The junk wax era was a period in baseball card history from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s that was marked by an overproduction of cards which greatly devalued the entire hobby. The overabundance of cards produced during this time has led collectors to refer to them as “junk wax” as the cards held very little value.
The junk wax era was fueled by the rise of mass production and an attempt by card manufacturers to capitalize on the boom in popularity the hobby experienced in the late 1970s and early 1980s following the release of the iconic 1975 Topps set featuring a rookie card of Hall of Famer George Brett. In the early 1980s, the baseball card market was still relatively small with the main producers being Topps and Fleer who released one or two sets per year. As the decade progressed more and more companies entered the market seeking to cash in on the popularity.
One of the first signs of trouble came in 1981 when Donruss entered the market as the first serious competitor to Topps and Fleer. They released green-bordered cards that were of much lower quality paper and printing. This kicked off a trend of declining physical standards that would continue throughout the junk wax era. Then in 1982, Major League Baseball granted licenses to produce cards not just to Topps as they had for decades but also to Fleer and Donruss which opened the floodgates. Suddenly there were multiple producers all competing for consumers and retailers shelf space.
In the mid-1980s, production exploded. In 1985 alone, Topps released 9 different sets including the flagship set as well as oddball issues like Traded and Update sets. Fleer and Donruss also released numerous sets. Meanwhile, smaller producers like Leaf and Score entered the fray. And it wasn’t just standard size cards anymore, as producers released sets in various shapes and sizes from “minis” to giant photo cards. The quality continued to decline as well, with thin cardboard stock and murky photos becoming commonplace. Retailers, looking to make room on shelves for all the new product, began heavily discounting older wax packs and boxes.
Perhaps the most egregious example came in 1989 when Topps, Fleer, and Donruss each produced a record high of 17 different sets between them, flooding the market with over 7,000 different baseball cards. The glut was such that cards were practically being given away. It got to the point that producers had to resort to gimmicks to move product like oddball parallel sets, autograph and memorabilia cards, and oddball materials like plastic and wood. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the emergence of sets featuring die-cut, foil stamped, or embossed cards that lacked substance or true collector value.
This overproduction had the effect of saturating the market and completely devaluing the entire hobby. Young collectors in the 1980s eagerly ripped open packs in search of stars only to find their allowances wasted on piles upon piles of virtually worthless cardboard. The glut eroded any sense of scarcity which had been a driving force behind the hobby. Boxes of unopened wax packs from the junk wax era can be found for just a few dollars as there is virtually no demand.
It wasn’t until the late 1990s that the hobby began to recover. Two main factors helped revive baseball cards – the players’ strike that wiped out the 1994 World Series drew fans back to their card collections, while the internet allowed collectors to better organize and researchers helped identify the true gems from the junk wax era. It took time to undo the damage of the prior decade when the bottom fell out of the entire industry due to unchecked overproduction during the junk wax era. The boom had gone bust, leaving a generation of collectors disillusioned.
In the end, the junk wax era serves as an important lesson about speculation and the free market. When left unchecked, mass production can devalue and destroy even something as iconic to American culture as baseball cards. It took nearly 20 years for the hobby to fully recover from the bubble of the 1980s as quality and scarcity were restored. While cards from that era hold little intrinsic value, they remain an important historical artifact showing the pitfalls that can occur when profit motive supersedes all other considerations in a collectibles market.
