"No Junk Wax"? Not Anymore

I had been stoic and resolute in my decision to forsake any & all "junk wax" from the 1980s and 1990s in my collecting - outside of cards I actually liked and the team I collect, of course. This policy has been tested at times, particularly because these cards are so easy and affordable to find, and because there are actually some designs from that are truly legendary - or at least that ring dim bells of nostalgia in my brain. 

I think it was 1982 Topps that was the final set I collected as a teenager; after that I was off collecting punk and new wave 45s, and left baseball cards in the dust until resurrecting the hobby in middle age. As one does! Yet now that I've had some time to marinate on it - and because I really like to look of these sets - I've started setting aside any 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1984 Topps baseball cards that come my way. I'm even going so far as to occasionally buy small lots of them online, although with these sets having 700+ and even 800+ cards in them, my want list is, uh, still rather extensive.

This past week I went into my "trade box" - the box where I keep anything and everything I might want to trade to folks out there, and pulled back a small handful of cards, most of them from the junk wax era. It's almost like getting 10 new cards in the mail. Look at 'em! They're beautiful! How about a Mike Mussina rookie card, hunh?

It's 1981 Topps that I love the most of the junk wax era sets. You might not even lump this set in with the various Score and Upper Deck monstrosities of the 80s and 90s. Here are a couple of trade box rescues:

And there's no reason whatsoever to not collect this 1987 Topps card:

Here's the rest of what I pulled back - like I said, not all of it from the 80s and 90s. I just thought it might look better in my collection than in a trade box, you know?

(this last card is a "1986 Season Highlights" Sportflics card that shows photos of Don Sutton, Mike Schmidt and someone named Jim Deshaies - the latter of whom struck out his first 8 batters in a game, which is pretty cool.)