As regular readers will know, I’ve been very into some particular repack sellers recently. I’ve also found recently that Instagram aids are very good at targeting me. I think that’s where I was reminded of Classic Wax Sport Cards and I decided to finally dig in.
Classic Wax offers repacks of baseball, football, hockey and basketball as well as selling some graded cards. You can get packs from an individual sports or a mix of sports. I decided to go with a four-sport box with 18 packs and you get to choose which sports you get four packs of and which sports you get five packs of.
I think one of the appeals from Classic Wax is the presentation and packaging. Everything comes in a branded box with wax wrappers for each pack with branding for each sport. It gives you that old feel of the wax and everything. But what’s the problem when you open those old wax packs now? The cards can stick right? Well, they put a business card-sized filler at the top and bottom of every pack so there’s no damage.
I’m going to put some highlights from all the packs below that I thought were interesting. Then later on I’ll give you some insight into what exactly came in the packs. It was definitely fun with that old feeling of the wax and all so let’s get to rippin’ (only kidding I was way more careful).
Hockey
I definitely don’t have a lot of a lot of vintage hockey so this was great. A Phil Esposito card was definitely nice. But the other thing about these that was interesting was about the Golden Seals card. I love the eerily simple old logo and that crazy looking uniform. But just seeing that had me researching about the Golden Seals and the different eras of NHL expansion and where teams moved to. Definitely a fun and interesting Wikipedia rabbit hole.
Two Rangers are here but there was a good number of them in my packs – good for me. I thought the other two cards were just interesting for the sweat pants and funny pose but also a requirement in any good hockey pack… a guy with missing teeth.
Basketball
Just after my brother came over I was showing him the packs and he thought all the old presentation was great. He’s not into cards like I am these days but we great up collecting together. Plus he appreciates some good business like that. The Jim Eakins card definitely set off some discussion.
We talked about how players in those days and players these days look totally different. Not really just body type but look too. Jim just sort of looks like “a guy” and not a basketball player. This is similar too football below too.
Basketball is also a sport I don’t have a lot of true vintage of and a guy named “Fly” gracing a vintage card is always aces.
There’s definitely some juxtaposition her with the Bradley Beal and Carmelo cards compared to all the other cards and the difference between current and older cards.
Football
Bob Berry and John Hadl definitely fit the “are these guys really players” images. I always think of John Riggins as a Redskin so seeing him in the Jets uniform feels crazy. Similar for Favre as a Falcon.
That Warrick Dunn card had me interested. Of course I remember him playing a lot in the NFL, but I will always think of him at Florida State. He’s always a Seminole to me.
Baseball
The baseball packs had a ton of great names in there. But I don’t know if that’s just because I know baseball better or what. But not only that, there were some good versions of cards. Of course that’s not a Willie Randolph rookie card, but I’ll take a Rookie Cup card any day. I also love the Ron Santo card as I don’t think I have any of him or Bob Lemon.
There was one pack with an autograph in it and that got me the Tom House card. It’s kind of hard to see on there but that’s kind of how Tom signs. The unfortunate part is that I have this card signed already.
Fun Time!
As I said earlier, it was a fun time to open these up. I’ll probably do it again sometime, but I might try to focus on something other than baseball to see what I can get to expand my collection in places.
I did notice some patterns in what you can find, or at least what I got in these packs. Below you’d see all of the packs combined and then data on what I got in each pack by year. If I had to sum up each by sport it would be:
- Hockey – I got three true vintage from the 70’s, a majority of early to mid-90’s and a current card
- Basketball – Similar to hockey with the chance at one more older card and a bit more of a wide range of 90’s, plus a current card
- Football – A bit more of a consistent spread across years from 1970 to 2000 with peaks in the 80’s or 90’s, plus a current card
- Baseball – The widest spread of all the sports
I think in some places 80’s were mostly skipped and you don’t see much of anything from 2000-current except for very current. But I don’t want that to see a complaint. I do like a bit more of a spread if I had to give a preference so I liked the way the baseball came out the best. It’s probably easiest to do that with baseball.
I would suggest checking it out. I’m not sure if why a non-collector might be reading this, but I think this would be a fun thing for someone to buy for the collector in their family (maybe suggest it to someone if you are a collector).
