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Bruesothat high quality examples exist of caramel cards, etc. when you consider who they were marketed to and how long it was before real collecting of these items begin. I was a pretty collector minded kid when I was growing up, but I still don't have any of those Beatles or Dark Shadows cards I collected when I was growing up, and if I did, they wouldn't look all that great. To think some kid in 1914 might've pulled out a card and DIDN'T bend it up or at best glue it into a book boggles my mind. Add to that the likelihood of getting a 1914 Cracker Jack that wasn't badly stained by the candy itself.
I've always thought what a burn it would be if, for example, you're a kid collecting in the 1950s and you keep buying packs because you WANT that Mickey Mantle card- then maybe you actually get on in a pack, but it's got gum stains on it. I know a local dealer who said he collected 1953 Topps when he was a kid and was always after that Mantle card. By the time he looked at his cards again when he was an adult, he remembered that he had "failed"- there wasn't any Mantle. But he had a couple of Satchell Paige's.
Someone on E-bay keeps auctioning Topps Rack Packs from the 1950's- They have a Santa Claus on the top of them. I look at those and think, How did any kid who got one of those for Christmas NOT rip it open?!