Junk Wax Journey: 1988

1988 felt like a deep breath before the boom. The shelves were full, the gum was stale, and the hobby was growing but it hadn’t yet gone supernova. There were no holograms, no fancy parallels, no chrome…just pure junk wax. This was the year of Glavine and Alomar rookies, of overproduction and optimism, when collecting was still about teams, binders, and bubble gum. For Junk Wax Journey, 1988 is the bridge between simplicity and madness; a reminder of when the hobby was still innocent, before Griffey’s smile lit the fuse.