Original baseball card art
The 1986 Topps Traded set was one of the most popular due to its awesome group of rookie cards. The iconic design featured debuts for Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla, Jose Canseco, Will Clark, Andres Galarraga, Bo Jackson, and Wally Joyner. Traded sets only required one checklist card (1T - 132T).
Technically, these cards weren't packaged with bubble gum. They were only issued for retail in box sets... although Topps did test-issue 1985 Traded in wax packs. However, I couldn't resist the opportunity to create the ultimate checklist on gum!
More about my giant sticks of Topps Chewing Gum
The last card inside a junk era wax pack would often get stuck to, or stained by, the piece of gum inside. My childhood memories of chewing hard sticks of bubble gum became the inspiration for making these large scale gum sticks. My gum sticks are typically tilted by 9 degrees, as a nod to the starting 9 on the diamond.
- My gum stick paintings are done on plywood as homage to the game's wooden bats. I hand bevel the wood with a router to create the proper shape, which also captures highlights on the edges and supplies nice drop shadows on the wall.
- The sticks are painted with my own multi-layer technique, making them look realistic.
- Each gum stick measures 12" x 36" and is designed to hang on a rotated angle of 9 degrees. This represents how the gum is typically positioned imperfectly inside the package.
- Each painting ships ready to hang, with hardware already installed.
- A printed and signed description of the artwork will be attached to the back prior to shipping.
- All pieces are original artwork by yours truly, Matthew Lee Rosen.
