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  1. #1




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    Opened a box of Vintage’85. I’m Happy

    Edit: got four more boxes. Instead of a new thread I’ll share the highlights here as I open them. Again some may know from my other posts. My main goal is to pull a Mike Singletary that will grade a PSA Gem Mint 10. Any other card is just a bonus as far as I am concerned.

    Waiting for me when I got home after a 48 hour shift next to my recliner was my latest eBay purchase, a package containing a box of 1985 Topps. These photos below are the rookie cards I was most excited about pulling. I’m happy but not thrilled. My whole reason for buying the box was to get that Singletary card that would grade a Gem Mint 10! The two Singletary’s I did pull are way off centered and knicked up and will go in the junk pile.

    I did pull two extremely nice Warren Moon‘s. Fingers crossed they grade well.

    oh and last photo. Guess it was an open pack kind of Sunday. My wife who absolutely despises my card collecting hobby bought me these four packs while at Target.

    ok well the order got all scrambled. Sorry










    Last edited by FireRob; 05-22-2020 at 05:43 PM.

  2. #2





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    Very nice thanks for the share

  3. #3







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    Nice break! Don't see many breaks of stuff from 1985 anymore
    Selling All My Cards Here------>Hidden Content

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  4. #4




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    Nice break! Don't see many breaks of stuff from 1985 anymore

    Thanks! I got four more boxes on the way. We shall see what they hold. I would trade a potential PSA 10 Moon for a PSA 10 Singletary in a heart beat.

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    nice Dents and Mongos

  6. #6




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    So Edited the OP to say that I now have four more boxes and Just finished one. As I open the others I’ll share the better cards pulled and my quest for a PSA Gem Mint 10 Mike Singletary!!!

    I got another Moon that is also in really good shape. NOT A SINGLE MIKE SINGLETARY in this whole box. These Dent cards are not so hot either. While his name isn’t smudged like the three from the last box the edges are knicked up, otherwise they would have been great cards. Such a bummer!!! As promised pictures.






  7. #7





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    Sweet break of the 85's and hope you get your good Singletary card and thanks for sharing!

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  8. #8




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    Please keep checking in on this post and when I am done I will give an actual review and my thoughts and opinions on buying “vintage wax” Spoiler alert, it’s not worth it! At least not with 1985 Topps Football. I’ll explain in detail in a few days. Maybe these next two boxes will change my mind. (I highly doubt it will)

    So update on my latest box. Very disappointed to say the least. Guess they can’t all be winners. I have another thread (With pictures) about the crazy packs with duplicates within the packs. I opened four packs in a row and one pack had as many as five sets of duplicates in one single pack. I think a couple had four sets and one had three.

    I finally got a Mike Singletary card. It was the only one out of two boxes. It had great edges, corners and coloring but it was very off center. Crazy how I end up with 15 Chip Banks from one box but only one Singletary card from two boxes.

    No Warren Moons in this box but a couple of the other key RC’s from this set. Dent, Ellard, Clayton, Fryer and the condition was so so on most with maybe a couple decent Irving Fryers that might grade 8 or above, at least I hope so if I ever decide to send them in. Nothing really picture worthy this time. If your hungry for pics search my post history and find the one about the duplicates.

  9. #9




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    I opened every pack. It’s been a few days. I had a little time to look some of the cards over. As you may know if you have read all my other posts, my goal and reason for buying so much was because I wanted a Mike Singletary to send in and get that Gem Mint 10. Well that’s not going to happen. I think I got a total of five Singletary’s. One was just awful! I’m talking wax stain on the back. Print defects across the whole front of the card. The others had plenty wrong with them and absolutely not even close to being as nice as any of the 30+ raw cards I recently bought off eBay or the PSA 9, 8.5 or the BGS 9 or SGC 96 I already own. I was also hoping to get some of the other Bears cards to send in but I am not so sure any of them will grade a 9 either but I may still send some in. While I don’t think any of the Warren Moons will get a 10, fingers crossed one will at least get an 8. I will send them all in for grading and see what happens. I think I ended up with four and maybe five in total.

    So honest review time, while this sure was fun and chewed up a lot of time, I have a hard time recommending you go buy a box.

    Again. i opened five (5) wax boxes and three rack packs.

    Box 1
    First box I got on eBay and was shipped from Canada. This was the standard 1985 packs with the top half of each pack being red and this box yielded the most Moon cards with two. The box itself was in really good shape with no black mark on the top and even had a Topps advertisement flyer for Garbage Pail Kids inside the box. Over all most cards where in decent shape and about what I expected I guess. Except because this is such a condition sensitive set many where still far from pristine. I will detail this in my wrap up at the end.

