Is there a certain way to tell if a star is showing top/bottom of wax pack?

MrNearMint

I tried searching past threads but only found "post your stars on top" threads.
I'm still building (slowly) my unopened collection of wax boxes and don't have anything special but was just curious. Is there a certain light/tool/method used to see if you have a star or rookie on top or bottom of wax packs?

cpamike

There is no easy way to tell and some years are easier to see through the wrapper than others. I usually try to make out some unique feature like the player's team, position, etc. and then go through my raw sets to match the card up. If you are only looking for certain stars, you can have images of those cards handy and compare them to each pack to see if you hit paydirt. Good luck in your search!!!

grote15

I'll echo what Mike said--some years (like 75 and 78 baseball) are easy to tell, but if you can make out a defining feature you can usually do a little investigative work to make the determination. 1980 Topps baseball is one of the tougher years. The easier ones are the years in which the player name is near bottom edge.

ReggieCleveland

<< <i>There is no easy way to tell and some years are easier to see through the wrapper than others. I usually try to make out some unique feature like the player's team, position, etc. and then go through my raw sets to match the card up. If you are only looking for certain stars, you can have images of those cards handy and compare them to each pack to see if you hit paydirt. Good luck in your search!!! >>



+1 to what Mike and Tim said. In my experience, 1986 Topps is near impossible. The blue wrappers are just really tough to see through.

In reality, there's probably only a dozen or two cards you're looking for in each set. I've had success getting large back scans with a quick Google search and have ID'd many cards from things like bio info or hometown/DOB. You can search baseball-reference.com for MLB players by hometown or DOB so you can usually narrow it down to one or two options just from there. I was able to ID an 88 Leaf Alomar Rate Rookie on the back from the bio info. Those are also all unique since no two players ever got the same bio info.

MrNearMint

Thanks for the info guys.

billwaltonsbeard

As many have discovered, the best way to go is to make those packs yourself