Football Cards

The Unopened Archive

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Welcome to the relaunched Unopened Archive! It used to have pages with photos of packs, wrappers, boxes, and cases from all the big pre- and post-war releases. This 2.0 version is more of a hub for all my blog posts about different unopened material. Over time, I’ll bring back the old content and add way more—like info about fakes, finds, sales, collation, and all the known products out there.

If you’re looking for a particular unopened product photo, shoot me an e-mail.

Baseball

Basketball

Football

Hockey

Other Sports

Multi-Sport

Non-Sports

Unopened Hobby Books, Magazine Articles, and 101s

1984 Topps Football Cut Card Cases

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Here’s one you don’t see every day, especially in triplicate: a 1984 Topps Football Cut Card Case! One of each sheet (“A”, “B”, and “C”)

Mastro offered these cases in his April 2004 Sports Premier Catalog Auction. While described as an “aftermarket” product, they included a small white sticker with Topps’ distinctive coding information.

Each 35-pound case had 8,650 cards packed in solid, “crisply patterned” rows. Here’s a photo of those rows; I couldn’t get a clean scan since the catalog is so thick, hence the dark color on the left.

With 25,920 cards, there would be enough to create more than 60 complete 396-card sets; that’s a lot of Marino and Elway rookies!

The lot’s description mentioned that the 18” x 12” x 7-1/2” cartons were retaped to ensure structural viability but were unsearched.

I’ll share more about cut card cases in a future newsletter, so subscribe here so you can catch it.

Pacific Takes On The Goliaths

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Who remembers when super premium packs were just $5.99?

Anyway, the December 1996 issue of Sports Card Trader had an excellent article about Mike Cramer taking on the industry’s goliaths that I wanted to share.

But, before I share the article, it is interesting that the back cover features an advertisement for Pacific Trading Cards…

The article is still a great read, though!

Cramer also recently published a great book called Cramer’s Choice: Memoir of a Baseball Card Collector Turned Manufacturer. I encourage you to pick up a copy for your own Hobby Library; I’ll post a longer review of it in the future as I did for True Mint and Mr. Mint’s Insider’s Guide.

Top 75 All-Time Classic Baseball And Football Cards

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In a ‘sort of related’ follow-up to my post the other day about the Top 25 Most Expensive Baseball Cards In 1993, are the Top 75 All-Time Classic Baseball and Football Cards In 1992.

These came from the August 1992 issue of Allan Kaye’s Sports Cards News & Price Guides (Number 9). I call it a ‘sort of related’ follow-up because I flipped through this magazine just after I flipped through the Sports Cards Magazine that had the Top 25 list; they just happened to have been published about a year apart.

I do like that the Top 75 list is organized by year; it’s already rather subjective. Unfortunately for some fans, I don’t think the 1986 Donruss Jose Canseco or 1987 Fleer Will Clark would make the cut on such a list today, nor would the 1989 Pro Set William Perry or 1990 Action Packed Jim Plunkett.

Unopened Case Clearance Specials In 1979

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In “I wish I owned a time machine,” hobby history is this advertisement from the December 1979 issue of The Trader Speaks for “sealed gum cases at the lowest prices ever seen!” And yup, that would be from Mike Cramer’s Pacific Trading Cards.

I shared this image on the Facebook “Vintage Wax and Packs” group, which led to some entertaining comments.

One person said he’d take an infinite amount of 1977-78 Topps Basketball; I agreed since I’ve only ever seen one photo of a wax case.

Another collector asked himself why he hadn’t bought a case for $25, responding that it was about $151 in today’s dollars.

There were a lot of comments about Mike Cramer, who owned the company. By the way, if you have any of his old catalogs for sale, please contact me.

The best comment was, “Funny that the priciest case then is the crappiest one now.” Referring to the 1975 Topps ABC Sports “Giant Stickers” for $40. They must have printed a million of them (and) or sold poorly because they’re incredibly easy to find today; a box was sold on eBay for $8 a few weeks ago.

