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Wacky Packages: 1st series 1979 rerun sheet
This page explains why this sheet is so common (below the image)


Click here to see the back

This is the infamous 1979 rerun sheet.  Tens of thousands of these suddenly showed up in 1999, before that they would sell for around $150 each, now they can be obtained for about $20 (at one point you could get them for under $10), certainly the cheapest sheet at this time.  There has been a lot of speculation as to why so many showed up.  Some believed they were counterfeit, but this has never been proven. Jay Lynch noticed that they were die-cut with a technology that was not around in 1979.1 Though this was evidence that they might be counterfeit, it did not prove it conclusively. Then in late 2000 the mystery was finally solved (at least by the mainstream collectors). It came out that these sheets were part of a planned promotion for Bond Bread around 1985. Bond Bread was apparently going to use them like Wonder Bread had. They were printed in the same factory in Philadelphia that the rest of the wackys were printed at. This was around 1985, which explains Jay's observation. They were printed and die-cut, and yet they were never shipped, due to some sort of cease and desist or perhaps due to a change of plans on the corporate level, we are not sure. So there they sat on a pallet for 15 years, with the "stop shipment order" stuck on top. Eventually the factory went out of business and went abandoned. Throughout the 90's it became a crack smokers hangout. There the sheets sat, until they were found sometime in 1999. This story comes from the people who found the wackys in the factory. They are believable because they also found many other wacky pack items and documents. Stay tuned for much more to come on this amazing factory!! It appers there were on the order of 100,000 of these sheets. The impact on the hobby has been very interesting, and hotly debated (was it good or was it bad?!) Stay tuned, more to come...  
 
1 In Jay's own words: When I saw these '79 first series reprint sheets for sale, I noticed that the die-cuts were laser die-cuts, as opposed to cuts with old fashioned metal dies. The depth of the cut is less. The cut is thinner, and smoother...and when compared to the original metal-die cut sheets, it is likely that some of the die cuts on the laser sheet are of slightly different shapes than on the metal die cut sheet... Although I have never actually compared the two. What I don't get about these Bond Bread sheets, though, is that there appears to be a 3 to 5% halftone barely visable on all white areas of the sheet (in the white background area between the stickers and on the puzzle backs too)...which would indicate to me that they were printed from pre-existing sheets. Does this microscopic halftone appear on the original sheets as well? I've never really looked that closely.