As someone who grew up during the 1980s, one of my first forays into collecting was buying packs of Garbage Pail Kids. Created by Topps in 1985 as a parody of the wildly popular Cabbage Patch Dolls, I felt like Topps knew exactly what ten year old boys wanted: crude humor, irreverence, and something a little profane. Many adults called these cards offensive. These cards were a huge hit but ended up being banned in some schools and were basically sued out of existence for trademark infringement in 1986.
Although you don't often hear about Garbage Pail Kids in news about collectibles, many of them are quite valuable. Let's take a walk down memory lane!
A PSA 10 Adam Bomb achieved an all-time high sale of $25,100 in January 2022.
Even if you didn't collect Garbage Pail Kids, almost anyone would recognize the image of Adam Bomb, the most famous Garbage Pail Kid. Adam Bomb is a little boy in a suit who pushes a red button that apparently causes the top of his head to explode resulting in a mushroom cloud. Adam is the most iconic since his image graced the cover of Garbage Pail Kid card packs just like the one below:
My parents were certainly familiar with Adam Bomb for many years since I peeled the sticker off the card and firmly affixed him to our porch's sliding glass door (he was difficult to peel off).
According to my research, the most expensive copy of Adam Bomb (a rare checklist glossy PSA 10 variant) that ever sold was for a whopping $25,100 in January 2022 during an auction hosted on eBay. This one sold towards the tail end of the pandemic--fueled collectibles boom which may explain its exorbitant price. According to PSA's population report, there are only 18 PSA 10 copies of the glossy checklist variant. High-grade PSA copies of Adam Bomb (e.g., PSA 7 or 8) currently sell in the $500 to $600 range on eBay including this PSA 7 copy:
A PSA 10 of Nasty Nick sold for $17,900 in May 2021.
Although Adam Bomb is the most famous Garbage Pail Kid, he isn't technically the first; that honor belongs to Nasty Nick who is card No. 1a (Adam is card No. 8a). Nick's 1a registration means his card is the first card in the first series. This card depicts a child-like vampire (dressed like Bela Lugosi's Dracula) who had just bitten the neck of a Barbie-like doll. Since the vampire is a parody of a Cabbage Patch Doll, he's not much bigger than his Barbie doll victim. He doesn't have the most original name, but still a weird character!
According to my research, a PSA 10 copy of Nasty Nick achieved an all-time high of $17,900 back in May 2021. But this was during the comic boom and it's very unlikely if another PSA 10 would sell for anywhere near that 2021 sale. In fact, a PSA 10 sold for less during an auction hosted on eBay in June 2024 that received 59 bids:
That's still an impressive number and clearly there's still a lot of demand for high-grade Garbage Pail Kids in the secondary market.
