Embracing the Best and Worst of the Junk Wax Era

This past summer, a couple of bloggers shared their personal rankings of junk wax–era baseball card sets. Dime Boxes started it off with a worst list, and then Night Owl followed with a best list. Once I finished reading those two posts, I thought it would be a fun exercise for me, too. The junk wax era was part of my childhood, after all.

 

Let's go with the span of years from 1987 to 1993. And note that by 1992, my collecting focus had mostly transitioned from baseball cards to hockey cards. (Hockey was having a junk wax era of its own at that time. Maybe I'll come up with a list for hockey next. Pro Set and Score, I'm looking at you.)

 

Anyhow, let's start with my bottom 5 junk wax–era baseball sets, in no particular order.

  

 

 

 

1991 Fleer

 

You could probably light up a dark room simply by opening a binder of 1991 Fleer. I think it's safe to say that the bright yellow borders, which ran from card #1 all the way to card #720, caught just about everyone by surprise back then. A couple of years ago, I revisited the set and did a redesign, suggesting that it might have been a better idea for Fleer to go with white borders or charcoal borders. I still stand by that suggestion.

 

 

 

 

 

1988 Donruss

 

Did you know that when a group of zebras feel threatened, they begin running around in zig-zag patterns? All those black and white stripes moving in different directions are bewildering to a predator, which gives the zebras a better chance of escaping unharmed. 

 

Well, the blue, red, and black card stripes moving around those 1988 Donruss card borders can be equally bewildering to a collector. In fact, after looking up current ebay prices for full wax boxes of this stuff, it seems that quite a lot of collectors must have avoided '88 Donruss back then. And although it is true that sometimes the stripes line up in symmetrical ways when the cards are next to each other in a nine-pocket page, it certainly doesn't save this set from the bottom 5. Neither does a fairly strong rookie class (Roberto Alomar, Mark Grace, Tom Glavine, Matt Williams, Al Leiter, Ken Caminiti, Ron Gant, Gregg Jefferies.)

 

 

 

 

1990 Donruss

 

In all fairness, some of the trading card companies of the time were really going for it. And that's commendable. The market was more saturated than ever, and premium brands like Stadium Club and Ultra were appearing on the scene. For the flagship sets, there was pressure to really stand out. And listen. Sometimes you swing hard and hit a homer. Other times you swing hard and whiff. And your helmet flies off. And you fall down. That second scenario was 1990 Donruss. From the redder-than-red borders to the black and white paint speckles to the facsimile script to the clashing bright orange card backs to the litany of errors, it just hurt to open packs of these cards.

 

 

 

 

 1992 Leaf

 

Speaking of premium sets, there were a few years of Leaf designs in the junk wax era. And they started out well. 1990 Leaf was different and exciting with those silver rays shooting out of the bottom left corner of the card front. Then 1991 Leaf had those make-believe photo album borders, which were a little cheesy, but not terrible. Then 1992 Leaf came along, and it was just . . . boring. If I didn't know which year was which and you asked me to put all three of those "silver border" sets in chronological order, I would have guessed that the 1992 Leaf design came first, then they tried to do a little more with it (1991 design), and then they found their stride (1990 design). Note some of the odd photography and cropping in the 1992 set as well, featured on the three cards above.

 

 

 

 

1988 Fleer

 

The 1988 Fleer design seems unfinished to me. Or maybe it's that the designers had a few different ideas saved on a template, and just mashed them all together and called it a day. Some of those red and blue stripes are so short that they look out of place. They're really more like random dashes. Whatever they are, I want to tell them to follow through and go all the way across the card and to the edges of the borders. There are some memorable cards in this set, like San Diego's Tim Flannery posing with a surfboard, but there are also way too many photos of players standing around and looking sad. Or bored. Or nonplussed.

 

 

Now the top 5, also in no particular order.

 

 

 

 

1989 Bowman

 

Many collectors seem to loathe this set and would readily include it in their bottom 5. However, it's all about nostalgia for me. I was a kid collector back in 1989, and the uniqueness of '89 Bowman—from the larger size to the "stats by opponent" on the card backs to the reprints of the golden-age Bowman cards (an era that I was learning about for the first time)—conjures up a lot of good collecting memories for me. I also think this was the first set I collected that featured facsimile autographs on the front. It was fun seeing the penmanship of the pros.

 

 

 

 

 

1991 Topps

 

The 1991 Topps set marked the company's first concerted effort to keep up with the great photography of the newer brands like Upper Deck, Score, and Leaf. They did an excellent job, and the set has held up so well that I decided to complete it a few years ago.

 

 

1989 Fleer

 

1989 Fleer has a solid design. There are some great action shots, and the 3D effect of the players overlapping the interior card borders works very well. Add the color-matched diagonal stripes, which really stand out against the surrounding light gray and white, and the coolness factor increases even more. You've also got many of the same rookies as '89 Topps and '89 Donruss, along with a couple of memorable errors and all their variations. (Billy Ripken and Randy Johnson.) And as usual with Fleer, the card backs were interesting and informative, showing some of the player's stats before and after the All-Star break. Just as with '89 Bowman, I have good memories of collecting this Fleer set in my young days. 

 

 

 

 

 

1989 Upper Deck

 

I think to this day, a lot of young collectors of the time will remember the feel and sound that came with opening those foil wrappers. But is it weird that I remember the smell, too? Regardless, 1989 Upper Deck changed the game. The crisp, bright white card stock, the hologram and full-color photography on the back, the Griffey Jr. star rookie. Upper Deck was a sensation. It's hard to leave it out of my top 5.

 

 

 

1987 Topps

 

I know The 1987 Topps design has been done, and redone, and redone again over the years. (Even the '87 set itself is a not-so-subtle redesign of 1962 Topps.) However, this is the set I collected the most when I was a baseball-loving, baseball-playing kid in New York. The Mets had just won the World Series with their fantastic cast of characters, and the Yankees had a good bunch of their own with Mattingly, Rickey, Winfield, Righetti, and broadcaster Phil Rizzuto on WPIX channel 11. I still get a big dose of nostalgia whenever I see a Mets or Yankees card from this set. All those fond memories outweigh the fact that Topps has exhausted this design.

 

ADDENDUM

 

Let's take a minute to talk about the term "junk wax".

 

I can understand that many folks automatically take it as a negative—enough to be upsetting, or insulting, even. But I also pause, and ask why? 

 

I mean, think about it. Junk can be a positive. Some of the coolest dudes out there are junk collectors. Have you ever watched the show American Pickers, for example? Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz meet some authentic people with some authentic junk, that's for sure. There's nothing negative about that. And besides, there's almost always potential to find some gems within the junk. A 1991 Topps Chipper Jones Desert Shield. A 1990 Topps Frank Thomas no name on front. A 1989 Upper Deck Dale Murphy reverse negative. So how about we start thinking of the term junk wax with more positivity? With more fondness? Let's enjoy the term in all its junkiness. Put mustard on junk wax and eat it. (Not literally.)

 

And if you're so inclined to come up with your own best and worst lists of the junk wax era and post them on your blogs, go for it!

Thanks for reading, as always.