Wax Pack Wednesday

Wax Pack Wednesday is pretty big in The Dugout. It may be our biggest day of the week but it’s not our only day with a theme. In fact, we have a whole week of themes here that help give us a nudge when we’re not feeling any certain direction to go. When my son Elliott really started getting into baseball cards he wanted us to put together a “shop” where we could work on our collections, trade and sell cards. No sooner than we were up-and-running he presented me with a weekly schedule. Here is what it looked like.

This has been great to have for a few reasons. First, it gave us some nights to work on specific parts of what I had collected over the years. Non-sports card Mondays got us thru sorting most of my Garbage Pail Kids and Magic cards. It also paved the way for a great discussion and history lesson when we got to the Desert Storm cards. I didn’t have a complete set put together but I still have 3 Pro Set wax boxes, and now his help, to finish it.

Beckett Thursday is a good father and son time for us to look up cards and spend time either laughing at page after page of Matt Nokes or celebrating a Fleer Cal Ripken rookie. This has also helped him understand all of the differences in card sets and subsets and see, like we did, the industry become over-saturated with cards. I mean Beckett covers the 70s and 80s in just 3 pages. The 90s were so crazy that it takes Beckett 18 pages to cover those. At least we won’t run out of things to do on Thursdays…

Wax Pack Wednesday though has been everyone’s favorite. This often times means a visit from Uncle Jeff and has also become our night to hit the local card shop. It started with opening up the cheap and available stuff but then Elliott started collecting unopened wax packs too. It’s fun to see him enjoy some of the very same things we did growing up. We still pick some up when we’re out or rip into a few from our own stash and enjoy every one.

I have to point out that this has led us to discovering some non-sports packs I didn’t even realize were being put out at the time. Packs like King Kong, The Black Hole, Jurassic Park and even Growing Pains. Trust me there are plenty more TV, movie and just plain weird packs to discover including Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson wax. I am guessing Topps simply switched these 80s production line volumes over to baseball in the 90s.

Give it a shot. Make your own night or nights where you set aside some time to just unwind with a certain part of card collecting. That Ripken rookie was pulled a few weeks ago on Wax Pack Wednesday from a pack we picked up at the local card shop. And yes, Uncle Jeff was there to help us celebrate.