1990-91 Topps Hockey Forum

I was recently gifted unopened boxes of these two hockey sets...(thanks again, Ryan!) And I'm wondering, do the cards always come out of the packs in the same order? I have only opened a couple of packs of each. I'm wondering what the likelihood of getting copies of the cards touching the gum in the middle of a pack is. 

Putting gum against cards is the worst idea ever, just saying. 

A great question, and I would be curious about the answer too.

I opened a few boxes a year or two ago, and can't say I noticed one way or the other, but did lose at least the card attached to the gum on almost every single pack - if not more because the gum would seep another card or two deep.

I am not sure about hockey , smaller set so maybe a better cahnce of getting the card again without wax/gum damage . I know with baseball it seems that some of the same cards end up with wax/gum damage . I have had better luck with cello packs , I have not had any serious gum damage to cards in those that I have opened recently . 

Thanks for the input. I guess I will have to pay attention to the cards and see if I can find cello versions if they are all the same. Right now I'm going to put the gum damaged ones in penny sleeves so they don't damage other cards, but still count them as part of my collection, because I would rather have a gum damaged version than none at all.

Putting gum against the cards is what got Topps in the card business.  I would say it is the greatest idea ever.

  I would like to add that having opened card in the 50s 60s and 60s, most of the damage was from the wax, not the gum.    If you have gum damage, they were probably store in an a hot attic somewhere.   The wax is the evil demon here.  Especially against the dull  back of the cards.

I still need some cards to complete the Topps set , I don't have any of the OPC . I have a bunch of extra Topps here though . I will try and get the extra's uploaded to my trade list this week , maybe we can help each other to finish the Topps set . 

Matt

I do believe I have several commons from these sets (and praobably some stars too). They are not easily accessible at the moment and getting the hockey stuff listed here is a lower priority to me.

Edit: I forgot to say that around this time, there were usually patterns to the sequencing of cards, but rarely did the packs mirror other packs (that is, if pack #1 was 24 - 67 - 135 - 2 - 85 - 244 - 38, Pack #2 may be 135 - 2 - 85 - 244 - 38 - 75 - 199, where I have bolded is the same, but the packs started at a different spot in the sequence.) Topps wasn't as "strict" on the sequencing (there were variations of the sequences), whereas Fleer (especially in the 1980s) had everything in a complete sequence. In 1989, I carried with me a "cheat sheet" of the sequencing for baseball to find Griffey RCs (and a couple other hot ones back then) and it worked.

As a kid I loved the gum in the packs! And I preferred the OPC gum to the Topps gum. It was fun to see how much gum we could chew at the same time and if we bought enough packs we could split the gum out when it lost its flavor and have more! It was great!

As for sequencing, memories are that it happened but my memories are that it that packs could start at different places which would make the gum and wax be on different cards. But this is a long time ago and would primarily be about OPC.

There is one year (and I'd have to look it up, but it's NOT that important) where Topps or OPC had special "inserts" of the Red Army Team and the expansion Sharks team. They were ALWAYS in the middle of the pack, next to the gum, and finding those without gum stains can be difficult. It actually has increased the value of non-stained copies by quite a bit.