The junk wax era refers to the boom in baseball card production between 1987-1994 when the baseball card industry greatly overproduced cards, lowering their values. During this era, card manufacturers would mass produce cards with the assumption that demand would keep up. This ultimately led to an oversupply of cards in the marketplace that were essentially worthless compared to older and more scarce vintage cards.
The junk wax era began in 1987 when sports card company Fleer was able to sign a licensing deal with Major League Baseball, breaking the monopoly Topps had long held on official MLB cards. This opened the door for much larger production runs by multiple companies all seeking to cash in on the booming baseball card market. In the late 1980s, interest in collecting sports cards was at an all-time high, fueled by the rising prices vintage cards were fetching. Meanwhile, companies like Donruss and Score also entered the baseball card market around this time, further increasing production.
Card manufacturers would sign multi-year contracts with MLB and players’ unions that gave them rights to produce massive numbers of cards each year. For example, in 1987 Topps’ contract allowed them to produce over 1 billion total cards over a five-year period. Donruss and Score also had deals allowing hundreds of millions of cards to be made annually. Producers would then err on the side of overproduction to try and meet what they thought was insatiable demand.
While interest was high in the late 80s, demand could not keep pace with the unfettered increases in baseball card output. Sets from 1987-1991 featured basic uniform shot cardboard cards that had no long-term appeal to collectors. By 1991, the bubble had already started to burst as production kept skyrocketing but interest began to level off. Companies like Score and Donruss went out of business due to overproduction while Fleer and Topps fire-sold excess inventory overseas.
Two key factors accelerated the junk wax crash. In 1992, baseball went through an offseason marked by a labor dispute that led to salary arbitration and free agency being limited. Interest in the game waned some that year. Another issue was the rise of expensive limited premium hobby boxes in the early 90s that contained rare parallel or autograph “hits.” These stole consumer dollars that may have otherwise gone to regular wax packs and boxes.
Through the early 90s, overproduction created a massive worldwide surplus of modern baseball cards with little intrinsic value. By 1994, the market was irretrievably flooded with readily available mainstream cards. Sets like 1993 Upper Deck, 1994 Stadium Club, and 1994 Pinnacle had print runs numbering in the billions. Stores had trouble even unloading wax boxes and rack packs at deep discounts. The junk wax era crash devastated the sports card industry and left many late 80s/early 90s cards nearly worthless compared to their cover prices.
It took years for trust in the baseball card market to be regained after the junk wax era, as speculators and investors were left burned. PSA/BGS grading also started taking off at this time, allowing collectors to independently verify condition and authenticity of older vintage cards they were putting significant money into. Today, most junk wax era cardboard holds little value and is not widely collected. Rare error cards, short prints, or stars’ rookie cards from this period can still attract attention from niche collectors. Unchecked overproduction and busted consumer speculation defined the rise and fall of the junk wax era in the late 80s/early 90s trading card market.
