Stuff I'm Saving

Be it known that liquid crystal has many uses beyond smart glass and your computer’s monitor. Liquid crystal has also been used for many other important technological achievements. One of these important technological achievements which I have been making use of since the mid 80s, and would now like to call your attention to, are these liquid crystal filled stickers commonly referred to by their brand name Oilies.

Oilies behave just like normal stickers except they are filled with liquid crystal so that when you rub your finger back and forth across them they give off a swirl of rainbow sheen, just like oil. A second innovative property of these stickers is that with extended use they begin to leak this oily substance all over the pages of your sticker book. This substance looks and feels not unlike Mutagen and it a pain to clean up. Shown above are the sole survivors of the Great Sticker War of 1988. I keep them, and the book that contains them, in a chamber 4000 feet below the surface, behind a reinforced steel door, in an air tight container baring the warning “Don’t Even Look At It”.

In 1991 The Topps Company, Inc. (or simply Topps to most) celebrated 40 Years of Baseball, to mark it’s 40th anniversary into the business of baseball trading cards. The celebration was marked by a sweepstakes and instant win game where old classic cards were randomly inserted into packs of the 1991 cards. Odds of winning this way were 1 in yeah right! Each pack also contained a sweepstakes entry card which could be an instant win card (very unlikely) or you could fill out the entry form and mail it in for a chance one of 41 fabulous prizes! The grand prize was of course all 40 sets Topps ever produced. 40 other prizes were each of the 40 sets individually.

I opened hundreds of packs that year. I did not open anything but cards from 1991 in my packs, I did not win instantly, and I certainly did NOT fill out any of the sweepstakes entry forms included in each and every pack I opened. I DID however save all of them. I discovered them recently in a box full of other advertisement insert cards, puzzle pieces and stickers from various sports cards packs I’d opened during the early 90s.

There they were packed neatly in a row, all perfectly preserved and in mint condition, as if to say “shouldn’t we be prize enough?”. Yes, yes you should.