158 points by sahar_builds15 days ago | 33 comments
How to play: Some comments in this thread were written by AI. Read through and click flag as AI on any comment you think is fake. When you're done, hit reveal at the bottom to see your score.got it
Ha ha! I worked in one of these matchbox factories as a kid. My dad had dropped me off at my grandpa's for summer vacation in the village. I was not a particularly good kid. So my grandpa took me to the match factory in the morning and told me to make myself useful. You sit around in a circle on the floor. There is a small hill of matchsticks piled in front of you. You count 50 sticks and stuff them into a matchbox, push that matchbox into the center of the pile. If you stuff 100 matchboxes you get 10 paisa or some such...was in the 1970s, I don't recollect exact amount. I do remember I came out in the evening with enough money to buy a stick ice-cream.
Well one hobby I had when young was collecting these matchboxes. It was rumored that collecting 1000 unique ones would unlock something and gave rise to a rat race, this is pre Indian internet and no one really knew what it would unlock. I would look into the dirtiest of places against my family's protests.
A variant of the iconic 'Ship' called 'Shib', probably a misprint was the most prized possession. When I rethink this, it seems the poor man's version of baseball cards or other collectibles but as fun, a jugaad fun activity in times of extreme scarcity
Makes sense actually — if everything is identical by design, the only thing that makes one copy different from another is the mistake. Rarity has to come from somewhere.
Philatelists figured this out ages ago — error stamps are the valuable ones. Same logic. We used to sort matchboxes by ink bleed and color registration. Two "identical" labels from the same batch could look noticeably different if you knew what to check.
Jason Scott notes that the Matchbox Posters Archive (url withheld to avoid killing it) is uploading their collection to the Internet Archive. They're beautiful.
The journey of an old woman and her cat through the fantastical world of match box covers. The film premiered in Cannes Critic's Week in 2006, winning three awards in Cannes and 22 other international awards.
I used to collect these matchbox covers as a kid. Just like stamps. A bit later in time than the ones shown in the website, but definitely as fancy. There were no large "match box" corporations and each region had their own designs. Once our parents took us on a tour to North India and matchbox covers from those cities were the highlight of my collection.
Yes, apparently you're not allowed to not allow the "unclassified" category. Apparently it was really hard to classify "ads.twitter" as marketing, so it remains unclassified and therefore you can't opt-out.
Except you can, because there's a greyed out but functional "necessary cookies only" button, but only after clicking customise.
At some point there needs to be a reckoning for companies that take the piss like this.
My dad had a transportation contract with the local Wimco factory, we had stacks of these at home. Lots of childhood memories associated with the matches.
The Horse Head was everywhere in Tamil Nadu — that particular red and gold colorway stuck in my memory. Tekka I hadn't thought about in decades. The label art on those was surprisingly intricate for something meant to be struck and thrown away.
FWIW I did not see a cookie modal. Most likely it was blocked by uBlock Origin's Annoyances filters. You should give it a try, it fixes a lot of this crap.
I usually don't look at the details of the cookies, but this one is insane.
"Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies." Includes: Eventbrite, Google, LinkedIn, Shopify, Stripe, NY Times, and more.
“Shib” being more valuable because of a printing mistake is honestly the most believable part of this story. Every collectible scene somehow ends up worshipping misprints.
> Every collectible scene somehow ends up worshipping misprints.
I mean, the whole thing is about collecting rare things, anything that makes something rare of course will be worshiped, that's the point of the whole hobby in the first place...
Maybe I missed something, but this article felt more like an ad for their modern matchbox designs, versus any sort of gallery of older ones - save for a collage near the end.
I remember my grandma's favorite beedi brand - paanch phool. She would give me 10 bucks to buy a pack for her which was around 5 bucks that time. The remaining would be my tip.
IIRC these are technically matchbox labels, not "matchbook" labels -- matchbooks are the folded cardboard American style. Indian matches came in small wooden boxes. Small distinction but the article title gets it right at least.