    3 Rack Packs
    Little disappointed with these. These three packs each had basically 3 cello packs. The cards them selfs where mostly in decent shap with many not knicked up at all. But... these where the worst when it came to centering and many where flat out miss cut. Like badly miss cut.

    Box 2,3,4,5
    The last four boxes I also got on eBay and got all four from one seller. These all had the packs that are white on the top half of the packs. I really don’t know what this is about but have a little idea but it’s not a perfect hypothesis. I opened the first pack and noticed it didn’t have a sticker like the first box with red packs. My first thought was these are searched packs but once I reread the pack it states 15 cards 1 stick gum. The red packs say 15 cards 1 sticker 1 stick gum. So there ya have it. Red packs get ya a sticker. White packs No Sticker. That is until I opened Box 3. These all had stickers! At this point I was just confused. Box 4 and 5, again no stickers. Go figure and heck if I know what’s going on. Was one box searched and they added stickers? I truly don’t know. Also these boxes where terrible at having up to five sets of duplicates in a pack. Yes, out of 15 cards in a pack 5 had a matching card within the same pack. So I only got 10 different cards in that pack. That was just annoying.

    Wrap up.

    Why I won’t recommend you run out and buy a box of 1985 Topps football.

    If you are a hunter of cards to send in for grading and then selling this is not the best investment. On eBay these boxes sell for $300 to $600. You might be able to find a deal for $250. In each pack at least the top and bottom card will have a gum and wax stain. Let’s hope that isn’t the key card you wanted. The perfect centered card is hard to come by. Add to that those darn black boarders are just so darn easily damaging. Even the Factory cutting process ruins a good majority of the cards. I have no doubt that I have many Gem Mint 10 cards out of the 3,500 or so I have but they are of no one I will ever send in for grading and would be lucky to get $25 for them on eBay. Needless to say I won’t be sending those to PSA. The cards I did want, I know won’t grade that high.

    So let’s just say you want to build the set. One box of cards will get you close to a complete set. But you can buy a complete set on eBay for $50-$100. Save your money.

    The only reason I would say buy these is if you just love the nostalgia of opening 1980’s wax packs. I sure did have fun doing it. Was not the results I wanted. I will not be buying any more. EVER!

    The search will continue for that perfect Singletary but the search will consist of buying individual raw cards and hope they look as good in person as they do from the blurry photo on eBay. Or maybe one day one of the four 10’s will be for sale and I’ll find it and not cost a small fortune and be able to afford it at the time I find it.

    Thanks for reading and following this story as it evolved.

  10. #10




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    Little update.... I lied..... I bought more when I said I wouldn’t. Same results. Actually worse.

    1 wax box that had to be searched at some point in time. Not a single star player or one of the five “big” RC’s. None and I mean zero Moons, Marino, Elway, Montana, Dent, Payton etc. I know you can’t get lucky every time but this was seriously bad. Some packs only had 14 cards instead of 15. To add insult to injury the gum stains where the worst I’ve seen. It’s like they must have need stored in a sauna and absorbed all the humidity because the gum was soft and mushy instead of dry and brittle. This ruined cards so bad because they swelled up.

    1 cello pack box. Yes some very nice looking cards and actually this batch the back centering was the best I’ve seen. But I can’t say that translated to front centering. While it’s nice that I didn’t have any cards ruined due to a wax stain the gum still ruins one card and the stickers are hardly salvageable. Good thing I’m not buying the packs to complete the sticker set but that would be nice. On the subject of stickers. It’s strange. Every box I have opened weather wax or cello, I only get about four or five different players.

    one rack pack (Rak Pak) this was the 48 card with a red “Star Player” card and no gum non grocery rack pack variety that comes with 42 cards and three sticks of gum. Some of the cleanest edged and vibrant colored cards but centering was still an issue.

    I don’t know when I’ll learn my lesson and stop buying packs. I hope it’s soon. This is getting expensive!!!! The one thing I will try if I can find it cheaper than I have is a vending box. I don’t have a lot of faith in that either. I also can’t bring my self to pay the premium price for a BBCE wrapper box but maybe I need to try that next if anything else.

    I did put together one complete set with some cards in very nice condition every one individually sleeved for protection and sold it for $75 on eBay. Considering it takes two wax boxes to complete a set add in a 660 ct box for the cards was about $6 another $4 in penny sleeves and $16 to ship it this is not a good investment.

    I know I probably got two maybe three more complete sets at least I can build but geeze this is disappointing.

    Thanks for reading! Now you need to go buy a box, pull that Singletary I have been looking for and send it in to PSA for graded and let me know how much you want for it.

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