I picked up a 7 pack lot of Ebay of 1995-96 Topps for .99 cents plus $3.75 for shipping. I've broken six of the packs and I'm saving the last one for another time.
I'm currently working on the 1995-96 Topps Master Set, excluding the OPC parallels as they are just too tough to track down. I was hoping to find a few inserts that I didn't have in these packs.
The odds on the back of the pack are (sorry for the blurry scan): Hidden Gems 1:24, Profiles 1:12, Power Lines 1:12, Rink Leaders 1:36 and Power Boosters 1:36. Each pack has 13 cards, a large amount per pack which is really nice. I forgot how poor the odds were of pulling inserts in the mid 90's. I was hoping to pull at least one nice insert from my packs.
I landed this beauty in my first pack! It's the last card I needed for my the Power Lines set! The Power Lines falls 1:12 packs so I figured I'd be done after this pack and just pull base.
I pulled several Marquee Men from my packs: Shannahan, Bure, Kariya and this Linden card but I didn't pull any of the 1:36 packs Power Booster parallel. These cards were highly sought after in my neighbourhood and I was the envy of every kid when I pulled the Eric Lindros Power Booster in the summer of 1996.
I was surprised when I landed one big hit in the packs. I have never pulled one of these myself and thats after busting a box and around 100 loose packs of this product as a kid. I mainly busted the jumbo packs found at my local dollar store and I think the Rink Leaders cards are exclusive to the regular packs.
Ray Bourque Rink Leaders!! What a hit, I really need this card for my set and it was awesome pulling it from a pack that I paid less then a dollar for. I noticed that the Canadian Gold cards were not found on the odds either, so I think they may be exclusive to the jumbo packs.
I also pulled a Winnipeg Jets power line insert. I think I did pretty good considering I pulled two power lines and the rink leaders card from 6 loose packs.
I really like that mid 90's product never guaranteed a certain amount of inserts per box, they just had a rough ratio. Sometimes you did really good and killed the odds and other times you didn't do so hot. Products now guarantee you "x" number of auto's, GU, inserts etc. You know exactly how many of each you are going to get and I think that takes away the fun from it. It's too late to switch now because a lot of people freak out if they don't hit the right ratio per box. I hear it all the time from collectors and how they contact the company to try and replacement cards to make up for the lack of hits.
Boxes today actually make me want to throw up when I think of the cost. To pull anything decent you have to put down over $100 for a box to get maybe $30 worth of cards in return. That is just not any fun for me. I can't even remember the last time I spent more then $30 on a box of cards. Maybe about 4 years ago when I was stupid with my money and was too young to realise how much I would need it in the future.
I will post up my last pack when I manage to break it!
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