The Wax Pack: On The Open Road In Search Of Baseball's Afterlife
By Brad Balukjian (University of Nebraska Press, 2020)
In September 2014, sitting alone in the sparsely-populated upper deck of the Oakland Coliseum, Brad Balukjian's mind wandered in the time between pitches.
Thinking about the game and his childhood and collecting baseball cards eventually gave him an interesting idea. What if he bought an unopened pack of Topps cards from 1986 (the year he began collecting) and tracked down every player in the pack?
He began scribbling notes on his scorecard and well before the game was over, he had (via his phone) won an eBay auction for a 28-year-old, still-sealed pack of cards.