This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 4/2/2021
When this 1979-80 Topps hockey wax box hit the store shelves, it arrived with very little fanfare as baseball ruled as the king of all sports in America and everything else was secondary. The disparity was even wider in the sports card market as baseball cards were highly prized collectibles but pasteboards in all other sports were without much value. The only thing possible to change that was if a rookie came along with such overwhelming magnitude and record-shattering ability that he simply could not be ignored by collectors. It happened in 1986 when Michael Jordan made his first appearance in the Fleer basketball series, but several years earlier, "The Great One" would begin a storybook career that forced the National Hockey League to re-write the record books, planting Gretzky's name at the top of virtually every offensive category. Like the 1986 Fleer basketball series, unopened boxes of 1979-80 Topps hockey cards have increased exponentially in value as has the demand for top-notch Wayne Gretzky rookie cards. Recent sales of world-class Topps Gretzky RCs report a $720,000 for a PSA 10 in December of 2020 with two recorded sales of over $50,000 for PSA 9 MINT examples within the last few months, fueling the fire for the drastic uptick in price for sealed boxes like this BBCE authenticated box. One of the few survivors from over 40 years ago, one can only imagine what pristine specimens await within their wax paper confines, but with only 2 PSA 10 examples of Gretzky's rookie card on record (one fewer than the number of PSA 10 examples of the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle), it's a good bet that if another one ever surfaces, it will have originated from an unopened box like this one, maybe even this one!