Junk Wax Rookies Tournament
The Tournament I grew up a Junk Wax Junkie. Born in 1976, by the time I was really focused on baseball - and able to get some cards, junk wax was my thing. I didn't know any better, though. Junk wax was just baseball cards to 9-year-old me buying cards in the summer of 1986. By buying cards, I mean using the change from grandpa's cigarettes to buy some Topps packs. It started as simply trying to accumulate cards, but it progressed into chasing the big-time rookies of the 1980s and '90s. Boy, was pre-teen me mistaken. These rookies turned out to be work very little nowadays. That Barry Bonds 1987 Topps I thought was special wasn't. That 1988 Tom Glavine? Yeah, not so much. Thinking back on some of my misguided youth, I began wondering about those Junk Wax Rookies. There were so many guys we thought were going to be superstars. Todd Van Poppel, Gregg Jefferies, Todd Zeile ... I could go on and on. Those names inspired a Twitter tournament: JUNK WA