Manufactured Imperfection

I started collecting baseball cards in the early 1980s as a kid.  There were all sorts of cool things about collecting cards in that era.  There were only a few sets out each year and I spent most of my energy trying to put together the 792 cards for the Topps set every summer.  A few packs from the Dierbergs in Manchester and a few from the Ben Franklin and by the time school started up in September I had finished off my set.

The packs of cards had a completely different vibe back then.  Wax paper wrappers and the gum were the two biggest differences.  Of course those two items also meant lots of imperfections with the cards.  There are still plenty of unopened wax from the 1980s floating around if you have never experienced the awesomeness of opening a pack of cards with a stale piece of gum in the pack, but you were often left with stains, discolorations, and sometimes even dings and dents in the cards.

Today there is no gum in the packs and everything has foil packs.  There are still some dings and dents on cards, but the stains and discolorations are a thing of the past.  Well, for the most part.  In this year's Topps Heritage set Topps announced that they were inserting cards with bubble gum stains into the product.

It sounded like a cool idea and I was actually excited about landing a copy of one of these cards.  They were even supposed to be scented like bubble gum.  I guess you could say they were scratch and sniff.  So after opening two boxes of Heritage, a few retail backs too, I had plenty of cards for my set along with some short prints, relic cards, and variations.  No bubble gum stain cards.  But wait....

While I was sorting out my Heritage doubles to help out another collector this afternoon I found this....

and then I found this.......

Very slight difference and there was no difference in code at the bottom of the card, which is probably why I missed the variation the first time around.  I must admit that the manufactured imperfection of the bubble gum stain on the backs of the cards is pretty cool and a nice creative touch.  I was thrilled to find this card too before I shipped it off to someone else.  While I am not a huge fan of Andre Ethier I think I am going to file this one away in a box.  Cool idea by Topps.