Roxanne Toser Remembered
By Kurt Kuersteiner © 2025 Monsterwax
Trading Cards for The Wrapper Magazine (Feb 2025, issue #359)
Roxanne (in the 1990s) at SCAI
The Wrapper is sad to announce the passing of non-sport VIP, Roxanne Toser. She was the founder and publisher of Non-Sport Update and co-owner of the Philly Non-Sports Show. She passed away in Mid-December after a prolonged illness. She is survived by her husband Marlin, their three sons, Barry, Marc, and Harris, and granddaughters Becca and Mia.
Roxanne was involved in the non-sport community for over six decades, and her efforts to promote and expand it were numerous. She was a big fan of Wacky Packages and Garbage Pail Kids, and she ran a non-sport mail order business from the mid-1970s through the 1980s. She started Non-Sport Update in 1991. While other non-sport magazines came and went, NSU continued bi-monthly publishing until its sale to Beckett in 2016. It continues to this day. While The Wrapper is a low budget, newsprint zine that serves vintage non-sport collectors and dealers, NSU is a big budget color magazine that focuses on new releases and current manufacturers. The two magazines serve different aspects of the same community. They promote one another and help each other grow. NSU gave a boost of class to our hobby in the 1990’s once its slick covers started appearing on magazine racks nationwide.
Few people realize that Roxanne was one of the reasons non-sport cards didn’t follow the “boom & bust” cycle that happened to sports cards in the mid-1990s. Keeping prices from sky rocking was one of the motivations for starting NSU. As she told GPK Boys Podcast in 2021, “Non-sport cards were starting to get really out of hand price-wise (in 1990) because there were strikes (and lockouts) going on in baseball, so the baseball cards weren’t around for a short time. There weren’t any sports cards. So all the sports card dealers decided they would get into non-sports, and they were driving up the prices. I had a dealer call me and say, ‘Oh, you’re gonna be so happy! We’re really raising the prices on these cards!’ And I said, ‘That doesn’t make me one bit happy. We love the cards, we collect them, and we’re not in it for the value.’ So we decided to start the magazine (and we knew absolutely nothing about printing a magazine) because we wanted to hold the prices and have a price guide in it and show what the prices really were.”
I happen to have been the Price Guide specialist for NSU in the mid-1990s, and I can attest to the fact that the prices listed were based on multiple documented examples of actual sales. It was a tedious task, but it helped prevent the prices from being manipulated and inflated by greedy speculators. A lot of people lost a lot of money when the sports card market imploded in 1996. The fact that non-sport cards avoided an equally large collapse goes to moderating efforts like those of Roxanne.
One of the funnier stories about Roxanne was the frustration she had with other companies that knew little about non-sport cards taking her work product and using it to compete against NSU. They used the same NSU formula of including a price guide, and since they were unfamiliar with the cards, they just copied the NSU guide and altered some prices. It got painfully obvious when NSU added a non-existing set to their price guide, and it immediately showed up in the competing rag. The funniest part is what they named the fake set: Copy Cat. Haw-haw!
In addition to GPK, Roxanne loved Wacky Packages. In the 1990s, she published several editions of Wacky Packages, The Beat Goes On. The 48-page color booklet was a checklist/ price guide for fellow collectors. She also published the Encyclopedia of Non-Sport & Entertainment Cards by Todd Jordan. That ambitious 528 page tome was a full color reference guide (and price guide) for all the newer sets from 1985 through 2006. She likewise published several editions of Jordan’s Promo Card Encyclopedia & Price Guide books in the 1990s as well.
Roxanne invested lots of time and energy sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm of cards with others. She became a board member of SCAI, the hobby’s first trade organization. She also traveled the country with Marlin or her son to other card shows, both as a dealer and (later) representing NSU. She even sent Harris to England for card shows “across the pond”.
Roxanne’s card activism was contagious. Harris started one of the very first non-sports online forums (NSU Card Talk, which is still an active forum for collectors of newer cards). Likewise, audio files posted there inspired the creation of UK Cardcast (the first non-sport podcast) with Paul Bines, which ran from 2002 through 2015. (Other card podcasts have taken up the flag since then, like the current Pencilled In Podcast).
When the non-sport industry started stalling in 1996, Roxanne responded by lining up the Non-Sport Update Summit. It brought together reps from companies in the US and Canada, including Dart, Donruss, Comic Images, Topps, SkyBox, Kitchen Sink, Inkworks, FPG, and Fleer. Imagine trying to herd all those cats at once. There was also a major winter storm that shut down the airport at the end of the summit and trapped several in Harrisburg for days. She must have really had her hands full!
Roxanne was the first dealer to sign on to Frank Reighter’s Philly Non-Sports Show in 1984. She maintained tables 1-3 every show since then until she became too ill in 2024. As the years progressed and the expenses of running the show multiplied, Frank needed to borrow from his retirement fund to pay the ballooning costs of the show locations. He tried to sell it but no one wanted to buy a show that cost more than it earned. Roxanne suggested the Tosers help run the show and lower costs. They teamed up with Frank and found a more affordable venue, allowing the show to continue until Frank wanted to retire from it. At that point, the Tosers bought it and carried on the tradition twice a year ever since.
Even before they took on the responsibilities of running the shows, the Tosers did a lot to improve it. They promoted the shows heavily in NSU, on NSU Card Talk, and their own website. They also organized non-sport panels and attended the informal dinner or breakfast gatherings that veteran collectors so enjoyed. Living in Florida, I’ve only been able to get to a handful of non-sport shows, but The Philly Show was always my personal favorite because it had the most going on and you really felt like you were part of its community.
This spring’s Philly Show will be held at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, PA on April 5 & 6. It will include a special gathering for those who wish to share some memories about Roxanne.
Roxanne with Gary Gerani (Dinosaurs Attack! creator).
Roxanne’s grandfather was one of just 13 original founders of a 1904 Pennsylvania Jewish Temple, and she remained involved with it all her life. The family asks that any who wish to send flowers might instead contribute in Roxanne’s honor to Historic B'nai Jacob Synagogue. They can mail it to P.O. Box 118, Middletown PA 17057, or utilize their website at www.bnai-jacob.org.