A Garbage Pail Kids Card for $4,250?

Collecting is a very difficult market to predict, and one man’s motorcycle sounds in the spokes of his BMX is another man’s ultimate treasure.

But io9.com came across an obscure collectable on eBay, and I was surprised to see the numbers attached to these very rare cards – Garbage Pail Kids cards!

For those not in the know, in the early 80s Cabbage Patch Kids were the coveted toys for both boys and girls. Each one was different, they came with a unique birth certificate, and people went insane for them. The highest form of flattery is imitation, and while card collecting expanded beyond sports cards, the satirical Garbage Pail Kids were an instant success.

Each card featured a very Cabbage Patch looking Kid in a crazy spoof of disgusting and rejected Kids with their own unique and disturbing names. I remember these cards being popular and I even had some of them myself! There was even a movie in 1987 and there is talks of a remake happening right now.

The most coveted of all these Garbage Pail Kids was called Adam Bomb, depicting a Garbage Pail Kid pressing a red button igniting a nuclear blast out of his head. There is an eBay auction for a rare proof card authenticated by Topps (the company that made these cards) currently standing at $4,250USD

While a recent Adam Bomb did sell for just under $100USD, Garbage Pail Kid Aficionado and author of the definitive Garbage Pail Kids collecting guide Barren Aaron admits even for a proof the price is inflated.

I think what is making this card valued so high – even if it doesn’t get its asking price – is a combination of a number of conditions. As popular as the Garbage Pail Kids were, no one expected these cards to be of any value. They were a spoof of a popular toy at the time and rightly so, no one took them seriously at all. Of course this means that there are just not that many of these cards around anymore. Even the more common cards are going to have value to a collector who wants them. You couldn’t have planned this.

Anything can be collected, and any collectable is as valuable as what someone might pay for it. But is it insane that something like Garbage Pail Kids could go for this much?