In general, I try to avoid cards with flaws. I'm not into grading so I'm not obsessed with centering, etc., but I do like cards with as few flaws as possible.
I definitely try to skip cards with creases or ones that are written on or drawn upon. Any card that has been altered by something other than good old wear, I try to avoid. But there is one well-known flaw that really doesn't bother me that much. In fact, when I realize a card has it -- because sometimes it's tough to tell -- I get a fuzzy nostalgic feeling.
This card has it. Do you know what it is? I was going through my 1979 Topps football extras to send to Cardboard Junkie in a deal when a slight touch of the card gave me that rush. If you look carefully at Steve DeBerg's back elbow, the arm holding the football, you can spot it.
It's the gum stain. For me, it's the most innocent card stain there is. Normally, me and stains on cards are mortal enemies. I can't stand seeing them, I've thrown cards out with stains on them, especially if I can't tell what the stain comes from. The only other stains that sometimes get a pass are the grease stains on Hostess Twinkies cards, they're just part of the package.
But gum stains, especially if they're almost undetectable -- can't be seen, only felt -- remind me of a time when cards came in wax packs with a stick of gum. That is how I bought cards from 1975 all the way to 1991. And you could guarantee that there would be one card in the pack with a gum stain.
You'd hope that stain was on the back (although it was extra apparent on the back, too). Many times as a youngster, I'd take my fingernails and scrape off the gum flecks -- which is something I'm sure became an instant no-no some time in the 1990s. But since there was one card in each pack with that "flaw" it was no big deal. Your collection was filled with gum-stained cards. And as much as I handled my cards back then, I knew that card feeling by heart.
That all disappeared when gum was removed from cards so we could protect our investment. And now it's one of those "good ol' days" sensations, probably not as good as we remember it but really pretty harmless.
I was reminded again of those gum stains just yesterday when I received a bunch of 1983 O-Pee-Chee baseball cards from a generous sender Christopher on Bluesky.
That's 47 cards off my '83 OPC wants and now I'm down to needing just 23 more cards from the 396-card set. This all came about just because I announced that I had finally paged the big column of '83 OPC that I received from Angus. Now I get to add these to the binder!
Lots and lots of star power here. All guys I watched back in the day -- when I was opening wax packs and usually shunning the gum.
Just a handful of those wonderful variations that make me collect OPC in the first-place. I think I might have most of them already. I'll have to check -- and I probably should get my wants on my blog as they're only on TCDB right now.
And these five cards have gum stains on them, not that I could tell by sight, only by touch. No, I will not be scraping off the stain, they're perfect the way they are.
Obviously there are times when you want to get rid of those gum stains. I've written in the past about acquiring '50s or '60s cards where the gum stains are so old that they are super-visible and mark up the card, the player's face, etc. In those cases I'm looking for ways to try to remove them, but that doesn't happen often.
Gum stains were just part of life opening packs when I was a kid -- just like off-center cards, another thing that collectors who are in search of perfection don't like. (In the case of OPC, I guess that means accepting ragged edges, too).
But cards weren't made to be perfect. They were made to create memories of a player or a team or a year and so you could collect them all (OK, they were made to make money). Quality control wasn't as much of an obsession as it is now in the hobby and it's probably why I'm the collector I am now -- I will never grade and cards straight out of the pack are always fine.
What you do to them after -- that's up for debate.
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