Another way to tell if s pack has been opened is, the wax paper was seemed in the factory with heated metal rollers around an inch and a half wide. If you are thinking of buying a wax pack and seethe whole back looks as if it has been sealed instead of the distinct roller mark, it's probably been opened and resealed with an iron
Update - I don't recall but I probably paid $200 for the pack. I submitted the two best cards and got an 8 and a 7. So the scammer threw me a bone and gave me a $10 and $5 card in the pack.
I got a factory box of 81 donruss golf a few months ago and the gum was fused to the bottom card in each pack. seems like that should be the case for most vintage wax packs.
Yes, that’s very discouraging for new collectors especially... no matter what you’re collecting. The Militaria collectibles segment is so flooded with Repro items that some sellers don’t bother trying to sell originals (the honest ones will tell you if the item is a reproduction- for example squadron patches. When you spend good money on an item and think you have something nice- only to have a pro reveal you’ve purchased a fake is heartbreaking. That’s why I always buy from people I trust and have purchased from before or can get a recommendation. The good stuff costs good money. One thing I’ve found to be true in collecting...if the price is too good to be true..it usually is. This guy mentions that he’s taking an item out of circulation by opening a fake pack- that’s a class move in my book. There are good trustworthy people out there- you just have to find them.
One of the main things you didnt mention was the patter of the wax on back of the wrapper. If it looked melted back in place or if it still had roller marks.
Think about it dude. Some of these packs have cards worth $150,000. If you owned a legit unopened pack, are you going to sell it for cheap? No. You're going to open it. Unfortunately, some people open it and then carefully re-seal it after taking the good card out, or finding nothing, and then lying to people about it. But don't ever expect to buy a legit unopened pack, unless you buy it off of grandma at a garage sale, where she sells her deceased husbands' box of stuff and hasn't got a clue about it. Aside from that, ZERO chance any baseball card dealer is taking the risk of selling you a pack with a 150k card in it.
When I was a kid in the early 60s, but best friend's dad used to buy him an entire brick of baseball cards - which he never opened. Someday I'll contact him on FB and ask him if he ever kept them.
Bummer! Man I always hated wax packs for that reason, even when I was 8 years old I knew something was wrong with that method of closing card packs, 30 years later, still biting people in the ass. 😤
i'm thinking that 65 pack was legit. not all back card will have a wax stain. the way that back wrapper unfolded when you opened it was hard to duplicate as far as resealing.
Sorry John but that was a reseal pack. They didn't package high numbers with the lower numbers. During the year they released different series of cards. Low numbers first in December or January, followed by middle numbers in March or April then finally the high number series in July and August. This is how Topps distributed there cards in 1952 to 1973. Your package was heat sealed. Sorry brother.
I bought a 83 pack of fleer baseball cards in 91, I opened the pack and ate the gum, Man, that gum tasted like wax. Lol! That gum was so nasty. I guess I shouldn't expect 8 year old gum to taste so good
I just opened a pack of 1989 Bowman in a recent video. For some reason, the gum looked too tempting, and almost reflexively, by some long defunct habit (I opened a lot of '89 Bowman when I was 9 years old that year) chucked the gum in my mouth before really thinking twice about it. 31 year old gum. Was a bad mistake. 😨😅
John, I know that it's a longshot, however, do you still have the Dodger's rookie card from this pack break over 10 years ago, and if you do, is it for sale?
This is why 89 upper deck went to foil packs as it is impossible to reseal those or even look thru the wrapper for sequencing, upper deck was ahead of the game from the start, too bad they folded.
I only buy unopened packs from Baseball Card Exchange or if they are PSA graded. I absolutely do not trust GAI graded packs. GAI service is shady as hell.
As a teenager in the 70's, I had an amazing collection. Full sets of Topps from 53 through 78 (when I went to college). I had partial set of 52's, and lots of Bowman and even 1932 Play Ball Joe Diamaggio. T206 Ty Cobb...a great collection. I stored them away while at college and eventually sold them at shows to come up with a down payment for my first house. Unfortunately, the hobby got completely corrupted by people who would pay top dollar for rookie cards from the previous or current year. There was no common sense. It's not like finding a 1954 rookie Hank Aaron...that in 1978 was actually rare. True collectors of anything, pay for RARITY...not for mass produced Jose Canseco cards. Once that shit started to happen, it all became a big fraud-fest rip-off. When I see RU-vid videos of people getting exciting about finding some rookie card from 2018 I just shake my head. They make thousands and thousands and thousands of these cards...they're NOT rare. End rant.