The 1992 Galovich Report On Unopened Material

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Tony Galovich wrote the following three-page article about “investing” in unopened card packs and boxes for the June 1992 issue of Alan Kaye’s Sports Cards News & Price Guides; it brought about a lot of conversation on Facebook, so I thought I’d share it here too.

You can see that he highlighted some interesting history:

  • A 1953 Topps five-cent baseball wax pack sale for $11k in the summer of 1991.
  • A 1954 Topps cello pack with Hank Aaron showing that sold for $25k in the fall of 1991.
  • A 1934 Goudey wax pack with Jimmie Foxx on the bottom that sold for $20k in 1992.
  • All the 1952 Topps baseball wax packs emerging; including a find of around 800 in Seattle in 1991. He said dealers were paying $5k each for them and that someone had just opened a complete box
  • The find of an entire case of 1953 Topps five-cent packs (Canadian variation) a few years earlier.
  • The sale of a 1951 Bowman one-cent wax pack for $1,500 “recently.”
  • The price appreciation of 1961 Topps rack packs going from $600 a few years earlier to $1,500 in 1992.
  • A 1967 Topps high-number case selling for >$70,000 and the find of 1961 and 1962 cases.
  • The sale of a 1952 Topps high number case eight years earlier for over $200k.
  • He shared market prices for the following football products: 1959 Topps vending box-$2,200, 1957 five-cent wax pack-$550, 1964 Philadelphia rack pack-$450, 1984 USFL set case-$30k, 1972 high number wax box-$3,600, 1960 Fleer wax pack-$250, and 1966 Topps wax pack-$325.
  • From a basketball side he said that 1957 Topps packs were selling for $1k+ and that he heard of a vending case sale in 1991. He also said 1961 Fleer packs were fetching $500+. Also, 1969 Topps boxes were worth >$5k, with packs being >$500. In 1986, Fleer basketball cases were worth $30k, with the rarer 1987 cases bringing $10k.
  • Galovich also talked about how scarce hockey unopened products already were in 1992. 

As I wrote in the intro, I shared the article on the Facebook “Vintage Wacks and Packs” group, and it prompted some interesting comments:

  • One collector asked if the 1952 case was the Mr. Mint case, but that one was for cards from a case. However, another collector mentioned that he knew who sold that case and who bought it and that it sold for $450k, not $200k. Also, that year, NrMt-Mt ’52 Mantles dropped to $675.
  • Another collector mentioned that he’d been collecting since 1970 and had never heard of the ’52 case but had remembered the ’67 case. He also saw first-hand, around 1983, an unopened high series case of 63s.
  • The person who sold the 1954 cello pack with Hank Aaron on top commented that a large horde of Topps high-number boxes was found and sold at the KC show in 1980 between 1962 and 1967 by a retired Topps sales guy.
  • One of the group admins made a note of “the reference to the 1975 cello with Brett on top and Yount on back, BOTH of which just happened to be faced out (a known trademark for a certain someone who was active during that time), illustrates just how long ago star pack were being fabricated.” I suppose I need to republish my old articles about 1975 Topps pack collation.

Happy collecting!

36 1959 Topps Football Cello Packs

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PSA has slabbed 141 1959 Topps Football Cello Packs; I have to presume a few of them are crossovers from when Mastro sold this lot of 36 GAI-graded 2nd-Series examples in August 2004.

The Global Authentication encapsulated slabs included seven Mint 9s, two NM-MT 8.5s, two NM-MT 8s, 19 NM+ 7.5s, and six NM 7s. A bunch of stars were visible on the top or bottom, including Kramer, Mitchell, Parker, Jones, Tittle, Robustelli, Lebaron, and Taylor.

The lot also included the fully intact display box, advertised as in Ex/Mt condition.

These days, most individually PSA-slabbed 1959 Topps Football cello packs have settled at a base price of ~$1500 (despite their high pop) but can sell for much more with stars showing or a touch less if they’re in rough shape.