lagniappe Michael Pineda letter patch which, unlike most letter patches, is not manufactured. It was cut out of the warm-up jersey he wore at the 2011 All-Star Game. Not a manu-relic, but not exactly "game used" either.
So there. It took me two years, but I've finally crossed over to the dark side and I feel a bit dirty for doing so. Now if you will excuse me, I need to look up the nearest Free Clinic.
And so this past Saturday, at a cramped Days Inn ballroom in Lancaster, PA, I forked over $13 and bought 26 Hobby loosies of 2012 Topps Baseball Series One.
No, you are not seeing things. I bought 26 packs of 2012 Topps One for a fourth of their $1.99/pack MSRP. I suppose there wasn't enough "added value," huh? Or squirrels?
Anyway, as feared, the product ranges from mediocre (base set) at best, to bland and soulless (inserts) at worst. Take a look at the piss-poor design of these inserts.
You can tell that these cards are designed first as BIG MOJO HITZZZ!!!1!!, then retconned into inserts with a team logo and/or seal; and that big-ass logo/seal makes them look like shit.
And what's with all the "Gold" anyway? Gold Standard, Golden Moments, Gold Futures, Golden Greats? What's the point of having all these inserts anyway? Just about every pack I opened had two inserts in it. Does anyone at Topps seriously think that this "adds value?" Do they understand the concept of Diminishing Marginal Utility?
I did manage to pull this purely Lagniappe Michael Pineda letter patch which, unlike most letter patches, is not manufactured. It was cut out of the warm-up jersey he wore at the 2011 All-Star Game. Not a manu-relic, but not exactly "game used" either.
So there. It took me two years, but I've finally crossed over to the dark side and I feel a bit dirty for doing so. Now if you will excuse me, I need to look up the nearest Free Clinic.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Top 10 National Pick-Ups: #2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes.
#2: One box of 1998 Zenith.
Paid $27.
Do you really want to know why I get angry at gimmicks? It's all because of Pinnacle Brands. Pinnacle may have been the first instance of a corporation gimmicking itself into bankruptcy.
The spectacular rise and devastating crash of Pinnacle Brands should be a case study on how not to run a trading card company; but first, let's go back a few years. In 1992, there were five MLB licensees, and of those five, what was then known as "Score/Sportflics" was clearly the trailer. Score was the last company to introduce a "premium" card set and when 1992 Pinnacle was finally released, Topps' Stadium Club and Fleer's Ultra had already upped the ante. Score's flagship set was hindered by drab design, boring color schemes, rampant overproduction, and a lack of inserts. If you were a betting man in 1992 and had to lay odds on which of the five MLB-Licensed trading card companies would be the first to go, Score would have been the Morning Line favorite.
Things began to change in late-1993 when Jerry Meyer was hired as CEO of the newly re-named "Pinnacle Brands." Within a few years, mainly by catering to what collectors actually wanted, Pinnacle had gone from being The Hobby's "sick man," to (according to a survey released by Action Packed) company with the largest percentage of market share.
By 1996 Pinnacle was exactly that; the pinnacle of The Hobby. Then a series of bad decisions followed by even more bad decisions, led to one of the most spectacular falls in Hobby history. It all started with Pinnacle's ill-conceived acquisitions of Action Packed and Donruss. In '97 Pinnacle released an Action Packed football and an Action Packed NASCAR set, but no baseball and nothing else afterward '97.
What was most puzzling was what they did with Donruss. The company's European owners had been wanting to get out of the American market; and so in 1996 they sold the candy division to Hershey and Donruss to Pinnacle. Even though Donruss had been acquired by Pinnacle, for some reason, they continued to operate it as a separate company. Although Pinnacle did move Donruss to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, it still had its own separate staff, its own office space, and its own distribution channels. It even had, if you could believe this, paid for its own licenses.
Donruss could have released all their 1997-98 baseball card sets under Pinnacle Brand's license. But they spent to money on a separate license anyway.
For the next two years, Pinnacle and Donruss's business model relied largely on 1) Overproduction and 2) Gimmicks. To be fair, they did leave their flagship brands (Score, Pinnacle and Donruss) largely sacrosanct. Yes, they did such things as the 1998 Score All-Star Edition (a re-release of 1998 Score Baseball, only with different inserts), and 1997 New Pinnacle (a completely different Pinnacle set released in lieu of a second series of 1997 Pinnacle Baseball). But Donruss, Pinnacle, and Score remained largely unchanged.
But in order to raise the revenue needed to level their post-acquisition balance sheet, Pinnacle (but not necessarily Donruss) let the presses fly with one new brand after another; a slew of 200-250 card base set all retailing for $2-$3/pack, all virtually indistinguishable from one another. 1997 New Pinnacle; 1997 Pinnacle X-Press; 1997 and '98 Pinnacle Inside; 1998 Pinnacle Performers; 1998 Pinnacle Plus: If I were to show you a base card from any one of the aforementioned sets, would any of you be able to properly identify it?
