High Demand Marijuana Collectors’ Cards Are Becoming Hot Commodities

FOR THE RECORD: Saturday, October 14, 1995 CORRECTION: A Tuesday article should have stated that new hemp collector’s cards are available at the Dead Rock, 2716 N. Division. The store name was wrong in the story.

These collectors’ cards showcase glossy pictures of Super Skunk, Badger Buds and Gator Ganja.

The cards don’t highlight new superheroes. They feature different strains of marijuana. The backs detail the history of hemp, facts about hemp and marijuana and the plant’s supposed benefits.

“The majority of people - even people who feel they know a lot of things about hemp - don’t know a lot,” said Spokane resident Andy Nelson, a Northwest distributor for the cards.

Nelson isn’t just selling the cards for educational reasons. They’re also political, and they’re also potential money makers.

Hemp clothing sells big. So does anything featuring a marijuana leaf. Nelson hopes the cards will sell as well.

“It’s really becoming a very rapidly growing industry,” said Nelson, wearing hemp shorts and a T-shirt stating “Help Eliminate Marijuana Prohibition.” “Kids are pretty much wearing anything with a pot leaf on it, and so is everyone else.”

“Not our kids,” added his wife, Kelly Nelson.

The cards could be a problem with kids, said Detective Mark Grumbly of the Spokane Police Special Investigations Unit.

“What makes marijuana so important is it’s the drug of choice for young people,” said Grumbly, flipping through some of the cards. “That’s why I hate to see stuff like this. It’s just putting it in their face again.”

Nelson said he’s not targeting kids, but adults who want to learn more about hemp and marijuana.

The stalks of marijuana plants, known as hemp, are used to make medicines, fuel, rope, food, oil, building materials and paper. Hemp makes backpacks, clothing and shoes.

It’s Super Plant. Hemp grows faster than a speeding tree. It’s a more powerful fabric than a pair of denim jeans.

There’s only one problem with growing it. The flowers of female plants produce marijuana, an illegal drug. It’s legal to import hemp products, but it’s not legal to grow marijuana in America for any reason.

The cards picture marijuana, but most talk about hemp and its uses. They’re professional, slick and varied. One pictures a new plant budding out of the ground. It’s called “Before Nursery School.” There are cards for Northern Lights, Lebanese, and Haight Street Hybrid, all strains of marijuana.

The only card that doesn’t show a picture of marijuana shows cocaine, which it labels “The real evil.”

One card features a snapshot of a clump of Cambodian marijuana and states that car magnate Henry Ford built a car almost completely out of hemp, marijuana and other vegetable matter. Card No. 29, highlighting Acapulco Gold, talks about marijuana being an effective medicine for 5,000 years.

“The only problem, of course, is that marijuana is completely illegal,” the card states.

That’s a problem that Nelson keeps running into when marketing the cards, made by InLine Classic Cards in San Francisco. He’s advertised on the Internet. He’s tried to find stores in the Spokane area that will sell them.

“There’s a lot of people out here who love the cards but won’t put them in their store,” Nelson said. “They’re hypocrites.”

The Deadrock Cafe, 2718 N. Division, sells them and sells them fast. It’s sold about 800 packs since August.

“Boy, they move,” a worker said. “I have people that come in left and right. They’re a very, very popular card with all ages.”

Nelson has also tried to sell the cards directly, but he sells only one or two packs a week. Small packs, wrapped in black and stamped with a marijuana leaf, contain eight randomly selected cards and sell for $2. A set of all 51 cards costs $25.

The first set came out in the spring. InLine Classic Cards plans to start selling another set, of 102 cards, in November. The company so far has sold about 300,000 sets and boxes nationwide. Washington loves them, more than any other state, said Kingsley Barham, president of InLine.

“It’s absolutely off the board,” Barham said. “We’re selling a lot of cards in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t know what you guys are doing up there.”

Hyping hemp and marijuana, apparently. The cards in general don’t advocate smoking marijuana, although one quotes author Norman Mailer discouraging young people from smoking before being educated and stating that “pot puts things together.”

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s sick propaganda,” Grumbly said.

The cards push for rethinking the war on drugs and legalizing growing hemp for medical and industrial reasons, such as clothing. Nelson owns hemp backpacks and a hemp wide-brimmed hat, which his 19-month-old son likes to wear.

The hemp clothing products feature a tag that says: “Warning: Do not consume. Hemp is 100 percent drug free and is the strongest natural fabric on earth.”

Nelson, whose family moved to the North Side from Los Angeles in June, eventually wants to open a retail store on the North Side that would sell hemp clothing products - and the hemp cards.

“The retail market for marijuana-associated material is just phenomenal,” Nelson said. “Anybody can see, it’s a very profitable business.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 color)