General Forum

Having been around cards for almost 50 years now there isn't much that irks me except for the terms junk wax and the recent Junk wax 2.0.

Is there a way(likely not) to get people to stop this mindset?

I mean how can we consider any product that contains cards of Jordan, Gretzky, Ripken, Ryan etc. junk wax?

Not so junky is it now that so many are scrambling to get these "junky" products?

The card companies just like any other industry and you and i need to make money to survive.

They do it by printing cards and print they will.

As a matter of fact 1991 Donruss is still being printed.

Please feel free to weigh in, 

For me, it's not really a 'junk wax era', I would say 5 years, between 1988-1992 in baseball anyway. Even though this period contains the prized Ken Giffiey Jr. UD rookie card, PSA tweeted yesterday they had graded over 75,000 of them. wow. that's a lot, and not even a Topps product.

I agree. I propose we use “ abundant wax era” from now on. 

Wait... 1991 donruss is still being printed?

I will go one further and say anyone who uses that term is not actually a collector, but someone trying to make money off of actual collectors. Not in th same sense as a dealer, but a profiteer. Dealers care about the cards, profiteers don't care about anything other than getting money out of true collectors.

I stop reading when I see that because I know the person has nothing of value to say. I also know they WILL try to sell me something and the root of whatever they are posting is simply a thin veil sales hustle.

Really Billy? I actively seek and collect a lot of that era  and have no issue with the term "Junk Wax". Maybe I am guilty of profiting from the time I have spent on 1989 and 1990 Donruss research on the site lately? If so "If I had a nickel for every......." I wouldn't even have a nickel

The term does not offend me.  To me it is just a term that defines (not really well) an era in the card manufacturing / card collecting hobby where it saw a huge influx of short-term collectors / investors (poor investment).  The companies did as the market dictated and produced an over-whelming amount of cards which also resulted in the start of the creation of parallel sets and second / third brands of cards being produced by the major companies.  Any collector who has purchased some of these short-term collectors' collections has boxes and boxes of 1987-1993 cards (I am guilty of this).  Are they junk - no; I have kept all of them (only recentloy have I started to throw out cards that no collector would want in his collection due to condition).  Are there too many produced - yes (when I have over 1,000 of a single 1988 Donruss card, I can say this - anyone want a few Mike Deveraux cards?).

I do know the term offends some members - Billy has been vocal about it before - so I try not to use the term.  But it is an era in the hobby that stands out and when a new collector who did not live those years asks why there is so much of this product available, opened and still sealed, there is an explanation and some collectors have termed it just that.

I liken the term to calling the 1930s the "Dirty Thirties".  Nothing dirty about the 1930s but it was a time of drought, recession and the rise of Fascism. For those who lived it, the term "Dirty Thirties" was apt.

I've been driving this bandwagon for some time and find it amazing that I cannot fill all my needs from this era - and encapsulate that within whichever parameters you wish, I have wants from these years.

I believe the term comes from the mindset of investment ala junk bonds which are high risk, and therefore its use irks those like me who have never been into this as an investment with prospects of a return. When I saw Griffey Jr. cards I didn't think college education for my kids or an Alaskan cruise. I thought I can trade this for some cards I really want. (An aside, I now collect Griffey cards and wouldn't trade them for other wants anymore.)

There are some that use the term simply as a colloquialism for the era while some etrapolate it to actually mean junk because of a proliferation of product. Overproduction doesn't mean junk.

I don't collect junk. I collect cards; and I do it for fun, not as an investment. If I wish to invest I do it with a bank or in real estate.

Mostof us think of "junk wax" as over produced and readily available..

I've been on a kick lately to start/complete some early 1990's hockey sets and some of the cards are tough to locate (echoing Joshua's post). 

I also just saw case fresh 1990-91 Upper Deck French hockey wax box (low series I believe) sell for $75.00 which sounded crazy to me. 

I'm a bit fond of this era though because this is when I really started to collect and the cards bring back some fond memories..

One man's junk is another man's treasure!

The junk wax stigma has kept cards from my childhood relatively afforable. Future collectors won't have the same issues collecting these sets as sets froms the seventies and back. It is what it is, and it's not necissarily a bad thing.