Are “Junk Wax” Cards About to EXPLODE?!

Collector Nation

In this episode of Collector Nation, hosts Ryan Alford, Brian Ludden, and Bella Schaefer explore the rising value of 'junk wax' era sports cards, discussing how overlooked vintage cards—especially

Key takeaways

• Junk wax era cards are no longer considered low-value; many are now appreciating significantly due to nostalgia and scarcity.
• Inserts from older sets—once ignored—are gaining value as collectors rediscover their rarity and historical significance.

Main topics

• Rising value of junk wax era cards
• Peyton Manning 1/1 printing plate discovery

Notable quotes

"We got to almost stop calling it junk wax because like these cards are starting to hold some pretty, pretty significant value."

Conclusion

The episode underscores a transformative moment in the sports card hobby, where vintage cards—once dismissed as

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) We got to almost stop calling it junk wax because like these cards are starting to hold some pretty, pretty significant value. It started with basketball inserts and now it's bled into baseball and football is always the last one that it flows down to. I think people are realizing like these big guys' cards that have been underappreciated. Like they're printing more than they printed. We're undervaluing this stuff. Shaq's rookies should be more than $3. Duncan's the same thing. Tim Duncan. We have the iconic... Speaker 1 (0:28) Bo Jackson card right here. Iconic card, iconic player. Ironically, out of the two cards I picked, last week's card and this week's card, both of them are from the Junkwax era. Arguably not Junkwax. I mean, they are, but they're not. And they aren't treated as such anymore. They've kind of stated their claim in the hobby. But I could see a bunch more of these popping up as more people are realizing that these... were generational players and they deserve more of that hype than what they maybe were getting at the time. I'm Ryan Alford. And I'm Bella Schaefer. And this is Collector Nation. We're curating all of the content in the hobby just for you all in one place. All the videos, all the podcasts, all the reels, all those drops you want right here, right now. Speaker 1 (1:26) What's up, guys? Welcome to Collector Nation. Ryan, Brian, and Bella. Hello, hello, hello. How's everyone doing this week? We're good. You know, just living that vintage life. Speaker 1 (1:40) That's the shirt you have on. I know. And I've been digging through like the 50,000 card collection. It's not, I don't think it's 50,000. I mean, it's. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's thousands. Probably 20,000, 30,000 collection and going through it. The most well-organized collection. Yeah. All binders. What era? 70s, like 74 to 90, 2005. Yeah. And the most, all football. And like maybe 5% basketball. And so, and some of it, some of it worth absolutely nothing, as you know, a lot of it. And then a handful of things that have grading potential and mainly just like cool stuff. I mean, it's like, there's no. Speaker 1 (2:27) I was hoping for, you know, a nice, I don't know, Brady rookie perfect 10 or something. No, none of that. Some cool Brady cards that have some upside graded, but nothing like that. A lot of inserts? Some. Some. I'm still going through it. I did just enough to like go, okay, I think I know Ruffalo's here, made him an offer that, you know, may have been favorable to us. Well, I mean, it's a lot of words. It's less about taking advantage of them. It's just more like, yeah, if you sold every one of these cards, you know how it is, man. You sold like all this shit. Oh, yeah, there's a million dollars worth of cards here. Yeah, if someone had a million hours to put into it, but time is money. Time is money. You could bring all of them to the National next year and just let the $2 bin go through them. That's mainly why I bought it. Speaker 1 (3:20) Like, honestly, we'll sell more in the dollar bins. And I wanted to get some variety in old cards and the kids who would come in and not be just like modern stuff. So, honestly. And then I did find a few things. Archie Griffin, rookie. Lawrence Taylor, rookies. Mike Singletary, rookies. And Sweetness, Walter Payton, rookie. Probably seven or an eight, maybe. And that's a big card. It's raw. It's like 600 bucks. It's a cool card. And then, didn't know it was even in there. Don't really know the value yet. Well, I do. Is it not a lot? You keep going. Less than you'd think? Yes. Less than you'd think. I'll let y'all guess, actually. That's fine. Yeah. And what it's worth is what someone will pay for this one. With me marketing it. Brian's going to pay a lot for it. So, I found a... Speaker 1 (4:17) printing press plate from 2005 just staring at me in the binder. I had gone by this page like a hundred times, but it was just like so drab because I didn't know what it was. And it's Peyton Manning. And it's a one-on-one magenta printing plate from 2005 from Tops Total. So a little bit about that season. It's like a sheet of aluminum. Yeah. The Colts went 14-2. That was the first season that Peyton Manning beat Tom Brady. However, they did not make it to... Speaker 1 (4:56) They didn't make it to the Super Bowl or anything, but the year prior, Peyton Manning had gotten MVP. Oh, going up in value is very well spoken. Knowing all of that information, how much do you think that is worth? I didn't think it was actually. I thought it was a few hundred dollars. I mean, like I just I had low expectations, even though it's a one on one. I know like that was just a guess. A few hundred bucks. OK, I would say 700. OK, so it's about 225. Okay. Is what it goes for. It's a weird product. There's not a whole lot to comp against. Brian, all that means is it's worth every bit of $700 like you said. Yeah. I mean, honestly. I can put $500 worth of juice on this thing. