Junk Wax Jay: Finally...

Once upon a time,

I was a fifteen-year-old kid with a paper route, and the occasional money burning a hole in my pocket. This would be 1989. Yes, I’m old. And most of that money was being spent on baseball cards and football cards, although some was now being allocated to buy cassette tapes of music that I liked.

That’s right…no more taping songs off the radio for me.

I grew up in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. A place called Penn Hills. It was your standard landscape of strip malls, fast food restaurants, and other assorted business associated with having to mostly use a car to get from point A to point B. One thing that was unique about Penn Hills was that way out in the outer part of the suburb, we had a place called City Limits. City Limits mostly acted as music venue, something that wasn’t very common to tony suburbs in the 1980s. Most of the bands that played at City Limits were punk and hardcore bands. I was too young to attend any concerts at City Limits, and to be perfectly honest, to this day punk and hardcore music really aren’t my cup of tea.

But City Limits hosted another kind of event that was more akin to my interests at the time.

A flea market.

Every Saturday and Sunday morning from 8am to 12pm or 1pm I believe.

Flea markets attracted local sports card dealers. If it wasn’t a card show, the American Coin at the Monroeville Mall or, more importantly, my local Thrift Drug or RevCo; I was probably buying my baseball cards at the flea market at City Limits.

Provided the old man was willing to drive me and my brother there.

On one particular late spring/maybe early summer day when I was at City Limits, I came across a dealer who was selling this.

Yep.

I didn’t see a lot of Upper Deck in 1989. Maybe at the Coin or at card shows. Packs certainly weren’t showing up at Thrift Drug. And when I did see 1989 Upper Deck, the inclination wasn’t there for me to buy them. I believe Upper Deck retailed for 99-cents a pack, which was more than double what a pack of Topps, Fleer, Donruss and Score were going for in 1989. Why buy one pack of Upper Deck, when I could get two of the other brands?

And I still had a couple chances of scoring me a Griffey Jr.

But that 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. card was already legend in 1989. It was already classic, and the kid was barely beginning his career. And the dealer at that flea market knew what he had on him. He was selling that Griffey Jr. card for $25. Cheap in comparison to now. And I had the money on me. It was a weekend after I collected for the paper route. I was flush…for a fifteen-year-old. But I couldn’t buy that Griffey card. Could I? I mean I’d never spent more than a few dollars for a single card before in my life. And this was $25. For a guy who hadn’t even proven himself yet.

But I wanted that Griffey Jr. card.

My how I wanted it.

But all I could picture in my head was my old man saying, you paid WHAT for that card?

All I could picture was me having little to no money until it was time for me to go collecting on the paper route again.

So, I didn’t buy the 1989 Ken Griffey Jr. card.

I don’t even know what I bought that day at City Limits.

And as for the value of the card…

You all know the rest.

Flash forward 36 years later and I’m on my way to the Dave & Adam’s pop-up sports card store outside the Empire State Building. The quest was to get myself a few blasters of 2024 Topps Archives to try and start building that set. Or, at least, to start considering whether or not it was worth it for me to build that set. Well, Dave & Adam’s had those 2024 Archives blasters. And under a glass case at the register, they also had this at a price I told myself I was willing to pay, should I ever come across that card again.