In other occasions I bought similar packs but these ones were different.
When I got them I noticed something...
They were all tagged with some players names.
I've read of some packs searchers and stuff but to me it's still *magic*.
So lets see if I really got the promised players.
Joyner?
Check!
Clemens?
S'berry?
Treadway?
Lind?
All 4 check!
Sandberg?
Joyner?
Steinbach?
Check! (No need to show again Joyner card)
Mattingly?
Boggs?
Magadan?
McGwire?
And again check!
The thing is that the 4 rack packs shouted other great cards too.
But for sure all these were a great intro.
I'm curious, where those some of the cards that were showing in the packs? It might have been that the seller (or one of the sellers depending on how many times the packs changed hands) added the labels to keep track of their inventory and which packs would probably sell better because they showed stars.
ReplyDeletethat was my first thought too. Check if the names were easy to picture through the pack but for first the rack pack only shows 3 cards face and 3 cards back. And I can assure you that in most cases the cards were quite in the middle of the pack. Without possibility to see. It's a kind of magic.
DeleteI'm sure there were people that figured out the collation of those things back in the day. You have to admire the research that had to go into that.
ReplyDeleteKind of like card counters at a casino.
I remember those days. You would buy 6 packs or so, open them and figure out the order of the cards (this is before UD figured out how to randomize collation).
ReplyDeleteThen, by looking at the front of back card of the wax pack, you would know who was in the middle. This was pack researching before the kids nowadays bend them back and forth looking for a relic insert. I pulled a lot of decent stuff back then, when I was collecting basketball cards.
I just read an article in an old issue of Baseball Card Magazine, where they solved the collation for 1988 Topps cello packs (the previous month they focused on rack packs). By looking at the top cards and the bottom cards in the packs, they were able to pinpoint the key rookies from the set.
ReplyDeleteLike the Commish said... maybe someone figured out the collation for 1988 Donruss rack packs.
WoW
ReplyDeleteSo you're saying the cards in every pack had some kind of an order so just by looking for the front and back cards you could picture the ones in the middle!?
I've noticed a couple of times that it is somehow possible to get something along that line on Panini stickers. It has something to do with the sheets and how they cut it.
I wonder if the case of getting double cards in one pack and lots of dups in some boxes has some 'magic' to it too?
1988 Donruss had some seriously weird and (probably) predictable collation. There was a big frenzy over the Gregg Jefferies rookie card in particular (how quaint) at the time, and a small number of cards were short printed so they could make room for extra "BC" numbered MVP cards. It's pretty amusing to think about now considering how many millions of cards were produced and how they are all relatively worthless now. Not every set has such predictable collation, but if my memory serves me I am not surprised that people were able to know that certain cards were in these packs even if they weren't showing on the front or the back.
ReplyDelete