Explosive Sticker-Price Explosion In Stickers Sets Inflation Alarm Bells A-Ringing

Skateboarding has long seemed impervious to the whims of inflation, with a deck and grip-tape in 1990 costing roughly the same as it does today, a conundrum that has confounded shop owners and time-travelers bent on achieving quick profits. Logic rules that over time a good either rises in price as ingredient or construction costs increase, or becomes cheaper due to advances in more efficient production techniques and more easily mined minerals. In skateboard decks’ instance, technologically advanced choppers derived from multi-blade Gillette razors have eased the felling of Canadian hard-rock maples, but the giant iron weights needed to press plies together and form decks have grown more dear due to increased demand from coastal New Jersey exercise parlours.

But fallout from the worldwide economic volcano could change all. Easy-money policies pursued by the Fed and other central banks have raised fears that nebulous and weird “bubbles” could be a-growing in certain segments of industry, risking catastrophe. So sayeth Esther George, Midwestern Fed banker:

“”Prices of assets such as bonds, agricultural land, and high-yield and leveraged loans are at historically high levels. A sharp correction in asset prices could be destabilizing,” she added.

On the internet, Ebay is an electronic marketplace where web users can buy bundled tongue depressors and floppy disks by the pound, or gently used pants. It is a digital bazaar where bargain-hunting is the law of the land and strange economic aberrations can develop, challenging monetary norms and thought processes. So it is that skateboard stickers have undergone a mutant outgrowth in price, with the “buy it now” demand of $16.99 for one cassette-tape sized decal running a hefty 3,400% premium to the 50-cent rate prescribed by glass case curators nationwide in 1994.

Here, fond remembrances of the passing Bridgebolt fancy of the early 1990s costs $8.00 to relive in sticker form. This Powell sticker ostensibly from the 70s is the size of several dimes, comes with ‘authentic’ centering error and is $32 to buy immediately. Elsewhere, two American dollars sought for a couple SMA stickers possibly reflects the harshness of Europe’s sovereign debt problems. Other entities, such as Apple Computer and HURLEY.COM, also make skateboard stickers.

Could a neon-coloured Steve Rocco Sims sticker selling for $27 or a $100 asking price for a larger Powell decal jostle the economy in an unfriendly way? Is there a market for recently unearthed Tracker stickers? Will packets of Bad Boy Club stickers ever find their true home? View more stickers currently on offer here.

1990s Antique Roadshow: Two Alien Workshop Stickers

Like many aging skateboarders I got a sticker “collection,” which is to say a ziplock stuffed with dozens of stickers mostly obtained as part of other purchases, and all but a handful of course are from brands that you wouldn’t mention in reputable company. The minority of actual good stickers present a problem, because they’re cool enough that you hesitate to plop them onto this month’s board, and eventually you get to a certain point where it’s tough to make the effort to put stickers on anything anyhow. So in the ziplock they sit. These Neil Blender-drawn stickers form the “TimeCode” era are probably the crown jewel of said baggie, alongside some Savier and Seek logo stickers that are certain to haul in thousands on Ebay in a couple decades. I got these second or third-hand from someone who used to work at DNA, and thought I had the Bo Turner one too, but it was either lost to the ages or stuck to something in a fit of pique. Here’s the full set