By: Jay Miller
If you are around my age and grew up loving baseball, you most certainly loved something else as well. Collecting baseball cards. Currently, I am Jose Canseco years old myself. That means 33 for those of you who aren’t sure.
That also means I grew up collecting during the “junk era” of baseball cards. The junk era begins somewhere around 1987, the year after I was born. It stretches into the mid-90’s and ends after the 1994 strike. Of course, growing up in this time, my friends and I just enjoyed collecting and had no idea it was the junk era.
In my small southern Ohio town of Chillicothe, population of about 25,000 in 1995, we had four different card shops. Just like in the movies, we would mow yards, do odd jobs, collect money, get on our bikes and ride to the different shops around town and see what we could get. Being about 10 years old, we couldn’t afford the singles in the cases unless we had our birthday money. We would usually buy the $10 boxes of 80’s and 90’s wax packs and search for early cards of current superstars. Guys like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Barry Larkin, Tony Gwynn, Greg Maddux and of course, the one and only, Ken Griffey Jr.
We would spend the night at each other’s houses and trade cards into the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes, we had a sandlot style whiffle ball game planned for the next morning in the empty lot at the end of the street. We would draft our lineups based on the baseball cards we had. The first picks weren’t always the best players, but the best batting stances. Jay Buhner, Gary Sheffield and Jeff Bagwell were always early selections. That’s how we learned to hit on both sides of the plate. Wanna draft Griffey? Better be ready to hit left handed. Wanna have Randy Johnson as your pitcher? Well, ok, we didn’t go that far, I mean no one wanted to see us throwing left handed.
Us “adult kids”, that’s what my wife refers to me as when it comes to cards, always have our favorite card from growing up. For me, it’s a 1993 Fleer Ultra “Top Glove” Ken Griffey Jr card. The story goes like this. One day, my dad and I walked into a local card shop and they had this beautiful Griffey card in their standing case that spins around in the center of the room. At the time, I was 7 or 8 and didn’t have a Griffey Jr card in my collection. Vividly, I can remember begging my dad to buy it for me, it may have been $8, which at the time seemed like a fortune for one card. My dad asked the owner several questions about it and while I was over looking at the boxes, he came over and told me, “maybe next time.” When we got in the car, he asked me why I wanted that card so bad and I told him, “IT WAS KEN GRIFFEY JR!!!”, elaborating on how I don’t own one and he’s the greatest ever etc. etc. A few minutes pass and I am still rambling on when he pulls the card out and says “here, I got it for you.”
That card is one of my favorites in my entire collection. On Christmas day in 2018, I was opening a gift from my wife. To my complete surprise, it was a PSA 10 version of that same Griffey card. The first one I ever had, but in gem mint condition! My eyes filled up with this water-like substance. Allergies are bad in Florida in December if you didn’t know.
Baseball cards were a huge part of my childhood and now that I am older, I can afford the nicer cards in the cases. However, don’t let the power of the junk era be underestimated. Since this whole quarantine thing hit and there isn’t baseball to watch, I’ve had the itch for some cheap fun. Through a Facebook group, I purchased a box of 1987 Donruss. It has some of those amazing rookie cards in it and seemed like a lot of fun. I also added a box of 1992 Upper Deck for $10 more so to stash away for my son when he’s old enough. The boxes arrived a day early and my son, who is only four, was enthralled.
“Baseball cards!” he said. “Can I open them with you dad!?” I thought about it for a minute and decided, why not. We opened the first pack and I sat a Cincinnati Reds card to the side and my son asked, “What’s that?” Ever since I can remember, the Reds have been my favorite team and I have always pulled their cards out and put them to the side. We talked about how that is the pile for Reds players only and from that point on, he was searching for Reds. He pulled an Ozzie Smith card out and said “Reds player, daddy!” Then I got the opportunity to tell him all about Ozzie Smith and how he was Cardinal and not a Red, but he would do back flips between innings. His attention span only lasted for about 10 packs between the both of us, but a moment in time that you cannot put a price tag on.
Parents, the boxes still exist and are not expensive. This is an amazing time in our history that we get the opportunity to be at home. We get the opportunity to create memories and experiences with our kids. If you are a baseball loving family, I suggest you snag some cheap wax and have a ripping party! Talk about the game with your kids and explain who the guys are on the cards. You can talk about growing up in the late 80’s and early 90’s and who your favorite players were.
If you are interested, I suggest these places for junk era wax: Dave and Adam’s Card World or Blowout Cards. Better yet, the Facebook group called The Original Junk Era Collectors Group (approval upon request), which is wear I make most of my wax purchases. It does not matter the year or the opportunity for “high end” cards, it’s about the memories and the fun. Like when we were 8 or 9 and just wanted to rip packs open to find our favorite players.
Back to my wax… Getting toward the end of the box I had pulled tons of big name hall of fame players that brought back all my childhood memories. There was a Jim Thome “prospects” card, John Smoltz with an image of him hitting and then Jose Canseco standing next to Ricky Henderson. I mean how much more early 90’s can you get than those two!? Then it came down to my final four packs. I could feel my inner child getting anxious. So far, no Griffey’s pulled. Then, the next pack, there it was, Diamond Skills “Most Exciting Player.” My heart raced like I was a kid again and I just looked at it, smiling.
To steal a line from Moneyball, how can you not be romantic about baseball.