$1000+ PSA 10 Junk Wax Commons! Will they hold their value?

[@Bravesdarrell8552]

It’s really simple, there only worth what people are willing to pay for them.

[@kevinjones9685]

Talked with a guy who does wholesaling of junk wax. What's happening is that it is all vanishing. People are ripping or repackaging the junk wax for value boxes. Combine that with the 1000s of collectors who finally tossed their junk wax from the late 80s and early 90s (I almost have a couple of times) and the populations are decreasing. Topps/Donruss/Fleer quality control was atrocious in the 70s and 80s. He also mentioned that a lot of Gen X kids are starting to get back into collecting, and they are looking for junk wax. He sold me 4 hand collated vending complete sets of 86 Topps for $5 a piece, they are stunning. Nothing less than a PSA 10 is acceptable for any card after 1980, and they are SCARCE. I picked up 86 Topps PSA 10s of Vince Coleman and Fernando and they are beautiful cards.

[@chrisjoyce6610]

Great topic! I really enjoy hobby talk like this. Huge supply of candidates but it seems to be incredibly difficult to get that 10. I am actually shocked that so few have 10 potential. I don’t see a census move big enough happening to affect the market too much.

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

Initially, I thought the market was "doomed" but after I thought more about it, I think my views have changed.

[@danieldavis9564]

There are many people out there who could single handedly change the pop report considerably if they got serious about grading their collections.

[@bobbylew81]

I think a big portion of the hobby community as a whole won't be sending too many junk wax commons in hopes of getting a 10...for me personally, even if I have a potential candidate to get a 10 in my view, getting anything but a 10 would ultimately be a "loss" for me and I just don't have the disposable income to gamble on these sort of endeavors especially since the price of grading what it is now and trending towards the future. Great video, very interesting!!

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

Thanks for your input Bob!

[@bensilva9842]

Agreed, you really have to be able to grade them for free to have any chance at all of even just breaking even

[@louieatienza8762]

Dunno... 1986 is probably not the best example, because aside from centering and print issues, finding one with perfect black tops is close to impossible. Same with 1985 and 1986 Donruss with the all black borders. Even in unopened packs..

[@Base1986]

Can't imagine too many 86 Topps PSA 10s coming out of handled cards on COMC. Not saying they're not out there, but the odds are really bad. I'm breaking a BBCE 86 Topps rack box FASC right now...even out of the pack, some of these cards are ridiculously tough. Davis is at 2% of the total pop and Ryan is at 5%. The 9+ pop on the Davis is only 12%! (The Ryan is a little more forgiving at 37%). Factor in the HUGE drop off in value of the PSA 9s and the math makes it really tough to justify chasing this stuff too hard. The Davis pop has only grown from 2 to 3 in 4 years. My guess is that the continued elusiveness will the build the story (and hence the value) faster than the pop will water it down.

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

Very interesting! I didn't realize that about psa 9 price drop. I agree with you about COMC - I don't think any psa 10s are coming from there :)

[@djquiksilva]

Base1986 .. I think your right & I hope your right. I like to invest in PSA 10’s

[@cscottriffle]

Interesting video I have found that those sealed case boxes can be totally destroyed with water damage or mildew. I really just don’t think that there are that many tens left regardless of how many boxes are out there. I’ve submitted a lifetime worth of 1986 and received one 10.

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

Wow that's crazy!

[@counterproof]

I guess it comes down to who has the balls to submit a $1 junk wax card and pay $30 to PSA in the hopes of getting a PSA 10 and guaranteeing yourself a $200 + gain in value.

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

This hobby has definitely changed over the past 10+ years!

[@MrRckstdy77]

I know the Sandburg 86 topps psa10 is like 500 bucks. I bought 2 boxes and only pulled 2 Sandburgs and they are off centered Nolan Ryan was hard to pull as well.

