Bad Wax Review – 1984 Topps baseball

I blindly pulled out my next pack to work on from the Chase for the 1952 blaster box I bought and low and behold up pops 1984 wax! Being a child of the 70s and 80s, I love this set. Actually 1983, 84, and 85 were my favorite sets growing up. Being a Yankees fan you know which card I want to see in this pack! I am actually excited to open this pack. I doubt very much that I will see the Mattingly card (as you know this is a website dedicated to bad wax), I mean what will become of this site if I find one? Now I’m nervous I might jinx my card cooler self. OK just gotta focus and see the bad pack in my mind. So here is the pack:

We are talking 15 cards + gum (wonder who will be the gum card). The best card in this set is the Mattingly, I don’t think there are any other good cards except maybe the Boggs and Ripken. Strawberry and Gooden didn’t come until the traded set. So here we go:

1.Bill Stein – 1B/3B – Rangers – 758 – First off I don’t think this guy has a chin, secondly, I don’t think there are 15 cards in this pack, third off, He’s played for 12 years and in those 12 years he had only 2700 Abs, you do the math. Let’s call him a journeyman. So far, this pack is promising.
2.Lou Whitaker AS – 2B – Tigers – 398 – This was the one subset I hated for Topps, the damn All – Star card, I could care less if the player is married and if he has kids. Good player bad card, why can’t I get his real card?
3.Ted Power – P – Reds – 554 – Oh Ted with your white guy afro, I think he would be retro chic in today’s world, but on this card it just looks bad. With a last name like Power you conjure up images of a mighty play, he was mighty alright, mighty bad!
4.Jose DeLeon – P – Pirates – 581 – Gotta love those old Pirates unis, with the 3 yellow rings around the hat. Almost as bad as the early 80′s Rainbow Bright Astro Unis. He looks positively stoned in this picture. Also he looks like he’s throwing in the snow, but I do see palm trees in the background. What an awful picture, I hope this photographer is long gone from Topps.
5.Rick Langford – P – Athletics – 629 – Wow, what a ‘shache, since his baseball career wasn’t all that great I wonder if he made it over to the porn industry, that mustache is definitely 80s porn ready! Just goes to show you, leftys can stay in baseball long past their freshness.
6.Tony Gwynn – OF – Padres – 251 – First off, wow a card of actual value! I wouldn’t rate it as an incredible pull as the card is probably worth about 2 bucks, but definietly a cool card to get. This is his 2nd year card. I already have his rookie card, so this is a nice add to my collection. He is soooo thin in this picture and his pencil thin mustache is funny, good thing he dropped that one. Brown and Orange Uni on him and his weight lists him at 185, hard to remember him like that. Still though one of my absolute favorite ball players and rightfully in the HOF!
7.Cal Ripken AS – SS – Orioles – 400 – Hey girls in 1984 Ripken was single, he even had hair that wasn’t gray back then. You know my feeling about AS cards (spoke worthy).

And that’s all folks. I should have gotten 15, I got 7, makes me wonder how legitimate this box is. The pack had obviously been tampered with since the pack was butterflied apart before I opened it. Although It could be a Topps error, I kind of doubt it. Overall lots of crap cards, but I did get the Gwynn which was very cool! So here are the rating (out of 5.0 stars).

Initial Cost of pack – Not sure I’m thinking somewhere between 59 and 79 cents – 5.0 stars – cards weren’t real popular yet and the sets weren’t crazy mass produced (see 1986 Topps).

Cards in Pack – 7, should have been 15 – 0.0 stars – how can you give any stars when the pack is more than half empty?

Stars in Pack – 1 – 4.0 stars – The star was one of big ones, so I can’t complain. I don’t consider AS cards star cards, they are cards I can throw at people, use as teeth picks, you know disposable.

Value of the pack – I’ll put it at 2 dollars. So I give it 3.5 stars, considering it’s considered a throw away pack by the Tri-star people, this is a nice pack to find in this box.

Design of card – 4.5 stars – This is one of my favorite all time designs and I think many of you can agree with me, it’s when Topps really cared about what the card would look like. I hope heritage does this design at some point! Note: this is not the card I got, but a picture of it I found online.

Overall the pack was 3.4 stars which is very good! Maybe my luck is changing with cards (I doubt it) guess I didn’t focus enough! If I got 15 cards in the pack it would have rated over 4 I’m sure. Maybe there is a slant here, bacause I loved this set but, I think many of you would agree that this was a great design and not to bad a set. The stud was the Gwynn and the dud was a toss up between Stien, DeLeon, and Langford. I’ll go with Langford just for the crazy ‘stache. This weekend I am going to get the autograph requests out. I will keep everyone updated as to how it goes.