Today, the Baseball Card Exchange is the big player in the unopened space, but in the early ’90s, it was Mark Murphy, The Baseball Card “Kid.” Here’s an ad he placed in the December 1993 issue of Sports Cards Magazine.
You can see along the top that he had just bought a gorgeous run of 1970-1979 Topps Baseball wax boxes and was offering packs from each of them as the first products in the ad. Let’s compare prices in December 1993 to PSA 8-graded wax packs today:
- 1970 Topps: $200 (5th/6th/7th Series) compared to ~$2000+
- 1971 Topps: $175 (1st/2nd Series) compared to ~$2000++ (BBCE Auctions recently sold a PSA 8 1st Series pack for $6,667 and 2nd Series packs for $3k)
- 1972 Topps: $65 (3rd Series) compared to ~$500-750
- 1973 Topps: $110 (2nd Series) compared to ~$1k
- 1974 Topps: $60 compared to ~$500
- 1975 Topps: $90 compared to ~$1k
- 1976 Topps: $35 compared to $350-425
- 1977 Topps: $30 compared to ~$225
- 1978 Topps: $20 compared to ~$150
- 1979 Topps: $15 compared to ~$115
This ad has so many other awesome products, so I shared the advertisement on the Facebook ‘Vintage Wax and Packs’ group in early September 2024 to see what stood out to people who concentrate on this hobby niche:
- Some were surprised by how high some prices were at the time; many thought that everything would have been a lot cheaper in 1993.
- One collector commented that the 1982 Topps and 1991 Stadium Club boxes cost the same.
- Many commented on how many “bad” decisions one could have made in that ad.
- A lot of folks had bought vending boxes from him.
- There were many comments about the 1986/87 Fleer basketball packs being $225 or $425 for two.
- Many recalled fond memories of dealing with Murphy.
Happy collecting!
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