Disclaimer up front: I have not purchased a box of anything modern unopened for fun in many years, probably since the early 1990's.
When I heard about the gum stains in this release, it intrigued me enough to go down to the local Fred Meyer and buy some, out of curiosity...so their marketing worked on at least one buyer :-) The cards feel nice, I have handled a lot of modern cards and the emphasis on this set obviously being eclectic, is accurate. The cards feel like older cards did for the most part. They aren't glossy and the backs are similar (aside from just the style being similar). The smell is similar, the feel is similar. The base set appears to be a real challenge to collect, with the short printed base cards in a lot of situations being more desired than the lower level insert cards. My son and I (he's five, so he would have liked any kind of cards), opened the packs together, and we had a blast checking the cards for the different variations, comparing to the checklist, etc. Just from the 20 or so packs I opened I can see that it would be a real challenge to complete just the base set. While the whole gum stain thing is somewhat silly in and of itself, it's not a bad idea at all to get folks talking and intrigued (I did not get one in the 20ish packs I opened). Anything I think that gets people interested in buying modern for something other than cut signatures and jersey pieces is good in my opinion.
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