I used to buy a number of wax boxes back in the height of the junk wax era, and now I have some of the box-bottom cards. Back then we didn't actually call Score boxes "wax boxes." They had different packaging, so they were called mylar boxes. But that's just a technicality. I bought many packs of 1988 Score, but only one complete box, so I have 4 of the box-bottom cards.
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| 1988 Score Box-Bottom trivia card. |
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| Trivia card back. |
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I really enjoyed the Score magic motion trivia card inserts. I guess in contrast to Topps' gum, Fleer's stickers, and Donruss' puzzle pieces, Score had to think of something to put into packs with the cards. (Did they really, though? Couldn't they just have had the cards?) So they put in trivia cards, and not just any trivia cards, but Sportflics-style "magic motion" cards. Well, on the box bottom, you don't get magic motion, you just get hte trivia. I, for one, did not remember what happened at Comiskey park on July 6, 1983. But apparently a grand slam broke a jinx.
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| Dave Winfield. |
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| Dave Winfield card back. |
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The other three cards are more traditional, and Score used them for a little All-Star set which isn't all that different from the Topps rack pack All-Star cards. I'm not sure why my Dave Winfield has such a big crease. While the box bottom might have some damage when it's intact, it's not likely to actually be creased with all of the packs inside. And by 1988, I was mainly taking better care of my cards. But in any case, this is quite a beat-up card, which I'm still quite happy to have.
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| Gary Carter. |
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| Ozzie Smith. |
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Finally, we have two more perrenial All-Stars, Gary Carter and Ozzie Smith. I wasn't a fan of Carter per se, since he was with the Mets. (If Dad and I went to Phillies-Mets games at the Vet, Mets fans would come down and start fights. We stopped going to Mets games.) It was always fun to watch Ozzie Smith play, and especially to watch him take the field.
Thanks for reading!
No! they could not have just had the cards. You see, in 1980 Fleer won a ruling that Topps' control of the baseball card market was an illegal monopoly, allowing it and Donruss to make 1981 sets. But during 1981 that ruling was overturned on appeal. But the companies, and the MLBPA which licensed the sets, didn't want to give up.
ReplyDeleteWell, it turned out that the a Topps contracts, which were with individual players, gave Topps the exclusive rights to cards by themselves, or with gum or other confectionary products. They were written that way to allow for cards sold as premiums with other products--for example, Kellogg's including cards with its cereal. So suddenly Fleer was selling you a pack of 3 stickers with 15 cards as a "premium". If you look at the packs from that era, the other item is always given billing over the baseball cards for that reason. So, yeah--no trivia cards, no legal right to sell.
I knew Topps had the right to cards with gum; I didn't realize that Topps also had the right to cards without anything included.
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