An Old Pack of Cards: Repacked

 

Assorted cards, vintage? 

 

From the Clearing off the Desk Dept. comes this pack of cards I purchased at a card show last summer. There was a table with a box of these "Repacked Wax" cards along with some stacks of sample cards that were supposedly pulled. The samples produced better results than my packs did. I bought two packs, and you can find the other one that I posted here.

The first card out of the pack is decided not vintage. It's from the 2019 Topps GQ set.

Lonnie Smith, former Cardinals champion, makes an appearance on the familiar 1991 Upper Deck design.

I don't know that anyone would say that the 2023 Topps set draws a lot of inspiration from 1983, but it doesn't have the headshot in the lower left thing going on.

This is quite a lousy photo. I'm curious to know why Lamar Johnson is wearing a helmet and a jacket, or why it appears that he's standing in front of a huge fog on this 1980 Topps card. He did do a bit of DH'ing in his career, so maybe he was trying to keep warm in between at-bats but was also trying to stay mentally prepared with the helmet... or something? It's a bit of a reach, I know.

Ehh... 2020 Topps.

This is a 1974 Topps card, as you might have guessed. It's what the 2023 Heritage set will be based on. I'm not sure I'm all that excited about this. It's a quality design, don't get me wrong, but this might be the breaking point where I feel like Heritage has caught up with Archives and isn't anything special anymore.

Mike Armstrong brings the '80s glasses (and beard) to this 1984 Fleer card. Mid-'80s Fleer cards are my jam.

I don't remember this player, but the photo (from 1993 Topps) looks pretty familiar.

I liked the 1982 and 1983 (the one with the glove instead of the ball) Donruss sets quite a bit when I was younger as well. I think it's because their packs were, for a time at least, more affordable a lot of other older sets.

I'm sure I must have owned this card at one point, because I think I had an opened 1990 Fleer Update set for no apparent reason. Nevertheless, I don't remember this card or Wally Backman as a Pirate at all.

I remember there being a bit of hype locally about Erik Hanson, or at least this card. Maybe because it's an '89 Upper Deck card, or maybe it was just people propping up any young Mariner that displayed some level of competence on the field. He was no Griffey, of course.

We advance forward slightly to the 1992 Topps set. Nice shades.

Card companies in 1986 were seemingly afraid to use Utility (or UT) as a position on their cards. What else would an OF/IF type be, though?

The only set hyped as much (or more?) than 1989 Upper Deck when I was in my young collecting years was 1987 Fleer. And if you pulled a star player like Kirby Puckett in one of those Fleer packs? That was money.

Last one out of the pack is this Mets pitcher from 1985 Topps. I could never afford packs of this because of the McGwire card and other "key rookies", but a friend of mine happened to gift me the whole set... minus those key rookies, of course. Pouring through the bulk of the set made me never really that interested in buying the packs.

Each pack has a sticker or two at the end to take the bullet and keep the real cards wax-free.

I'm not sure I'll seek these out again considering how underwhelming my packs were, but it's not going to keep me completely off repacks.