Thursday, February 10, 2011

My Best Investment - $10 on Bad Wax

There is a term in the card industry called Bad Wax. I'm not sure where is started but there is a good blog that explains the concept (www.badwax.net). On the blog there is also a section called Craig's List Idiots where the blogger contacts people who are posting outrageous offers to sell cards on Craig's List and posts a humorous transcript of the email exchanges. Worth a look.

What is bad wax? Simply put, it's the cards that were produced between the mid 80's to mid 90's. The cards where so mass produced there is little or no value to them in the industry. Unfortunately, many people invested in cards during this period and are disappointed when they go to sell their cards and find out they are almost worthless.

Well, I have to say one of the best investments I ever made was in 'Bad Wax'. You see, a few years back I took my son (9 years old at the time) to his first card show. I wanted to get him into the hobby but I wasn't really sure how to do it. He is a Philly fan so I bought a few Jayson Werth cards at the show but could tell he was not really into it. Then we stopped at a dealer's table who had big boxes full of 'bad wax', worse yet the cards were all dinged up. He offered one box for $5 and I thought to myself, 'What a waste of money.' But before I knew it my son was hovering over the box sifting through the cards with wide eyes. At that point, the dealer just smiled and said, 'The best deal in the place.' I knew he was right. Then he offered me 3 boxes for $10 and we had a deal.

My son was grinning ear to ear when we hauled those big boxes in the house (thank goodness my wife was a good sport and told him how lucky he was). I explained to him how I used to sort cards as a kid by year and then put them in numerical order to complete sets. And that's what we did each night for the next week. We sorted through junk wax, we had no concern about the condition of cards, and talked about the players and cards. Truly the best investment in cards I've ever made.

The one problem, my son now wants to buy every box of cards he sees when we go to a card show.

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