Hockey Cards

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!

1982/83 O-Pee-Chee Hockey Sealed Rack Pack Case

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While individual 1982-83 OPC Hockey rack packs are some of the most common of those OPC released between 1979 and 1989, cases are rare. This one was offered for sale in April 2006.

Interestingly, OPC was the only company to make a major hockey set this year; Topps didn’t issue cards in 1982-83. Anywho, you can see on the case that it held four sealed 24-count boxes, each containing 51-card rack packs from O-Pee-Chee. The set’s key rookies include Dale Hawerchuk, Brent Sutter, Grant Fuhr, and Ron Francis.

The Baseball Card Exchange offered this sealed case for $3,375 at some point in its history (there’s no date online).

BBCE must have offered that case for sale quite a while ago because REA sold this single rack box for $5,040 in late 2023.

To round things out, here’s an example rack pack with Wayne Gretzky’s record-breaker card on top. It sold for $275 in April 2024.

1961/62 Topps Hockey Five-Cent Display Box

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I always feel bad for vintage hockey unopened collectors; finding these items is tougher than tracking down a unicorn. Here’s one of them, a 1961/62 Topps Five-Cent Display Box.

Mastro included this one in their December 2004 Sports Auctions of Distinction catalog.

During the early 1960’s, Topps Chewing Gum Company printed NHL hockey cards in the United States, and then shipped the vast majority of them to its Canadian subsidiary. There, O-Pee-Chee, the affiliate company, produced its own packaging for use in distributing the cards north of the U.S. border. Offered is an original 36-Count display box from the Topps/O-Pee-Chee series of 1961/62. The 8” x 3-3/4” x 1-7/8” box, with the issue’s scarce stamp insert prominently featuring in its front-panel graphics, grades at least NM with only very mild, natural handling faults. This scarce relic is a superb representative of a highly collectible U.S.-Canadia collaborative effort.

The minimum bid at the time was $200; that wouldn’t be close to enough today. In the fall of 2022, REA sold a display box, perhaps the same one, that they described as the first they had ever handled and the only example they had seen available at public auction in the past twenty years for $10,500.

Still interested in vintage hockey unopened? In the market for an authenticated 1961/62 Topps hockey wax pack? BBCE listed this one on their site in August 2004 for $25k. PSA has only slabbed seven.

Upper Deck Hockey Sheets

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Here’s an awesome summary of the Hockey Sheets that Upper Deck distributed at games during the 1991/92 NHL season, as presented in Allan Kaye’s Sports Cards in April 1992.

I had previously written a four-part series of blog posts related to Upper Deck’s commemorative sheets that I may republish here or via a magazine in the future, so if you’re interested in more about them, please contact me. In the meantime, here are a pair of examples from the 1991/92 distribution, as discussed in the article.

What’s New For 1983 (Oddball Sets, That’s What)

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The June 1983 edition of The Trader Speaks featured this great piece by Robert Udelson, highlighting four great oddball sets, new for 1983!

You’ll find the first cards commonly called the 1982-83 Neilson Wayne Gretzky Hockey set. And while they’re pretty nifty, the coolest collectible from the set is the 25” x 33” store display sign featuring all 50 cards. Classic Auctions sold this one in November 2017 for $179.

Udelson wrote that the backs of the Gardner’s Brewers cards were very similar to that year’s Topps issue; well, that’s because Topps printed the set! So the hobby now calls the set the 1983 Topps Gardner’s Bakery Milwaukee Brewers cards. The cards remain cheap today. You can grab this pair of graded Yount and Molitor cards on eBay for $50 (July 2024).

The non-standard-sized 23-card 1983 True Value Chicago White Sox cards (2-5/8” x 4-1/8”) would have been tough to assemble in 1983, two at a time, but today, they’re pretty cheap. The Standard Catalog shares that the Sox could not distribute some of the cards because of rainouts, but they were smuggled out to hobby channels anyway; those three cards belong to Harold Baines, Marc Hill, and Salome Barojas.

Frankly, there isn’t much interesting to say about the 1983 L.A. Dodgers Police cards; however, it looks like the partnership to print cards between the Police and the Dodgers lasted a long time. The Standard Catalog lists a set for each year from 1981 to at least 2000, except 1985. This complete set of 1983 cards is available on eBay for $7 (shipped).