Buzz 12 in 12: Busting 20 1980 Topps Fun Packs (Hour 5)

Do you like Buzz Breaks? Today's your day then as we launch 12 in 12 -- a series of a dozen breaks of wax boxes and wax packs in a dozen hours. We'll post one every hour all day long ... this is Hour 5.

The packs: 20 1980 Topps Fun Packs (mystery version)
The cost: About $6 total (part of a bulk lot)

What's inside this one? Keep reading ...

Packs per lot: 20
Cards per pack: 4
Cards in this lot: 80

1980 Topps Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back Series 2 set completion: 
49 of 132 (37 percent)
Duplicates: 23
Triplicates: 8

Inserts: None (a sampling of cards in gallery below)

Autographs/Memorabilia: Not for a few years

What's Buzz-worthy: Back in the day (late 1960s to early 1980s), Topps (and Donruss) produced retail markdown grab bags generally known as "fun bags" that included wax packs from recent years -- both sports and non-sports -- with massive discounts. They also included blind-wrapped generic fun packs -- sometimes with just two cards but as many as four cards -- and that exact same outer wrapper you see here was used back in the mid-1970s up until the later 1980s packs -- so that's a big reason you're seeing this right here. These packs were buried in a junk wax lot I found (and I actually hadn't meant for it to be used here in a 12 in 12 countdown) but the surprise was consistent enough I figured why not. All cards in these packs were from the second series of Topps' Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back set released in 1980. (Man, why couldn't these have been baseball from that year? Or older?) Once I peeled the wrapper I was a bit surprised but also not wowed as these aren't that easily found but they're also not all that pricey, either. Some sellers can get as much as $10 a pack on eBay for packs just like these but I opted to rip just in case they weren't all filled with Star Wars cards. These packs are small -- four cards -- meaning one will suffer some gum damage (not all the time) and one will get the oldschool wax stain. My set stats above include some stained cards, so it's not that good atop the stats you see but this was still a gamble I enjoyed taking. Maybe I'll try others if they present themselves on the cheap. The only inserts in the Star Wars set were stickers and these didn't include those because these were just a way for Topps to monetize leftover cardboard and fill a spot on the shelf back in the day. Times have changed sooooo much since then.

Product Grade: A-
Lot Grade: B+
Fun Grade: A (the mystery factor)

What's next? Be back in an hour ...

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