Well, well, well. Let me guess, you stumbled upon your old sports card collection?

Maybe you were cleaning out the garage or made a visit to your childhood home and located binders and boxes full of your old 90s and 00s sports cards. Maybe some NBA Hoops, Upper Deck, Skybox or Fleer? 

Did you just hit the jackpot? Did your childhood hoarding, and inability to let go of the past, finally pay off? Can you finally retire and move to a tropical island?  

Or did you just find a bunch of worthless cardboard? 

Whether you collected baseball, hockey, football, or basketball cards. It’s tempting to assume just because they are old (and in great condition) that they are valuable. But hold up. What if I told you your old sports cards were essentially worthless?  

In this article, we will discuss the main reason why your old 80s and 90s sports cards won’t be making you rich or funding your next family vacation. 

The Junk Wax Era Killed Card Values

The term junk wax era refers to a period in the sports card collecting hobby that primarily occurred during the late 1980s through the early 1990s, and to some extent, into the 2000s. 

Why junk wax? If you remember most cards in the 80s and early 90s were packaged in colorful wax paper packaging that could be peeled open to reveal a new batch of cards. They also often came with a tasty piece of bubble gum. And to this day, collectors still refer to packs and boxes of cards as wax or sealed wax even though there's no actual wax involved.

This era was characterized by the overproduction of sports trading cards, particularly basketball and baseball cards, which led to a saturation of the market and, ultimately, a decline in their value. In other words, these old sports cards are essentially worthless (or worth way less than you think) since everyone either already has them or they're accessible and easy to buy. 

As with all things, sports card value comes down to basic economics—supply and demand. 

Most sports cards from the junk wax era, especially common cards of star players, have relatively little intrinsic value today due to oversupply. The laws of supply and demand dictates that when supply greatly exceeds demand, prices fall. 

In the world of sports cards, this has resulted in a situation where most cards from the 90s are worth very little. Even common (or base) cards from iconic players, which you might assume are super valuable, are not worth much in today's market.

Don't get wrong, a rookie card from a legend might land you a few hundred bucks, but they won't garner life changing money.

And let’s face it, most of the cards we collected as kids were likely lower-end stuff, unless you got lucky and landed some premium rookie Refractors or inserts from superstar players like MJ, Kobe, Dirk, Lebron, Steph Curry, or Kevin Durant.  

That means there are millions of dudes just like you—with the exact same common cards in a similar dusty shoebox—hoping their collections can fetch top dollar.

But alas, basic economics says most of your 90s sports cards are only pretty much worthless.

Next steps

If you have a pile of cards from the 80s and 90s, here's the best course of action:

1. Depending on how many cards you have set aside a day or weekend to go through them.

2. Pull out all the rookies, hall of famers, fancy inserts etc. and at minimum penny sleeve them. Be sure to look out for serial numbers!

3. Look up current prices to find their value on eBay, 130point.com or Card Ladder.

4. Keep the ones you like and sell the rest on eBay or Facebook Marketplace.

5. Give away the rest to kids (nieces, nephews, local sports teams, organizations etc.) or just recycle them.

Lessons Learned

The key lesson from the junk wax era is that rarity, demand, and condition are crucial factors in determining the value of sports cards. That’s why collectors and investors today focus more on modern cards with limited print runs (low numbered), parallels, rare inserts, autos, patches and relics.