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Post Cereal, Drake's Cakes, and Wheaties can build you a HOF collection on a Common budget.

Remember looking at sports cards on the back of the cereal box as you ate breakfast?  After finishing the box, you cut the cards out of the box and fought your siblings over the coolest card.  You most likely don't remember what the cards even looked like; you only remember tricking your little brother/sister into taking the duds.  Now, as an adult, those cards make for a great way to build a collection of Hall of Famers on a budget. 

Buying a 1960's Topps Mickey Mantle, an early Michael Jordan card, or a young Ken Griffey Jr. cardboard delight may be out of your price range these days.  You can, however, collect these same stars on cards from the same era for much, much cheaper!  Let's reminisce about some cool cards from your childhood to bolster your collection without spending a fortune.

This blog is sponsored by JUST COLLECT where we specialize in buying vintage cards, autographs, and collections. If you have any of THESE cards, we'd love to chat!  We'd be interested in vintage Post Cereal, graded cards!

Post Cereal Cards

Back in 1962, the back of Post cereal boxes contained a panel of baseball cards for you to gawk at while putting down a bowl of Sugar Crisp.  You probably stared a little longer at the cards on the back of the Grape Nuts box; that box was always full - who wanted to eat Grape Nuts...

The 1962 Post set contains 200 cards, including 30 Hall of Famers! On the back of boxes, you can find the likes of Mickey Mantle, Ernie Banks, Al Kaline, Frank Robinson, and more.  The Non-HOF'er list is equally impressive, holding cards of Roger Maris in the year following his 61-homer campaign.

The 200-card set also has an number of errors and variations which brings the complete total to 361 different cards.  Hand-cut cards are tough to turn up in high grades; we had no coordination to cut these cards out as kids.  There have only been 715 Mickey Mantle hand-cut cards graded by PSA, and zero came back a 10.  Just 137 hand-cut Roger Maris cards have been graded not one '10' came back.  Low-grades and raw cards are SUPER cheap, though!

Mantle in a PSA 1.5 sold for just $34.00

Maris in a PSA 7 .. a SEVEN...sold for only $64.53 

Find cheaper, bigger names from 1961 - you couldn't do it.

POST continued the tradition in various years, releasing cards in 1962, 1963, 1979, and 1990 through 1995, then again in 2001. 

In 1990, Post began inserting the cards directly into the boxes of cereal via three-card cello packs.  This means you didn't need to finish the cereal to collect your gold!

The '90 set has huge stars of the decade like Don Mattingly, Wade Boggs, Cal Ripken, and a young Ken Griffey Jr. in a 30-card set.  With cards not being cut from the cereal boxes, grades are bit nicer.  The second-year Griffey card has 147 PSA submissions and 20 came back a PSA 10.  You can score a high-grade example of a 1990 Ken Griffey Jr. at a very affordable price as sales for a PSA 9 are around $16.00.

Drake's Snack Cake Cards

After a bowl of cereal, nothing beats chowing down on a Yodel.  Ah, to be young again and not care about calories.  After polishing off the yodels, you were then entitled to another sweet panel of baseball cards, including early Don Mattingly cards, and Reggie Jackson winding down his HOF career. One panel even has two HOF'ers on the same strip!

From 1986 to 1988, Drake's put cards on the back of their snack boxes. Depending on the snack, two or three cards are placed on the back of the box to cut.   

The '86 set of 36 cards is where I chased a Don Mattingly all season.  Only 18 hand-cut Donnie Baseballs have been graded by PSA and just one 10 was awarded.  The three-card panel with Keith Moreland and Mike Marshall only has 8 copies graded.  While I love Mattingly, this is not the panel to focus on.

Two Hall of Famers stand out in the '86 set, with Wade Boggs and Mike Schmidt sharing a panel! How about a raw, uncut strip for $.799!  Only 16 of these panels have been graded by PSA and there are no 10's; care to give it a shot now that you can cut better as an adult?

This sweet panel can be had for $8.50; look at Doc in his prime!

Wheaties Cereal Box NBA Cards

For just one season in 1991, Fleer teamed up with Wheaties to put their cards on the back of cereal boxes.  Eight different, 9-card panels were put out for you to eye down as you "ate your Wheaties" so you could dunk like MJ.

You still can't dunk like MJ, but you can nab yourself a fifth-year Michael Jordan Fleer card without much money!

The set itself is pretty impressive - Larry Bird, The Dream, Ewing, Malone, and many more stars; a who's who of NBA royalty are lurking on boxes.  Of course, the guy you really want is the Jordan All-Star card, number 79.  Jordan, dunking over the world, with rockets for legs; such a cool card.  The Jordan card is on panel #6, right in the center.  Not only did two boxes of Wheaties in our house back in 1991 have the panels, but one had the MJ panel.  Panel 7 with Larry Bird in the bottom right was also in the cupboard.  Took a lot of convincing but I got my little brother, Shawn, to believe Larry Bird was cooler than Jordan.  Few times could Larry play second fiddle in his career but to this day, I still own the MJ.  Sorry, Shawn.

Of the 36 Jordan cards that PSA graded, 2 have been graded a 10!  One of those Gem Mint Jordans sold for $76 back in January.  A full panel can be purchased for about $109.  Shawn's panel is $14.95...again, sorry, Shawn. 

Recap: Your HOF Deals:

• 1961 Post Mickey Mantle = $34
• 1986 Wade Boggs & Mike Schmidt = $7.99
• 1990 Post Ken Griffey Jr = $16
• 1991 Fleer Michael Jordan = $76

For at total of around $134 bucks, you can own four cards with FIVE Hall of Famers, in eras where a base Topps, Fleer, or Upper Deck card could set you back five times that.  

Want to SELL Your Collection?

Whether you're holding onto a full panel you swindled your siblings out of, have a rare PSA 10, or want to share a Yodel, WE ARE BUYING! Fill out a FREE appraisal form, reach out at (732) 828-2261, or send an e-mail to info@justcollect.com. 

Half kidding on the Yodels.  Mmmmmmmm.