Blog Bat Around: Top 10 Junk Wax sets

Following up on Collective Mind, Fuji and Night Owl: Here is my very subjective ranking of junk-wax era sets, based primarily on how I felt about them at the time. My collecting years as a kid were 1987-1993, perfectly encapsulating the junk wax era. While in my earlier years collecting was a very social endeavor, with kids trading cards in school all the time, by the time I got to high school in 1991, card collecting was something I kept to myself. There were still plenty of cards available in drug stores and other retail places, so I never went to actual baseball card stores. Therefore I only ever knew the main brands: Topps, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Upper Deck, and Sportflics. I didn't know of the existence of brands like Pinnacle, Ultra or Stadium Club until years later, so they are not included in my ranking.

10. 1992 Score.

This is more to get Score on the list then anything else. I liked the cards well enough but the action photography was very repetitive, and the long card backs felt like homework to read. 1992 is my favorite of the score designs, I like the colorful side bar, so this is Score's representative in the ranking.

9. 1993 Donruss

Similar to Score, Donruss was a brand I liked but never loved. My favorite parts were the player's full name and full transaction on the back. To me the 1993 set felt totally different, a copy of Upper Deck in a good way.

8.  1987 Sportflics

I personally considered Sportflics a major brand, though the packs were more expensive so I only got a few a year. 1987 was my favorite as the one year they really leaned into having three successive action shots, which I felt made best use of the lenticular effect.

7. 1991 Fleer

I actually like yellow, and beyond that, this set had really good photography, and personally I like a design where the photo is in a perfect rectangle. 1990 Donruss almost made the ranking for just that reason.

6. 1988 Fleer

I missed out on the quirky early years of Fleer, and the junk was era had a lot of really boring Fleer sets. 1988 had a fun design with the red-white-and-blue motif, and some of the best photography of the era, with some last gasps of Fleer quirkiness.

5. 1993 Upper Deck

I didn't intend to make the top half all UD and Topps, it just worked out that way when I made a list and sorted it. UD was always a favorite for action photography that was still fun and interesting. 1993 makes the list for shaking up the formula a bit, with photos even better than before.

4. 1993 Topps

1993 was the last year I collected cards until the early 2000s, so this was the last set that I collected a substantial amount from. 1993s were the newest cards in my collection for many years, and most of them were Topps, so this always felt a little more special. It's a nice design with good photos, too.

3. 1989 Upper Deck

The first four years of Upper Deck were all very similar, so going with the set that started it all and began the craze of ramping up card quality.

2. 1991 Topps

This was Topps's answer to Upper Deck; a set that had a fresh spin on baseball photography while still keeping the overall Topps look and feel. It was disappointing to see a lackluster follow-up in 1992.

1. 1987 Topps

I am one of many, many collectors for whom this was the set that got them into collecting. Probably more lifelong collectors were created by this set than any other. The woodgrain design gave it a classy feel, the photos were interesting, and the write-ups on the back gave the player character. Nine Pockets just wrote a really great homage to the set which captures my feelings better than I could have written it. The next three years of Topps sets felt a little clunky and goofy in comparison to this one.