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I first started building the collector station storefront, I definitely didn't have everything figured out. I knew I wanted to start a business. Speaker 1 (5:50) But there were still a lot of things I was learning along the way. That's exactly why Shopify made sense for me. Shopify is where you go to start your business with everything you need already there from day one. I was able to launch my store and start selling in a few simple steps. Shopify's design templates and AI site builder made setting up my storefront easy and Sidekick AI was there to help me along the way. ShopPay also gives customers the easiest checkout on the market, which is important when you're trying to turn someone visiting your storefront into an actual customer. Speaker 1 (6:19) What I've appreciated is that Shopify helps me stay up to date with my business, even when everything else gets busy. My storefront isn't something I launched and then forgot about. It's an important part of how I continue running and growing the business. If a friend asked me what I wish I had known before getting started, I would tell them that they don't need to know how to do everything on their own. They just need the right place to begin. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash collector nation. That's shopify.com slash collector nation. Speaker 1 (6:51) And it's not, there's not much, like you can't go and really get them graded because they don't grade very well because they're printed. It says one of one on it. Magenta, one of one. So, and it has his name and his face on that aluminum. If you're a Peyton Manning fan, you should be embarrassed if you haven't already DM'd me and getting your hands on this stuff. So I actually posted about it yesterday and like within an hour already had somebody, is it still available? It's not even on the website yet. Speaker 1 (7:20) Told you. See? I would hold that, man. Just hold it for a little bit. I think it's just a cool piece of history. I didn't think it was $10,000. I knew. Like, I just, I had low expectations. You see the one of one and you're kind of like a little shell-shocked. It's cool. I think I will hold on to it until I get a drive the offer up with my pretend to hold on to it. You know what else is happening? Like, interestingly, in the hobby, it's like, there's like a waterfall effect. Speaker 1 (7:49) And it's happening to like inserts from the, you know. Yes. We got to almost stop calling it junk wax because like these cards are starting to hold some pretty, pretty significant value. But it started with basketball inserts and now it's bled into baseball. And football is always the last one that like, that it flows down to. So I've seen like, I've seen obviously like the Griffey or the Jordans and all that, blah, blah, blah. Speaker 1 (8:18) You know this realm better than me, Brian. I got to send you some pictures of the stuff. And like, I've looked up like the value, like none of it's crazy, but it's mainly football. And to your point, it's like those weird inserts that I swear if they were basketball, they're like hundreds of dollars, you know, or maybe more. It's going to trickle down though. Football is going to trickle down. I mean, why wouldn't it? It's the most popular sport, like almost in the world. I'll bring some of those next week on the show. Like there's some, you know, the ones that like have acetate on one side and like not on the other. Speaker 1 (8:47) Like you can see through it, but it's the player. Yeah. Like stuff like that. I also saw like Marvel cards. I have a bunch of those. Like Spider-Man 10, like Pop 6. Like those are starting to go. So like that's really healthy for the industry. 100%. That's actually a really interesting point. Thank you, Bella. You're so welcome. I appreciate that. But kind of on that, Ryan wrote an editorial this week on the Shaquille O'Neal market as well as the Duncan market. If you want to kind of elaborate on that, if not, I can. Yeah, no, I mean, the big man is kind of what Brian's saying, I think, a little bit. Like, everybody's, everything's trickling down. Like, and I think people are realizing, like, these big guys' cards that, uh. Speaker 1 (9:39) have been underappreciated for how their Hall of Fame players and their impact on the game. And, you know, some of these, you know, Shaq's been in the news and different, he's always in the news because he's on TV with NBA coverage and all that stuff. But it's, it's fascinating to me, even going through this collection and looking up the cards and somewhat related. It's like, this stuff is way undervalued, like way underpriced. Like they're, they're printing more than they printed. They're printing. It's all the number for tops. Like 700 million or something like the upper deck didn't sniff that number. I don't think. So yeah, they printed a lot. They printed millions, but it wasn't that much. So. Speaker 1 (10:20) that we're undervaluing this stuff. If a new card nobody's worth a dollar, Shaq's rookies should be more than $3, which they are now. Literally never made sense to me. Duncan's the same thing. Tim Duncan. Greatest big meet of all time. One of. You know, top of 10? Top 15? Like, legitimately? You know what else I saw too? And this may be Bella, this could be your like, is like all the like pop. like cards like from like the rappers and the singer like all the different people from the 90s are starting to like go, you know go crazy, but Bella you're probably too young