The 1987 Topps baseball card set is one of the most iconic and collectible issues from the 1980s. It was the 66th annual set issued by Topps and featured cards of players from that year’s Major League Baseball season. Like all Topps sets from the 1950s through the 1990s, the 1987 cards were sold in wax packs and wax boxes straight from the hobby shop. Let’s take a closer look at what came inside one of those iconic 1987 Topps baseball cards wax boxes.
Inside each 1987 Topps wax box, you would find 14 wax packs. Each wax pack contained 11 cardboard baseball cards sealed inside a foil wrapper. The wrapper was made of colorful, thin wax paper that had to be peeled open to reveal the enclosed cards below. Some key details and statistics about the 1987 Topps set that collectors would discover upon opening their first packs include:
The set featured 792 total cards and included rookie cards of future Hall of Famers Gregg Maddux, Tom Glavine, John Smoltz, and Craig Biggio.
The design featured a photo of each player in a vertical layout with their team logo and position underneath. Stats like batting average and home runs from the previous season were printed on the back.
Some inserts and specialty cards in the base set included Dennis Eckersley’s Cy Young Award card, the Topps All-Star card, and Leader cards highlighting single-season records.
Topps produced the cards on a thicker and higher quality cardboard stock compared to previous years for added durability. The backs were still plain white without any additional graphics or bios.
The standard relic card inserts found in wax packs of the era, known as “pocket schedules,” featured a printed schedule of all MLB teams for that season that could be peeled off and taken with you.
Exciting chase cards like the limited print run Frank Viola ‘#1 Pick’ award subset added to the allure of seeking out these tough to find premium hits in packs.
Inside each wax pack, collectors would have their eyes drawn first to the colorful wrappers advertising “11 Cards Inside” before eagerly tearing them open. The excitement of not knowing which players or key rookie cards might be lying in wait was half the fun. Once peeled apart, the first few cardboard flaps would be lifted to reveal a face-down stack of cards.
Collectors would take their time flipping through each one, studying the photos and checking for star players, exciting rookie cards, or valuable short prints and inserts. With no internet databases to easily reference at the time, it was all about carefully examining the details of each new addition to your growing collection. With any luck, a chase card or two might make an appearance in one of the wax packs found inside the box.
After opening all 14 wax packs contained within, collectors would be left with a sizable accumulation of over 150 new 1987 Topps baseball cards to add to their set. The fun was hardly over once the packs were emptied. The leftover wax paper and cardboard wrappers could then be combined and molded into small baseball-shaped sculptures, buildings, or other curios to be placed on a desk or shelf as a reminder of the day’s rip.
The used wax and emptied cardboards from 1987 Topps packs also represented the potential beginnings of an entire vintage wax collection for the dedicated collector. Some savvy players began keeping the empties to seek out incomplete wax packs or rare factory errors still sealed in wax at a later date. The boxes themselves also took on significance as displays for completed sets or for shipment when trading cards by mail was how most deals went down.
Over 35 years later, the allure and nostalgia of 1980s Topps wax packs and boxes continues to this day. Completely sealed 1987 Topps wax boxes still nestled in shrink wrap as they were on store shelves all those years ago increasingly become the crown jewels of vintage collecting. Their rarity has only grown more pronounced with time, standing as true time capsules transporting enthusiasts back to the heyday of the baseball card collecting boom. Forthose fortunate enough to have ripped packs from one as a kid, the memories and thrill of the chase clearly still remain as vivid as the photos on the enclosed rookie cards of icons like Maddux and Glavine.
The 1987 Topps wax box was more than just a baseball card product – it was a portal straight into the statistical heights and heroics from that year’s MLB season. For countless collectors both young and old, the experience of slowly discovering all that a ’87 Topps box had to offer inside was uniquely suspenseful, memorable, and helped spark a lifelong passion. Even today, the cardboard slabs and foil wrappers still manage to transport fans back to a golden era when America’s pastime felt akin to a national pastime. For baseball nostalgia and vintage collecting devotees alike, few pieces could prove more essential to any collection than a time-warped 1987 Topps box.
