As I was going through the box that Shawn sent, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw these beautiful vintage skateboarding trading card stickers...
What a stunning slice of pop culture history we have here. From a designer's standpoint alone, the retro graphics on these cards are a lesson in 70s style. And each card is like a little time capsule offering up a taste of what the skateboard boom of the 70s was like, at least in the mainstream view.
It's all I have in me to not go and get the above image tattooed on my chest.
Looking through these cards (which are actually stickers, much like Wacky Packages or Garbage Pail Kids), I'm thinking that these are from around the late 70s. I'm mostly basing this on the style of the images, the groovy sayings that are on some of them. If so, then they are possibly just pre-Dogtown takeover, or just completely ignoring the whole radical California boom that skateboarding experienced once legends like Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta hit the scene.
One bit that was pretty interesting, however, was the card shown below declaring that skateboarding should be made an Olympic event in 1984. If these cards were made int he late 70s, why not say 1980? Are these possibly made post-1980? If so, I'd venture to say that the graphics were probably a little out of date by then.
Another clue about the date of these cards lies in the brief biographies of various champion skaters of the day that are on the backs of each card. The latest date I could find on any of these was 1977. And let's face it, these pictures look pretty groovy.
Anyway, I just love stuff like this and can't thank Shawn enough! Looking at these cards has me looking forward to warmer weather up here in the Pacific Northwest when I can strap on the pads, grab my deck and glide over a little concrete once again.
