What do gates have to do with growing up? Between the blown-out birthday candles of a lifetime and the countless days in between are many gates... Most often, the gates are invisible. They are the metaphysical gates of change happening. A new year doesn't cause the transformation, living does. The book-of-the-week for Week 12, Growing Up: Vintage Trading Cards Set is a book about some of these gates. It's a snapshot of a period in time for a little boy during his first few years... Some are real memories and some are fun-loving fiction... Instead of a traditional photo book or childhood journal they are expressed as athletic trading cards.
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| a tape measurer and magnet create the clasp |
The book structure is an accordion book with pockets... and can be a sort of activity book...with trading cards going in and out of the pockets. The accordion pages are heavyweight Mohawk paper, mono-printed in shades of green and blue. Inside each pocket fits a Growing Up Trading Card. The front of each card is a polyester plate lithograph (of a photograph) of the little boy. On the back side is a fictionalized account of the lithograph's event in the style of a real athletic trading card.
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| Here, the trading cards are inside the pockets |
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| Here, the trading cards are pulled out of the pockets |
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| Track and Field trading card... Gold Medalist? |
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| the title card... |
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| the title card, photo side |
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| the title card print side... and the Track & Field card |
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| Trike #34, Nascar Hall of Fame |
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| card for Trike #34, Nascar Hall of Fame |
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| Greatest Clown |
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| silly boy did all those things! |
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| Top Gun World Traveler... |
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| Shredding the gnar on the pow |
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| Robo-Guy: can do anything! |
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| all the things Robo-guy can do when all grown up! |
Baseball trading cards date back to the 1860's when they were printed by sporting goods companies. By the early 1900's they were placed inside candy and tobacco products as a free gift. In 1909 the American Tobacco Company released the T206 tobacco card set in their cigarette packages. This set included the T206 Honus Wagner card... which is said to be the rarest baseball trading card of all time. In the 1950's the Tops Chewing Gum Company began inserting trading cards in its packs of gum and began including the sports players' game statistics. In addition to sports figures, the Tops cards included TV and movie stars, astronauts, and other celebrities. Non-sports cards produced by Topps included Wacky Packages, Star Wars, and Garbage Pail Kids. By the 1980's Topps was the leader in the trading card industry. When trading cards began, they were added incentives to buy gum, candy or cigarettes... by the 1990's, the cards were valuable on their own and the cards were sold without the gum.
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| the all-time favorite baseball card of the little boy in the book... |
