Category: Australia

Another Op-Shop Jigsaw

  • May 29, 2026

In an op-shop in Orange I purchased this for a mere $4:

500 pieces is more than I usually like to do on these stays at mums, but the art was so nice I couldn’t resist. Let’s make it!

I intended to start with the edge but the radius was large and the curvature of the end pieces too subtle to separate them.

Very quickly I realized the pieces didn’t have much ‘grip’ and even a slight nudge of the puzzle tended to dislodge them. In other words, this wasn’t the highest quality product!

The above took a couple of hours, and was enough for my first session.

There’s a weirdness to the art, as if the artist wasn’t entirely sure what some of these beasts look like. Also I wonder why they included two numbats?

The bottom half was considerably harder than the top, especially the lower right quadrant. In total it took me three sessions and about six hours to complete:

Or more correctly almost complete; there were three missing pieces:

Shame on that op-shop for selling an incomplete product! They should have reduced the price by $0.02 to account for the 0.6% missing pieces 🙂

Edgelords of Eternity

  • May 29, 2026

Today I caught up with Adam for the first in a two-day series of playing Magic using all 66 packs in these boxes:

Today we opened the Edge of Eternities box, and it took us about 6 hours to play 7 games with progressively more complex decks as we added more and more packs to our pools.

It’s a fun set with complex cards. I played a black/white deck in each round, where Adam played black/white, then red/green then blue.

I was the victor today, winning two of the three rounds. I can’t take full credit for this: I got very lucky with some of my boosters and pulled some very strong cards. Many games were close too, and the last one in particular (shown in the above pics) had a crazy board state at the end.

As much fun as Edge of Eternities was I’m looking forward to see how the Spider-Man and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sets play when we continue on Monday!

Bootleggers Again

  • May 28, 2026

Went to the mall today, and what do you know I found more bootleg cards! I know Oz was founded by criminals but evidence these past few days suggests they’re still here.

And what do you know, once again it’s K-Pop Demon Hunters cards. Two different packs in fact, which were a measly $3 apiece. What could be the difference between them?

The box on the left contained fifty or so foil cards all depicting stills from the film. Unlike the ones from yesterday they weren’t just the girls and included a good few Saja Boys cards as well.

These are reasonably well made and printed, although the foil is unspectacular and darkens the image slightly. But for the very low price (about US$2) this would be a fine gift for a bootleg-card-collecting K-Pop Demon Hunters fan.

The other box was a near-identical product, although the cards had different art and no foil coating. They were also not exclusively film stills, with a few cards depicting other anime style and chibi versions of the girls.

These ones felt a bit cheaper than the others, but at the very low price and given the art is different I’d say this would also be fun for a fan. (Who are these fans that collect bootleg KPDH cards?)

It’s been fun opening and inspecting these, but I think this is it for bootleg cards this trip. And maybe pirates booty in general, unless I find something truly unique!