As the sun began to shine a little more and spring training camps began to open in 1978, collectors were hit with another cold slap in the face.
The price of a pack was up again and you’d need to buy more cards to complete a set.
Just a five years earlier, wax packs were a dime each. Even in ’74, you could still snare one for that price, although there weren’t as many cards as there were inside the new 15-cent versions.
There were other options, though. In the latest edition of Vintage Pack Facts, we look back at 1978 Topps baseball.
- It was obvious from the start that Topps’ newest set was bigger. Instead of 660 cards in 1977, there were 726 in ’78. Double prints meant you wound up with a lot of Bill Faheys and Larry Milbournes en route to finding every card.
- The bad news about the price increase was met with some good news, too. Instead of 10 cards per pack, you got 14 for your 20 cents. A full box of 36 packs with gum at full retail cost $7.20. Today, thanks to the sizzling interest in vintage unopened, you’ll pay close to $2,000 for a box.
- Wrappers were red with an artistic rendering of a catcher. Topps’ advertising on the side panel included offers for an uncut tri-fold set of team checklists, a sports card locker and an add for their Smooth & Juicy bubble gum.
- Check out more Vintage Pack Facts after the gallery…
- Topps also produced 21-card cello packs for .30 per pack, up a nickel from the year before but with three more cards inside. Packed in a red, white and blue box, cello packs also came with a stick of gum.
- Cases of wax and cello packs are extremely rare today but rack pack cases do come up for auction on occasion. Rack packs were no longer a great deal for collectors. In fact, you paid 10 cents more for the same number of cards in a rack pack compared to 1977. The ’78 packs carried 39 cards for 59 cents. Three boxes of 24 packs were in each rack pack case. Memory Lane currently has a rack case up for sale in their Late Summer Auction.
- As usual, Topps also made vending cases with 24 500-count boxes in each. Dealers who broke complete sets from vending typically sold them for around $10 per set. A vending case sold for nearly $29,000 through Heritage Auctions in April 2019.
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