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These Grateful Dead stickers/decals are old tour merchandise. I found them wrapped in plastic in boxes in master cases. They came from a distributor who sold them to tour vendors. The condition is pristine and they still will work as a car decal or window/mirror sticker. We found them packed away in storage boxes dated 1992 (many are older than that) and 1995 (year Jerry Garcia died). They are high quality artist renderings of Grateful Dead themes. Back in the day, the Dead did not monitor copyrights and that sort of thing, and in fact, at one point encouraged artists to do designs. The LA times explained it well “The Grateful Dead was famously lax in enforcing it’s intellectual property rights and trademarks, allowing fans to create their own designs using the band’s expansive iconography”. Since there was no serious monitoring or much concern back then, a lot of up and coming artists got involved in designing them. This is how some of them got their starts. Some of the sticker artists who designed these stickers went on to produce official licensed works for the Grateful Dead and other famous groups. These stickers include some by now famous designers including David Opie, and others. These older stickers are very hard to find anymore.

Back in the day, when a new movie was going to play at the local theatre, there would be a guy who would run around town tacking these things on bulletin boards, telephone poles, fence posts, or anyplace else where they might be seen. Because most were outdoors, few have survived. Some will have small edge tears or roughness, but this is true of all paper movie broadsides, and they can easily be trimmed for framing. Although, a few small imperfections kind of adds to the look with these. Colors vary. We got them from the estate of famous dealer and friend Bob Secrist. He found them in the storage area of an old theatre up in Northeast Ohio.

They are in unused condition, and are uncommon. They were sold as hippie beads in the late 60s from a bead store near the Haight Ashbury area. In 1967, the hippie phenomena dominated the area and the demand for beads was huge. The owner of this store put out the call that he wanted all types of beads that were either colorful, large, earthenware, or had mystical significance. Some of the items that he brought into the store were much older, and we will note them in the listings. The hardcore hippies wanted glass or ceramic or earthenware, so that is what most of these items are. The lucite stuff was for the fake hippies. The demand started slacking as the hippie phenomena died down and by the mid 1970s, they started selling gold chains and disco related items instead. The hippie items were taken from the front shelves, and stored in the back. The newspaper they were wrapped in was dated 1977, so that's when they put them back there. The most striking thing in the store is an old display of huge African Trade Bead necklaces from the 1800s. They were even selling those sort of beads to the hippies. One of those necklaces will run you about 2 grand now. That place is a real time warp. You could still smell incense around some of the boxes and I kept hearing Jimi Hendrix and Jefferson Airplane in my head. Just amazing.