NEW YORK (AP) — 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.

“There is something inherently magic about peeling away the paper of the wax pack. There’s something visceral about it, taking the pack to your face and smelling it,” says Brian Pirrip, owner of collectible business M1NT. “It’s something about the mix of all these scents — the wax, the gum, the cardboard — that transports you back to a different time.”

Collecting and trading cards has been part of the baseball ecosystem since the 1860s. But the wax pack emerged as the delivery method in 1951 by Topps.

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I always liked the other 80’s “wax packs” of trading cards for things like Pac-Man, Star Wars, etc. I have a Star Wars one, unopened still, somewhere around here.

Growing up a friend of ours had the entire back of his bedroom door plastered with the stickers that came with the various trading cards. ( Each pack had a sticker of gum, a sticker, and then a few cards. )

They eventually moved, and I wish I knew then what I know now. I’d have asked for that door, even paid for the replacement.