But it wasn't just the avalanche of new brands, it was the constant re-tooling of existing ones. There was no consistency from year to year. Take for example Zenith. It was introduced in 1995 as the company's first true "super-premium" product, designed to compete with Fleer's Flair, Upper Deck's SP, and Donruss's Leaf Limited in the $5/pack category. (Pinnacle also introduced that year the Chromium-stocked Select Certified as their answer to Topps Finest.) For the first two years, you basically knew what you were going to get in a box of Zenith: A high-quality base set with a couple of way-cool Dufex inserts in a Hobby box.
Then in 1997 they completely changed the product, doubling the price to $10/pack, reducing the base set to only 50 cards, and inserting two, oversize, 8" X 10" cards per pack.
Yeah, oversized cards and $10 packs in 1997. What the fuck were they thinking?
And then there were the gimmicks. I guess if you're part of the product development team and management mandates that you crank out yet another set, I guess you have to do something to make it stand out. Hence, the cards in soup cans and tins and bizarrely structured sets like Fractal Matrix; so confusing that even I, a man with a graduate degree in economics (which requires a lot of advanced mathematics to acquire) still can not figure out.
Which brings us to 1998 Zenith, a Perfect Storm of the needless meddling of an established card set combined with just about the dumbest gimmick I've ever seen. Yes, I'm talking about Dare to Tear.
I picked up a box of this junk for $27 at The National -- which is about $26.99 more than I probably should have paid -- and video broke it. In the process, I will attempt to extract the standard-sized card from the jumbo WITHOUT trying to damage either card.
Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
#10: It's for "Members Only"
#9: The case of the mysterious rookie reprints
#8: 75 for 25
#7: A point is a point
#6: OH NOEZ!!!!!
#5: What do they know about partying? Or anything else?
#4: Epix Mo-Jo!!!
#3: Satisfyin' the ladies, one printin' plate at a time
#2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes
#1: Ironic ain't just the name of an Alanis Morrisette song
Paid $27.
Do you really want to know why I get angry at gimmicks? It's all because of Pinnacle Brands. Pinnacle may have been the first instance of a corporation gimmicking itself into bankruptcy.
The spectacular rise and devastating crash of Pinnacle Brands should be a case study on how not to run a trading card company; but first, let's go back a few years. In 1992, there were five MLB licensees, and of those five, what was then known as "Score/Sportflics" was clearly the trailer. Score was the last company to introduce a "premium" card set and when 1992 Pinnacle was finally released, Topps' Stadium Club and Fleer's Ultra had already upped the ante. Score's flagship set was hindered by drab design, boring color schemes, rampant overproduction, and a lack of inserts. If you were a betting man in 1992 and had to lay odds on which of the five MLB-Licensed trading card companies would be the first to go, Score would have been the Morning Line favorite.
Things began to change in late-1993 when Jerry Meyer was hired as CEO of the newly re-named "Pinnacle Brands." Within a few years, mainly by catering to what collectors actually wanted, Pinnacle had gone from being The Hobby's "sick man," to (according to a survey released by Action Packed) company with the largest percentage of market share.
By 1996 Pinnacle was exactly that; the pinnacle of The Hobby. Then a series of bad decisions followed by even more bad decisions, led to one of the most spectacular falls in Hobby history. It all started with Pinnacle's ill-conceived acquisitions of Action Packed and Donruss. In '97 Pinnacle released an Action Packed football and an Action Packed NASCAR set, but no baseball and nothing else afterward '97.
What was most puzzling was what they did with Donruss. The company's European owners had been wanting to get out of the American market; and so in 1996 they sold the candy division to Hershey and Donruss to Pinnacle. Even though Donruss had been acquired by Pinnacle, for some reason, they continued to operate it as a separate company. Although Pinnacle did move Donruss to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, it still had its own separate staff, its own office space, and its own distribution channels. It even had, if you could believe this, paid for its own licenses.
Donruss could have released all their 1997-98 baseball card sets under Pinnacle Brand's license. But they spent to money on a separate license anyway.
For the next two years, Pinnacle and Donruss's business model relied largely on 1) Overproduction and 2) Gimmicks. To be fair, they did leave their flagship brands (Score, Pinnacle and Donruss) largely sacrosanct. Yes, they did such things as the 1998 Score All-Star Edition (a re-release of 1998 Score Baseball, only with different inserts), and 1997 New Pinnacle (a completely different Pinnacle set released in lieu of a second series of 1997 Pinnacle Baseball). But Donruss, Pinnacle, and Score remained largely unchanged.
But in order to raise the revenue needed to level their post-acquisition balance sheet, Pinnacle (but not necessarily Donruss) let the presses fly with one new brand after another; a slew of 200-250 card base set all retailing for $2-$3/pack, all virtually indistinguishable from one another. 1997 New Pinnacle; 1997 Pinnacle X-Press; 1997 and '98 Pinnacle Inside; 1998 Pinnacle Performers; 1998 Pinnacle Plus: If I were to show you a base card from any one of the aforementioned sets, would any of you be able to properly identify it?
