The anticipation. The chase. The powdery, sugar-coated board of gum! For generations of baseball card fans, there was nothing like scrounging up some change and sprinting to the store to buy a wax pack.
Some tore the slightly tacky paper wrapper open and flipped through the cards in an insatiable instant (hence the popular phrase “ripping wax” for opening card packs even today, about 35 years since use of actual wax wrappers ceased). Others did the slow reveal: one card at a time, peeking out of a corner of the pack, or maybe upside down and reversed. However you did it, it was the right way.
