When I started the Junk Wax Journey, I didn’t really have any idea what to expect. I had a format in mind, a bunch of boxes lined up, and a very clear emotional goal: celebrate junk wax, team collecting, and the era that made a lot of us collectors in the first place.

What I didn’t have was certainty. I wasn’t sure which parts of the format would actually land, how people would react to bounties and bonus rips, or whether anyone would really want to commit to a year-long idea built around cards that are often written off as “worthless.”

By the end of JWJ 1987, I had some of those answers. And I learned a lot along the way.

Every great story starts somewhere. For the Junk Wax Journey, it begins in 1987 — the year woodgrain borders, bold Rated Rookies, and the first true wave of junk wax magic hit the shelves. 1987 is the year I became a collector; I was just old enough to have a few dollars in my pocket and head to the corner store on my bike to pick up a pack of cards.  It’s the perfect starting line for a project built on nostalgia, team spirit, and the joy of ripping through every product of the era.

Let's have a look at some of the cards in the 1987 sets, and what sales data we can see for cards in raw, ungraded state, PSA 9, and PSA 10 grades. These values are not collected programmatically. Please view these values as rough estimates, I eyeballed all the values and rounded a bit and card prices change very frequently.

All prices are sourced from https://www.sportscardspro.com/ , all Gem Rates are sourced from https://www.gemrate.com/