But it wasn't just the avalanche of new brands, it was the constant re-tooling of existing ones. There was no consistency from year to year. Take for example Zenith. It was introduced in 1995 as the company's first true "super-premium" product, designed to compete with Fleer's Flair, Upper Deck's SP, and Donruss's Leaf Limited in the $5/pack category. (Pinnacle also introduced that year the Chromium-stocked Select Certified as their answer to Topps Finest.) For the first two years, you basically knew what you were going to get in a box of Zenith: A high-quality base set with a couple of way-cool Dufex inserts in a Hobby box.
Then in 1997 they completely changed the product, doubling the price to $10/pack, reducing the base set to only 50 cards, and inserting two, oversize, 8" X 10" cards per pack.
Yeah, oversized cards and $10 packs in 1997. What the fuck were they thinking?
And then there were the gimmicks. I guess if you're part of the product development team and management mandates that you crank out yet another set, I guess you have to do something to make it stand out. Hence, the cards in soup cans and tins and bizarrely structured sets like Fractal Matrix; so confusing that even I, a man with a graduate degree in economics (which requires a lot of advanced mathematics to acquire) still can not figure out.
Which brings us to 1998 Zenith, a Perfect Storm of the needless meddling of an established card set combined with just about the dumbest gimmick I've ever seen. Yes, I'm talking about Dare to Tear.
I picked up a box of this junk for $27 at The National -- which is about $26.99 more than I probably should have paid -- and video broke it. In the process, I will attempt to extract the standard-sized card from the jumbo WITHOUT trying to damage either card.
Part One:
Part Two:
Part Three:
#10: It's for "Members Only"
#9: The case of the mysterious rookie reprints
#8: 75 for 25
#7: A point is a point
#6: OH NOEZ!!!!!
#5: What do they know about partying? Or anything else?
#4: Epix Mo-Jo!!!
#3: Satisfyin' the ladies, one printin' plate at a time
#2: The Mother of all junk waxboxes
#1: Ironic ain't just the name of an Alanis Morrisette song
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Friday, July 08, 2011
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Junk Box Break: 1986 Donruss
Part One:
Part Two:
Base Set: 388 of 660 (58.79%)
161 Doubles
6 Triples
1 Full 63-piece Hank Aaron puzzle.
And to think, I got all these cards for about the price of a Blaster!
Part Two:
Base Set: 388 of 660 (58.79%)
161 Doubles
6 Triples
1 Full 63-piece Hank Aaron puzzle.
And to think, I got all these cards for about the price of a Blaster!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Junk Box Break: 1998 Topps Stars
Paid $35
Base Set (Reds, serial-numbered to 9799): 52 of 150 (34.67%)
Bronze (Numbered to 9799): 54 of 150 (36.00%)
Silver (Numbered to 4399): 24 of 150 (16.00%)
Gold (1:2, numbered to 2299): 12 of 150 (8.00%)
Gold Rainbow (1:46, numbered to 99): 1 of 150 (H. Nomo)
1 Rookie Reprint (five cards, 1:24): M. Schmidt
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Blog Bat Around: $50-large on eBay?
How I'd blow $50K on eBay? Simple.
I'll take 5000 of these.
That is all.
OK, not really.
Here's how I'd spend $50-grr on eBay:
I'd start with this unopened '72 Topps waxbox for $4,995. Not a bad return on a $2.40 investment in '72, eh? I don't particularly "get" the professional grading of wax boxes, but hey, EVEN MORE TO RIP!
Here's another five-grand: A case of 1968 Fleer Baseball Iron-ons. I have no idea what these are, but what the hell. Now I know how Monty Brewster felt.
$40-grand to go. Let's see...
How about a 1992 Derek Jeter Little Sun Autograph (Graded Mint "9" by PSA) for the low, low, price of $39,900! And, "also included is a copy of God’s Simple Plan of Salvation Gospel tract."
Wow! What a deal! And I still have $106 left over to blow on all that junk wax!
Friday, September 11, 2009
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
The Jersey Shore Junkwaxapalooza! 1997 Totally Certified.
Platinum Red (numbered to 3999): 33 of 150 (22.00%)
three doubles
Platinum Blue (numbered to 1999): 19 of 150 (12.67%)
Monday, July 06, 2009
The Jersey Shore Junkwaxapalooza! 1996 Pinnacle Aficionado
Base Set: 76 of 200 (38.00%)
Parallels
2 Artist's Proof (1:35) J. Damon, M. Newfield
Inserts
2 Slick Picks (32 cards, 1:8) K. Griffey, Jr., J. Gonzalez
Autogamers: NONE
Sunday, July 05, 2009
The Jersey Shore Junkwaxapalooza! 2002 E-X
The Pulls
Base Set: 65 of 139 (46.76%)
20 doubles
short set: 61 of 100 (61.00%)
nEXt: 4 of 39 (10.26%) E. Almonte /2999, M. Byrd /1999, D. Sardinha, R. Chiavacci
Parallels: NONE
Inserts
3 Behind the Numbers (35 cards, 1:8): J. Bagwell, L. Walker, K. Griffey, Jr.
2 Hit & Run (30 cards, 1:12): M. Piazza, A-Fraud
Autogamers
1 Behind the Numbers Jersey (1:24): J. Bagwell
1 Hit and Run Bat (1:24): NOE-MAH!
1 Hit and Run Base (1:120: That J.D. Guy
Friday, July 03, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
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