Author Topic: My best Wacky find ever was…  (Read 1847 times)

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Offline JailOJohn

  • Posts: 736
  • Sticking Wackys on Furniture since 1973...
My best Wacky find ever was…
« on: July 19, 2021, 07:46:02 AM »
Its fun to reminisce….you don’t need to give seller’s name, but what was the coolest or most valuable stash of Wackies you’ve ever found? This includes trades where you ripped iff another kid.  I am a piker, best I’ve ever done was a pile of about 30 tan backs from series 7-15 at a yard sale for $2…..medium grades…not a big jackpot but very random and appreciated..

Offline drono

  • Posts: 1412
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #1 on: July 19, 2021, 12:29:04 PM »
About 20 1st series cloth unmarked checklists for $1 each. About 10 1st series tan backs in great condition for $2 each.  An unpunched Ratz die-cut for $400 - would probably grade a 7-8 (OC).

Offline NationalSpittoon

  • Posts: 1394
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #2 on: July 19, 2021, 02:27:44 PM »
Found a binder of OS titles in not great condition at an antique mall, but spotted two shedds titles within them that were both in EX condition or so. The binder was $50.

I also got a 16th checklist for $2 at the Philly show one time because the seller clearly didn’t know what it was. It’s perfectly centered and the corners aren’t bad either, and no marks on it either.

Also spotted an Oddie Boy on eBay and got it for $20

Offline jleonard1967

  • Posts: 1164
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #3 on: July 19, 2021, 04:13:44 PM »
I have many of the great stories.  I usually find one great find a year.  The best find was a whole box of series 11,  black box, green packs.  Purchased it for 800.00 and they threw in a series 10 box with all the cards opened.  ( sent many of those to get graded and got good grades).  There was the start of my shedd's collection that I go in with a bunch of 1979 cards.  I got a whole bunch of series 3-15 (maybe 4-5000 cards) in there were 19 chokes and 19 Bum Chex.  There was once on ebay I bought 4 1974 Topps fun bags with series 12 Wacky Packs in them for 300.00.  He was so happy that he gave me an opened fun bag that still had most of the packs.  (I sold 3 of the 1974 bsket ball packs to cover my costs.)  I since parted with 3 of them and made out well on the trades but I am keeping the last bag.  Every year I look forward to what the special find will be, so far this year I have gotten nothing that will be considered great but we still have 5 more months left.

Offline BattleCaps

  • Posts: 306
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #4 on: July 19, 2021, 05:18:34 PM »

  My best 'find' was finding the only kid in my grade in elementary school had a 10th series Pupsi Cola.  At that time there was little to no way to get information and was wondering why I had every card in the series except that one and was wondering what it looked like.. I had to compete the set!  I convinced the kid to trade it to me for some Baltimore Oriole baseball cards which weren't much. It turned out that he did peel the sticker off at one time and put it back and it was a crooked, but I was still happ at the time....I had it!

Offline 1980Phils

  • Posts: 20
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2021, 06:25:24 PM »
I was not a big Wacky collector, but in late 80's I was in a thrift store with my wife.  While waiting for her I went through the hobby section.  Found a bag of stickers for $2 that interested me and I bought it on a whim.  Turned out it had almost two complete sets of series 15, plus maybe another ten from 14 all like new.  No checklists, but not complaining.

Offline MoldRush

  • Posts: 1146
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2021, 08:55:55 PM »
I was not a big Wacky collector, but in late 80's I was in a thrift store with my wife.  While waiting for her I went through the hobby section.  Found a bag of stickers for $2 that interested me and I bought it on a whim.  Turned out it had almost two complete sets of series 15, plus maybe another ten from 14 all like new.  No checklists, but not complaining.
My most notable find was similar to this one.  Sometime around spring 1992 I had been occasioning a mom-and-Pop type video rental store.  He sold sportscards in the store as well, which is what I think drew me there to begin with.  He had a wire display rack on a counter that you would normally see in a diner or candy store to hold snacks, but instead he would put miscellaneous card items on there, wrapped in Saran Wrap so you could only see the top and bottom card, but the prices were cheap, just a few bucks per brick.  In hindsight I would have to guess he knew nothing about non-sport and this was just a quick way to get rid of whatever came his way.  Anyway, that fateful day there were two bricks of Wackys, and the yield was astounding.  At least one checklist card from every series 1-12, including a complete 12th puzzle set plus another 10 or so dupes.  Near complete 9th and 10th sticker sets including Pupsi.  Assorted stickers from 2nd through 4th and Wonder Bread stickers.  Some had writing on the backs.  A few of the checklists may have been marked also.  But the 12th puzzle set and 9th & 10th near-sets all had clean backs.

What made this such a standout find was not just getting it for next to nothing, but for how many questions it answered for me.  My discovery of a thriving Wacky universe was still 5 years away, and there was just such a dearth of information in the preceding years.  At least I didn’t know where to look.  My memories from the OS era were mostly not that vivid but it always haunted me that I lost nearly everything I ever acquired from the OS era, and I had always wondered why the Reissues seemed so different, why there were some titles I remembered, many others I’d never seen and couldn’t figure out why, and OS titles I remembered that were not in the Reissues.  Puzzle backs on every card?  Whaaaaaaat?...  The Reissues were both a delight and confounding at the same time.  Of course, once I absorbed the contents of those two packs, studied the checklist titles and figured out that there were major gaps in my exposure to OS, the hunger for more knowledge inevitably returned.

Offline ToadallyDude

  • Posts: 514
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #7 on: July 30, 2021, 05:03:39 PM »
4 pieces of original art (OS titles) from a dealer at the Chicago non-sport show (for let's say a surprizingly discounted price at the time), just for being dorky enough to ask him if he "still had any pieces laying around", even though everyone 'in the know' was sure he'd sold all of them years ago.  A great lesson in "it never hurts to ask".  Unfortunately, I blew just about every other similar art opportunity in some way after that.  So, it all evens out.

Offline Alexeirex

  • Posts: 1208
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #8 on: July 31, 2021, 12:30:31 AM »
Can't beat getting original art from the OS, but did find 5-6 ludlow backs from the OS1 and OS2 for about 25c each at a yard sale. Sold them all on Ebay for $40-$60 each, not bad for the 1990s.
A few years later I saw a big binder of 60s non-sports cards, including the various Batman and Robin sets which and which also included die cuts, at a flea market. These were 15c each, and I bought every die cut in the binder.
About 15 of them, which helped me almost complete the set.
Have yet to contact my friend who collected the OS with me when they first came out, just to see if he kept any of the boxes. He always had more room in his house than I did!
A

Offline MoldRush

  • Posts: 1146
Re: My best Wacky find ever was…
« Reply #9 on: July 31, 2021, 01:33:53 PM »
A great lesson in "it never hurts to ask".
Reminds me of another great score I made in the late 90’s.  Was doing most of my Wacky hunting through Wrapper ads back then, and I got to know a dealer who advertised regularly.  He had so much good stuff in sports and non-sports that contacting him in reaction to the latest Wrapper ad became little more than a conversation starter, and I would get good deals from him just by asking about different things.  On one occasion he sold me a slew of empty Wacky boxes for next to nothing - if I remember correctly, two gumless 7th boxes for $7 each, a 16th for $4, a common Poster box for $4, and a half dozen Reissues for $2 each, all four series represented.  The 16th was very worn, but all the rest were in fairly nice shape.

 

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