I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment. I got into collecting as a kid in the 1970s, then graduated to buying 1980s sets and older rookie/star player cards from the 1950s and 1960s. I used to get Sports Collectors Digest by mail and Baseball Card magazine on the new stands. Remember in the mid to late 80s when people in the hobby started to promote players such as Wally Joyner, Mike Greenwell, Kevin Seitzer and John Olerud as sure fire future HOFs? Then their rookie cards skyrocketed in value, even though they were mass produced in junk wax boxes! To me it's no different today with people clamoring to get cards of Fernando Tatis Jr., Luis Robert and Aristides Aquino. Who knows how these players will end their careers? The hobby now is driven by the "chase" or "insert cards" which claim to be printed in lesser quantity. And the autographs and junky "uniform relic cards." Don't want to sound like a buzz-kill or a hater. If you enjoy collecting, have at it. But don't expect today's cards to afford you a paid college education or down payment on a house. I think people are nuts to shell out a million dollars on a Mike Trout card for instance, but it's a free country, so knock your socks off if you want to shell out that kind of money for a current player's card!
lol dang that gum was blatant fake. I opened a pack not too long ago from the late 80's, and gum pretty much ruined the card it was on because of oldness. Like stuck to it and was half petrified, became part of the card. Sorry I know this video was 5 years ago, but oh well! Even if the gum was broken, the pieces would have hinged to the card. Also, umm, the piece of gum was smaller, a lot smaller back then. the piece they put in that pack was like from one of the last years gum was in packs!
I’m afraid to ask what you paid for it in 2002….but after checking the values, obviously it would have been better not to open it, even though it’s a re-sealed pack.
True. I've only bought a few from eBay and only this one was rejected. I actually bought a wax box run from 1972-76 in the early days of eBay and the boxes were fine. Lots of packs with stars showing. I still have the 1972 wax pack with Clemente IA showing that came from that box.
John C Nowadays a lot of people on E-bay are scammers. Good for you if you did get the real thing, I just know I got burned in the early days before I learned what kind of d-bags are out there trying to scam honest people. Sad really. I miss the days when me and my friends would ride our bikes to the card shops. Do those even exist anymore?
Is it better to have a pack fresh very off center card 20/80.... or a perfectly centered card with a small ding in one of the corners....or a gum stain?
Clearly, this pack had been opened and resealed…the Astros Rookie card was pulled from the middle of the stack…yet it had wax/gum stains all over it!..poster stated he’d paid $200 for it off of EBay…cards were worth about $10…what a ripoff
Can you guys smell me? My neighbors dog can. Well.... hopefully this guy at least gave the bastard from eBay a negative rating. Thanks for reading! Smell you later!
Ok so its a reseal but who does it ?? OTHER nudnick collectors..who else would have pristine opened vintage packs and cards...only collectors revsealing their shit after they went through it.. shouldn't be anything gradeable or valuable. THIS kind of collector and collecting AND COLLECTING!!!! IS bad FOR the hobby bad FOR kids and bad FOR baseball...3 strikes.
You think he was ripped off. Look at all the kids who grew up in the 80's and 90's. Cards were so over produced and everyone saved their cards. Now they're not worth jack shit.
jongreek Thanks. I've had far more wins than losses. Just wish I still had the run of 1972-76 wax boxes I sold off ten years ago. Unopened prices are really soaring these days.
jongreek It may seem that way to use probably because your mommy and daddy bought all your cards for you when you were a child. But I was out mowing lawns and doing other various work at age 7 saving up money and buying cards. I watched many of my countless 70 to 90 dollar cards drop down to near nothingness. All the complete sets I bought, even the so called limited LEAF card sets that I paid 150.00 for in 1990 can now be bought for 15.00. So that's why I say kids from the 80s and 90s that collected cards got ripped off big time. But I eventually learned how the system works. They jack up the price in the card pricing catalogs to create demand. Once they sold enough then they drop. Hell, I bought a PSA GRADE 10 1989 Donruss Ken Griffey Jr. Rookie card for a dollar on ebay about 5 years ago..lol.
***** I don't play in the modern market partially for that reason. But also because production runs are artificially limited with 1/1, 1/100 etc. I stick to the vintage cards. I did have some 1980s/90s junk cards but I wasn't heavy into it. I was actually building a high grade 1969 set at that time, so I avoided losing big money investing in modern cards. The worst investment was chasing the Ripken FF card. I probably spent a few hundred on wax and cello chasing that card. Could have been a lot worse though. I know people sitting on cases of unopened late 80s and 90s packs.
Hey , if u have local minor league teams( Nuts, Ports) u can use some of them if they have former players now coaches for autographs, N for just a postage , most of them love to sign them
Its ashame card collectors have to get all the no-name players because of this type of monkey business of opening vintage packs to take out all the stars and re pack them with all the commons!🥴
...and also to distinguish them from cellophane packs. The wax packs held 5 cards for a nickel, the clear cellophane packs held 10 cards for a dime, and they were always preferred in my neighborhood because you could see the top and bottom card. Used to drive the candy store owner crazy digging through the box looking for prime cards!