Under Wraps

Bored with baseball cards and baubles, Jason Liebig turned to collecting vintage candy wrappers—and his Astoria apartment now houses some 10,000 of them.

Photos by Brad Horrigan

It’s seven p.m. on election night, yet a steady flow of pedestrians are still streaming in to the London Candy Co. to assuage their sweet tooths with imported delights—and to calm their caffeine jitters with gourmet coffee. Beneath the Upper East Side shop’s Day-Glo paintings and amid its colorful displays of Chupa-Chups and shelves stocked with Curly-Wurly bars is Jason Liebig, shuffling through a sampling of his personal collection of candy packaging—bright plastic and paper wrappers that most would consider trash, or at best a tease.

Liebig, 43, wears corduroys, thick black glasses and, fittingly for the playful setting, which is bustling with adults and kids, Chuck Taylors emblazoned with Union Jacks. He selects a glassine folder from the pile, containing several examples of Kit Kat wrappers dating back to the candy’s official incarnation in 1937, two years after its introduction under a different name.

One of the wrappers is uncharacteristically blue. Liebig …