Junk Wax – Post War Cards

Why the 1990 Score McDonald’s Baseball Cards Are Worth A Lot More Than a Happy Meal

January 20, 2025January 19, 2025 by John

You can grab a 1990 Score baseball factory set for under $10, but the 25-card McDonald’s version? With only 4,000 reportedly made (vs. who knows how many millions of base cards), it commands 40x the price!

I have to acknowledge that I only recently discovered the existence of this set after looking back through the May 1992 issue of Sports Collector Digest’s Sports Card Price Guide Monthly and skimming Jeff Kurowski’s hobby commentary.

However, while Kurowski wrote that the cards were only available in Boise, Idaho, The Standard Catalog wrote that they were also available in eastern Oregon:

This 25-card set was released exclusively at 11 McDonald’s restaurants in Idaho and eastern Oregon. Four cards were given with a large fries-soda purchase. Production was reported at 4,000 each. The cards have front borders of graduated purple shades around a game-action photo. Backs are similar in format to regular 1990 Score cards and include a portrait photo. The McDonald’s logo appears on front and back. Fifteen World Series trivia cards were part of the promotion.

BaseballCardPedia adds that the cards were only available for about three weeks in the spring of 1990. Others have presumed these cards were part of a trial pulled by McDonald’s before being implemented nationwide.

Here’s an example of a 1990 Score McDonald’s card, Ricker Henderson’s, #5, graded Gem Mt 10 from PSA that sold for $313 back in October 2016 by PWCC (now Fanatics Collect).

As I said, the sets are pricey; this ungraded example was sold on eBay for $489 on December 9, 2024.

This example, with all of the trivia cards, sold on eBay for $525 on September 28, 2024.

I haven’t been able to track down any sales of complete graded sets, but there are a handful out there, including four active ones in the PSA Set Registry; PSA has graded 680 cards across the set (as of mid-December 2024), so more are possible.

I suspect we may see a few more PSA or SGC-graded examples pop up; back in November 2024, a collector offered dozens of them on a Facebook group before mentioning he would move them to eBay later (some were already graded).

And here’s an example of the 4-card wrapper.

In late 2021/early 2022, a collector picked up a handful of packs on eBay, so there are a handful of unopened packs floating around, though I haven’t seen a graded one, which would potentially be a four-figure collectible!

Not so junky junk-wax, huh?

Check out The Unopened Archive for more!

One Of The Rarest Junk Wax Era Baseball Cards – The 1993 Topps Nikon House Celebrating Baseball Card

January 17, 2025 by John

Mario Alejandro introduced me to this card in his tweet from March 2024, and then I ran across the following picture of it in Issue 15 (Summer 1993) of Topps Magazine.

First, here’s a screen capture of what Mario wrote about the card

And here are the images he attached to the tweet.

Unfortunately, in their Topps Magazine blurb, Topps doesn’t add much more to the story. Mario alluded to the back of the card, which invited folks to show up at the Nikon House on Tuesday, April 13th, from 6:00-8:00 p.m. after RSVPing to Rebecca Kirisits. But that means the card had to have been distributed before then.

Perhaps it was handed out by Topps’s “paparazzi,” whose photos were displayed at Nikon House.

By the way, PSA has a single example, a gem mint 10, in its Pop Report.

Let me know if you have any more info about this card.

And happy collecting!

Pulling the Bill Ripken FF Error from 1989 Fleer Wax Boxes

May 12, 2024May 10, 2024 by John

I first discussed the 1989 Fleer Bill Ripken #616 FF Error card in an article about expensive baseball card printing errors that was focused on modern cards. In it, I wrote that “Fleer didn’t notice that the Bill Ripken card they released had an obscenity written on the bottom of the bat he was holding. It spelled out, “F**k FACE.” After the company became aware of the error, they released subsequent printings with the words obscured. First, they had a blob of what appeared to be White-Out, then a pen scribble, and finally a black square. Ripken admitted that he wrote the words on the bat to spot it easily as his batting practice bat. Ripken also believes that Fleer couldn’t have missed the error and suggested that they enhanced it to generate extra publicity.”

The 5 Bill Ripken #616 cards have the following populations and approximate prices:

Black Box Over Error – Total Population of 3948 – PSA 8 for ~$18
Black Scribble Over Error – Total Population of 1572 – PSA 8 for ~$30
FF Error – Total Population of 15464 – PSA 8 for ~$70 (The card everyone seems to want these days)
Scribbled Out in White – Total Population of 130 – PSA 8 for ~$500+ (A lot of Variance)
Whited Out Vulgarity – Total Population of 163 – PSA 8 for ~$480

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Black Box Over Error

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Black Scribble Over Error

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Scribbled Out In White

1989 Fleer #616 Bill Ripken Whited Out Vulgarity

Now, if you want to pull a 1989 Fleer Bill Ripken #616 FF Error card from a pack, you need to buy a case or an authenticated box from a trusted source with the right provenance.

There is a 5-digit number printed on 1989 Fleer cases. The case you buy needs the right numbering on it, or the box needs to list the 5-digit number of the case it came from. In the picture that follows, 83422 is printed in black ink on the lower right side.

The first digit is the print year, 9 for 1989, and 8 for 1988. The next three numbers represent the day of the year. 001 is for January 1st, 004 would be January 4th, and so on. The last digit is either a location or a shift.

Digits before 90171, January 17th, 1989, have the Bill Ripken FF error inside. I’ve been reading that the error has been verified in cases up to 90191, but I haven’t seen that myself.

The next two pictures and the case above will have the FF error since their codes are under 90171.