[@kevinjones9685]

Yup, they're super tough I found what I thought was a very nice 86 Sandberg and then noticed it had a small printing imperfection. 86 Topps is awesome, but the quality control was terrible

[@bensilva9842]

I don't see the pops growing that much. The market for psa 10 junk wax commons just isn't there, imo. As for cards like the 1986 Eric Davis, some simple math reveals that it just isn't cost effective. I've done statistical analysis on 1986, specifically, and my conclusions were that a wax box of those has an expected value of just a few dollars. Given that they retail for $20+, the only reason to buy is for fun/nostalgia.

[@Base1986]

Fellow stat geek here. I’d love to see your numbers.

[@bensilva9842]

​@@Base1986, I'll have to go dig through my old spreadsheets. It was a pretty involved process where I would first define a PDF of expected grade based on different sources (PSA pop report, data culled from my own experience on 1986 vending, wax, rack, and cello, or data culled from other people's rips). For example, on a 1986 vending rip, I'd center the distribution on PSA 6.5-7.0 (based on my experience of ripping tons of 1986 vending boxes), and tweak the tails until I had a PSA 10 'hit rate' of around 0.2%. In my mind, this was the most accurate way of estimating grade coming out of those boxes. From there, I'd give myself allowance to submit only what I thought were 10s, 9+, etc. I then had price targets that were derived from several sources again (PSA auction price, ebay, PWCC, and my own data scraper). Each card then had an expected value based on the price target, grading fee, odds of pulling it, my submission strategy, and odds of it being 'gradable' based on the PDF defined above. This whole thing was a lot of fun, and I ended up doing cost models for 1986 topps vending/wax/rack, 1989 upper deck low/high series, and 1989 bowman. No matter how fast and loose I set the variables or pushed the PDFs, I could not justify buying/ripping junk wax to try making a profit. The money simply isn't in it. That said, I still have cases of junk wax here in my office and I am always buying more. Money be damned, I just love the stuff. :-D

[@Base1986]

@@bensilva9842 That is so awesome! Thank you for sharing! I'm on the same boat...as much as I'd love to pull that Ryan in a 10, the nostalgia is enough for me. Please do reach out if you dig up that spreadsheet!

[@Base1986]

@@bensilva9842 Thank you for the info! I'm super interested in this sort of stuff. I always wanted more data as a kid. Only now are we starting to get the information necessary to figure out stuff like this.

[@BaseballCollector]

Very interesting video and topic Tanner. Well done. I do think more and more of the cards from that era will get graded which will drop the prices.

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

I think that is a definite possibility. I do however wonder if it will go the other way. Will the high prices spark more people willing to pay these prices? Perhaps no matter how many are graded a PSA 10, there will always be more people wanting them than those available. I dunno ... interesting thing to think about!

[@drewhunkins7192]

My two favorite junk wax sets: '84 Donruss and '83 Topps.

[@topps85401]

Eric and I made a smiler video on 80’s PSA10’s

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

Sweet! I gotta check it out - how long ago back was it?

[@djquiksilva]

I don’t think we have anything to fear...it’s too expensive & risky for people to just be sending cards to be graded. Also, the drop off in price from PSA 9 to PSA 10 is so huge it makes it not worth just sending a bunch of cards to be graded.

[@MrERL-bv7nb]

I have a 1987 Topps never opened, I’m looking right at it....

[@svacardcollectors9547]

1985 topps harder to get psa 10 for the top cards compared to 85 donruss which was shocking to me.

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

Wow, same!

[@icollectichiro]

That's it I'm selling my junk wax cards, sets, traded sets, and tiffany sets!!!

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

just make sure you get them graded first! :D

[@shakascloset1700]

So when I see these 10,15,20,40 or more single player card lots on Ebay, their probably not going to be any good PSA 10 or even 9 candidates? I have bought 2 lots of a player and thought at least 1 card in each lot might be a good candidate but I'm no expert so they might be 8's 😂. I don't own any PSA 10's. I have 9's to compare with and in my bad eyes I think I might have some. Idk. Maybe someday I'll look closer, and send in a lot.

[@tanmanbaseballfan]

Yeah the odds are probably not in our favor with eBay lots!

[@DeuceTreyz]

2 years ago, imagine now lol