Saturday, May 19, 2012

VINTAGE: Derby Coal Stickers


When I was a kid, everyone was going crazy collecting skateboard stickers.  Sure I had a skateboard, but I used to cover it in MINING STICKERS.  There is a huge sticker market for miners and coal companies and steel companies - basically for anyone that works in a business where they have to wear a HARD HAT.  The hard hat guys like to put the stickers all on their hats and wait for them to congeal and get dirty and melty and gnarly.  This is real talk: there is still a HUGE DECAL market for these companies, with an old school concern for design and cartoon mining characters.

My Uncle Stewart STILL works in the Queens Mines underneath Astoria where they mine for mostly useless rocks.  He used to travel a lot for work, and he'd send me all these stickers that he'd acquire from his various mining gigs across the United States.  We all thought he was trapped in a mine for 3 years back in the 90's but it just turned out he was a workaholic.