Babe Ruth General Gum Sign/Display - Black Light PIX added FINALLY

[steve B]

Originally Posted by oldeboo

That would be insanely crazy!

(To recap) Almost as crazy as an item that was sold by the truckload by a big box store and millions of people all over the country, both inside the hobby and outside the hobby, saw it, yet not a single person ever resold one, asked about it online, posted a picture of one of the many thousands of items sold by the store, or ever discussed it at all in any capacity. Not one person out of the millions ever said hmm what's the story here, not even someone outside the hobby that wanted to do a little research. Then one magically pops up in an online auction that is different than the only one that can be seen online. The only online image happens to be from a random person who saves images of very rare items and was the only one to have an image of the item that was only viewed 170 times, of which 95%+ were probably from here. Since then, a few mugs and shower curtains were probably ordered. On top of that, some people tend to think it's original to 1934! Some think it's the white whale from the big box store. Meanwhile, others think it was printed in a two car garage by some smooth fellow running a printing press and die press to make this one copy. The odds of even half of the above happening are so slim, but here we are.

This thread has been fun.

Most of that might not be as unusual as you think.

Special cards and sets were made for the home shopping channels during the late 80's and early 90's. Nearly all of those are uncataloged and probably mostly forgotten.

Upper deck had a license for yugio cards in the late 90's, and counterfeited their own licensed product to sell to Treat Inc. The original article that covered it didn't include a list of which ones were made, just that they were rare foil ones and were different than the issued cards. Maybe there's a listing in some court document, but who is going looking for it?

Nearly all the unlicensed cards of the 80's-90s were never cataloged in any way.

I have a bike that was used to win a gold medal in a world championship in 1983. I've looked for around 20 years for a photo of the event with no luck at all. Not even a photo of any team, let alone the US team.
(the 1984 olympics TTT and 1986 world track championships team pursuit are almost as tough)

Do I think an ad piece for a promotion done in 1934 could have slipped through the cracks? It's possible.

[Jobu]

It is also possible that this sign was made and sent to Ruth, Walsh, or the team in hopes of convincing Ruth to sign off on a promotion that never happened - perhaps because of the bad blood mentioned. The staple holes/paper could have held a "take a look at this" sort of note.

This type of thing did happen, remember the awesome T206 Wagner strip proof found in Wagner's uniform pants in his attic.