Friday, October 20, 2017

Another Cavalcade Of Griffey Cards XII


Awhile back someone, sorry I don’t remember which blog, posted about picking up some cards that had gum stains on them. When I was a kid in the early 1980s a gum stain on a card was a mark of death, it was destined for the spokes of your bike or to be drawn on and defaced, nobody wanted them. 

Now Topps makes it a variant of the base card in their Heritage releases, like we need more parallels, but in collectors who collected when the gum stain was a bad thing now sees it in a different light. It now transports us back to flipping cards against the wall in elementary school and leaves us wondering how many 1980 Rickey Henderson and 1981 Joe Montana rookie cards were tossed in the trash over a stain.

I caved, I had to find a Griffey gum stain for my collection, which is kind of difficult because by the time his cards began showing up gum in packs was quickly becoming a thing of the past but I did find a 1989 Bowman rookie card with that mark. I have picked up a couple of Griffey damaged and error cards over the years, things like this make each card unique.

2 comments:

  1. Old gum stains I don't mind. Gum stain parallels, well that's just dumb.

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  2. Awesome! Love that we've now come to an age where gum and wax stains are now desired. It's like they're unofficial parallels from the 80's (and earlier). I'll have to dig and see if I have any Gwynn wax/gum stained cards.

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