With the baseball season nearing an end, college football in full swing, and a fantasy football team that can be considered “above average” at best, I’ve found myself at a card collecting crossroads.
It’s not that I’m losing interest altogether. Far from it. It’s just that with so much else going on – all of the above mentioned distractions, not to mention the baby right around the corner – I’m having trouble focusing my collecting efforts. The fact that the online warehouses are beginning to slash prices isn’t helping matters, either!
I’d been dead set on “sampling” $5 packs of recent releases in search of somewhat easy to obtain hits: Ticket To Stardom (I like ’em), Goodwin Champions, Allen & Ginter (perfect for TTMs). Of course, I’m smitten with relics like it’s 1999 and LOVE picking up packs of ’07 Fleer Ultra SE, and even occasionally consider Sweet Spot, SPx, and Legendary Cuts – all stuff with guaranteed or near guaranteed hits in each pack.
And a dangerous new thought has crept into my head: collating “junk” sets from the late ’90s and early ’90s that I grew up on. ’87 Topps, ’90 Fleer, ’92 Topps… stuff like that. My card shop makes this option far too easy since they stock a ridiculous amount of cheap wax, and I’m certain I could bargain down these older boxes even further than they have them priced if I bought more than one.
What to do, what to do. Some of the cheaper stuff I’ve been considering online include ’08 Timelime (junk autos, sure, but I LOVE early ’90s throwback designs!), 2008 Topps (jumbo, with two hits per box), Artifacts, and ’06 Flair Showcase. All stuff under $40 with multiple hits per box.
Packs of new stuff, online boxes of products that are a couple years old, or collating junk wax from twenty years ago… what to do?
Filed under: Help Wanted, Musings | Tagged: boxes, Card shop, junk wax, online, packs, relics |
The Priceless Pursuit 
Spend $20 and buy yourself 4-5 complete “junk wax” sets. When they arrive, dump them all out on the floor so that you suddenly have a massive organization project at hand (so it feels like you are doing something with your hobby instead of just spending money). Then you can also spend a little bit following your second, true, hidden love of FOOTBALL CARDS!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
And yes, I might be dumb…
Go get a bunch of those 90 donruss sets for 5 bucks a pop and collect all of the puzzle pieces and actually put together an entire puzzle. That would be money.
the junk sets while fun and cheap, are somewhat hard to complete as they are like 700 card sets… and with about 600 players you have never heard of, nor will ever hear of, it isn’t as much fun as you would think. you are better off getting relatively cheap stuff from the late 90’s or early 2000s
I vote for UD Timelines because I need trading partners for that set – I’ve got about 100 short print duplicates for trade…and am still missing a ton of cards from the set.
Actually, unless you are a sucker for short prints I don’t think I can recommend that set…it’s impossibly difficult to put together – unless you are thinking of buying a case I guess.
I like Timelines a lot. I’d been thinking it’d be easy to put together, despite all the SPs – the pack says you get six per pack. I just wish my shop would adjust pack prices of the stuff to a more reasonable amount… from a pack perspective, they’re very reasonable for MOST products, but sometimes they fail to adjust as demand dwindles.