Junk Wax Journey
Ruleset
Welcome to The Junk Wax Journey!
The Junk Wax Journey is a year-by-year celebration of baseball’s cardboard history from 1987 through 2000. The goal is to rip every product of the era: flagship, glossy, premium, and grail…but rebuilt into modern team break formats that are fair, fun, and nostalgic.
The Junk Wax Journey is not about chasing only the hottest rookies. It’s about celebrating team collecting, set nostalgia, and the community spirit of ripping packs together.
Team Breaks
Junk Wax Journey is built on the spirit of team collecting: the backbone of the hobby during the junk wax years. Back then, we weren’t chasing color parallels or short prints; we were hunting our favorite team’s players, one pack at a time. By structuring every break as a team break, we’re keeping that tradition alive! Celebrating the joy of seeing your team’s colors, remembering the era’s stars, the long-forgotten bench guys, the Prospects and Draft Picks who went bust, and finding beauty in commons that once filled our binders. It’s about connection, nostalgia, and bringing every fan — not just the big-market teams — into the fold.
Break Levels:
Rookie-Level → accessible, flagship-focused, lowest buy-in.
All-Star-Level → glossy and mid-tier products, moderate buy-in.
Hall-of-Fame-Level → premium and grail products, higher buy-in.
At Least Two Breaks Per Level (as needed): Some years have too many products to fit into one Chase Box per break level. In these years, we rotate products across multiple Rookie/All-Star/HOF breaks until every product is covered.
Pack Allocation: Minimum 3 packs / Maximum 12 packs from any single product per break.
Chase Boxes
Each year of the Junk Wax Journey, I will build a year-set “Chase Box”, a sort of Franken-box made by combining packs from every product released in that year. Each year’s Chase Boxes will represent the spectrum of releases for a given year. Chase boxes will have roughly the same amount of packs as a standard “Wax Box” or “Hobby Box” (subject to change based on pack availability).
Chase Boxes for each year will be built live on Stream for subscribers, so you’ll see the original boxes the packs come out of, and we’ll have a look to see the condition of the boxes and packs, and chat about what we’re chasing in each box.
Break Buy-Ins
My goal is to keep buy-Ins as low as possible: I really want to encourage wide participation, everyone should be able to buy in at a level they are comfortable with. The pricing of the breaks directly reflects the price of the packs and boxes in the breaks.
Scaling by Level:
Rookie-Level = cheapest. Usually focused on flagship sets with some additional interesting packs
All-Star = mid-range. A combination of flagship and some premium/glossy, or rare packs
Hall-of-Fame = high end. Some flagship, but a significant portion of hall-of-fame breaks will be packs from expensive boxes of the given year. Buy-ins will be a bit higher than Rookie and All-Star.
Other considerations:
In case breaks do not fill, I reserve the right to:
Change the break(s) to P1G1 or P1G2, with slight price increases
Random off extra teams at the start of the break to buyers
Retain cards from remaining teams for myself, to offset the loss of buyer(s)
Agents of Chaos!
Wax Bounties are (relatively speaking) grail-level chases from each year — the biggest rookies, rarest inserts, or true hobby icons. Expect to also see 3 to 6 Bounties every year.
When a Wax Bounty is pulled, the card is allocated randomly amongst all participants in the break using wheelofnames (I think the wheel will get a real workout during these breaks!).
Each Bounty also triggers a Bonus Rip (from retro packs, traded/update sets, oddball sets, or my own Nostalgia Rips mystery packs).
Bounties will be explicitly announced at the time team reservations open, since they may influence which teams you may want to buy. Read the rules for each year carefully!
Bounties are reserved for cards that are:
Major chase Rookies
Scarce parallels
Extremely rare inserts
Something else entirely!
Junk Wax Jokers are surprise triggers tied to notable cards, subsets, or parallels of the year. Expect to see 3 to 6 Junk Wax Jokers every year.
Jokers inject an additional level of chaos to the break: the Joker card pulled goes to the team owner, but the whole table gets a shot at the bonus rip cards.
Pulling a Joker card also triggers a Bonus Rip (from retro packs, traded/update sets, oddball sets, or my own Nostalgia Rips mystery packs).
Jokers will be announced at the time of break reservation, but it may not be clear exactly what they are! Feel free to speculate in the comments and build suspense!
Jokers can be:
Notable subsets
Specific Parallels
Cards specific to my Phillies-focused PC
Hobby quirks
Something else entirely!
Bonus Rips keep the breaks unpredictable and nostalgic. They can be triggered by Junk Wax Jokers, Wax Bounties, or even PC hits. I’ll do my best to make the bonus rips year-thematic and relevant to the journey.
Types of Bonus Packs:
Year-specific Updates/Traded/Rookies sets (Topps Traded, Fleer Update, Donruss Rookies, etc.,). If a Joker or Bounty triggers one of these extended sets, we’ll pull the top 10 cards off the set and allocate them to the break by team.
Nostalgia Rips Mystery Packs: These are my own mystery packs, built from my card collection. A nice little bonus if we hit an interesting card for my PC.
Retro Bonus Packs (2000–present throwbacks): Think: Topps Archives, Upper Deck Retro, etc. If we hit a trigger for one of these, we’ll rip the pack and allocate the cards.
Oddball Sets like Classic Travel sets or other major manufacturer small sets (Score rising stars, Fleer League Leaders, Donruss Highlights, etc). Same mechanic as the Update/Traded/Rookie sets, we’ll take 10 cards off the top and allocate to the break by team
The Leaderbaord!
The Junk Wax Journey runs on a season-long leaderboard to reward participation.
Points on the leaderboard are earned by:
Reserving rights to a team via Patreon (5 points / month)
Buying slots in breaks (1 point / EUR spent)
Hitting Jokers (bonus points TBD)
Winning Bounties (bonus points TBD)
End-of-Journey Rewards: At the end of the full 1987–2000 run, top finishers get special prizes (exact prizes TBD; but think: personal rips, sealed packs, sealed boxes, custom Nostalgia Rips packs, exclusive breaks, etc.).
Bringing it all together
The Junk Wax Journey is more than a series of breaks; it’s a full-scale time machine for collectors who still remember the smell of old gum, the feel of a wax wrapper, and the thrill of pulling a hero from their favorite team. We’re chasing memories as much as hits, rebuilding the era year by year, pack by pack. Whether you join for the nostalgia, the chaos, or the cardboard, you’re part of the story now!
Sign up for Junk Wax Journey breaks (as well as many others) here!