1980's wax and the effect the lack of rookie card power in it has on it's cost.

sorry for the messy title, maybe im a little tired.

as i delve deeper into my 80's obsession, some things stand out clearer to me then others.

a quick recap.....having been burned out on anything newer then 1989, my current focus is to collect in PSA 9 slabs, one copy of each baseball HOFer (+ Pete Rose) that i saw play during their playing days, with a strong focus on 80's stuff.

here i should add that for the most part, i have all the "key" rookie cards from the 80s already, so that saves me some money, but also makes me have to make decisions.

Opening packs and sending them to PSA myself is naturally a big thrill, BUT it is also harder to do with the 80s stuff. Remember that back then there was no real care about quality control. add that fact with the slaughtering of many many trees to make the cards, and you have many many cards that have many flaws right out of the pack.

having opened some early 80s issues here recently, i can tell that getting self-subbed PSA 9's is not going to be all that easy to do. Sure, i'd like to buy them already graded PSA 9 (and am doing that for the most part), but there are some that don't show up on eBay, or worse yet (i suppose), they are listed, but the seller is delusional in their expectations of what kind of money they want for their PSA 9's

now back to my original thought that lead me to this posting.

1980 wax is $10 a pop. Rickey Henderson Rookie. Topps is the only kid on the block that year.
1981 wax is much cheaper. Topps $2.50, Donruss & Fleer are $1.50 each. No HOF rookies in 1981 releases.
1982 wax Topps: $4.00 D&F: $3.00 This is Cal Ripken's RC Year
1983 wax Topps: $4.00 D&F: $3.00 RCs: Boggs, Gwynn, Sandberg
1984 wax Topps: $1.50 D: $6.00 F: $2.50 No HOF RC's, but the '84D is an Epic Set
1985 wax Topps: $3.00 D: $3.50 F: $4.00 This is Puckett's RC Year

1986 marked the beginning of the "Junk Wax" era. for the rest of the 80's, packs are pretty much .25 to .50 cents each, with a casual exception here and there.

so you'll notice that opening wax for the sake of getting base HOF (non-RC) cards to self-submit is pretty risky.