July Pickups

[Beatles Guy]

A nicely centered '57 Topps is a beautiful thing.

[JollyElm]

Picked up a '63 Fleer Bob Gibson, a '72 In Action Willie with ridiculously great centering (too bad about the slight corner touches) and an oddball Jim Bunning. I know KDKA is a radio station is Pittsburgh, PA (and is supposedly the first commercial radio station in the world), but I have no idea what this sucker is. Jimbo was on the Pirates in 68/69 I believe, so it is undoubtedly from that time frame.

If anyone is greatly familiar with '63 Fleers, can you tell me if the 'stain' on the back of my Gibby is SOP for these cards? I figure it has something to do with the cookie the pack held, but I am unsure. Other Fleers I have seem to possess very similar anomalies and I want to make sure it's not the remains of paste or something else put there directly by humans after it left the factory.

gibsonmaysbunning1a.jpg gibsonmaysbunning2a.jpg

[brian1961]

Darren,

I guess I can chime in with some memories of the 1963 Fleer baseball. I collected them as a kid. The ginger cookie was not oily, as I recall, and perhaps a bit stale. Still, cookies have oil as an ingredient, and the Fleer company did something very thoughtful to prevent problems to their cards.

I remember this very well.

Their nickel-a-piece wax packs included another plain card, dark brown on one side and white on the other. The dark brown side faced the cookie, which likely was included to prevent any oil residue on the cookie from being absorbed into one of their beautiful cards. I never remembered any of my Fleers being stained. That would have annoyed me even as a 9-year-old, and I'm rather certain I would have recalled if the cards came out of the pack stained. Some things you'll remember from your childhood--52 years later!

Hope this helps at least eliminate the free cookie from being the cause of the stains on your Gibson.

--Brian Powell

[DanP]

Added another PW RC and a few more cards for my 69 set.

[JollyElm]

Thanks for your insight, Brian!

Originally Posted by brian1961

Darren,

I guess I can chime in with some memories of the 1963 Fleer baseball. I collected them as a kid. The ginger cookie was not oily, as I recall, and perhaps a bit stale. Still, cookies have oil as an ingredient, and the Fleer company did something very thoughtful to prevent problems to their cards.

I remember this very well.

Their nickel-a-piece wax packs included another plain card, dark brown on one side and white on the other. The dark brown side faced the cookie, which likely was included to prevent any oil residue on the cookie from being absorbed into one of their beautiful cards. I never remembered any of my Fleers being stained. That would have annoyed me even as a 9-year-old, and I'm rather certain I would have recalled if the cards came out of the pack stained. Some things you'll remember from your childhood--52 years later!

Hope this helps at least eliminate the free cookie from being the cause of the stains on your Gibson.

--Brian Powell

[ALR-bishop]

Flat, squarish, dry as a bone and cherry flavored....yum

[JollyElm]

For everyone's edification...I looked around at COMC and immediately ran into a ton of cards that had the same (read as "similar") back stains as my Gibson, so I'll display a few of them here:
fleer1.jpg
fleer2.jpg

It's pretty clear something was definitely going on inside of the 1963 Fleer packs. If Brian's recollections are correct and the cards were protected from the cookie, my guess is maybe at some point -- at the beginning of the run or later in the run -- the set-up changed and these safeguards were either added or discarded. (In other words, perhaps when the cards were first released there were no protective measures in place, but then consumers started complaining about the stains and Fleer acted on it? Who knows.) The high rate of occurrence of these stains seems to indicate that the dark brown/white protective cards were completely removed and it wasn't just a case of them accidentally NOT being inserted during the packing process from time to time.