Category: Collecting

Con Haul

August 26, 2025

Here are some of the items I got at the con. I’m not including the half dozen or so volumes of manga (mostly isekai trash) or the many stationary items (postcards and stickers) since I haven’t yet decided which will be gifts and you may even see a postcard in your mailbox one day.

The above is an English ‘special edition’ of the Weekly Young Magazine, a Japanese manga weekly from Kodansha. This is a hefty (1000+ pages) volume containing the first chapters of 14 series translated into English. Readers can vote on which ones they want to see serialized, but it’s unclear whether this format (an anthology magazine) will continue or if they’ll be serialized online.

This is a beautiful book, printed in Japan and with the same feel as the Japanese anthologies. I had to join a longish line to get one (for free) at the con, and the next day I saw a big pile just sitting around for the taking at Kinokuniya in the city!

This is a vinyl figure of a kaiju that I bought from the designer. The monster itself is from an old (1980s) Korean film which I’d never heard of, but the guy who designed this figure also designed two of the kaiju in the recent Godzilla x Kong film and had a few impressive 3D prints of his work on display. His was a somewhat out-of-place booth for an anime con but I’d been looking for a vinyl kaiju figure and this one wasn’t expensive and scratched the itch.

There were hundreds of anime figures available, almost all of the prize variety. I’ve got loads of these BiCute girls, and picked up the above two at the con. Prices were extremely good – possibly due to competition? – and had I more space I probably would have bought more.

Bandai had a display and shop for Gundam kits, as well as an area where you could sit and make a beginners version for free. I charmed the dude into letting me take one! I like that it’s on a single runner, and will certainly assemble it one day.

I got the above clear file at the Japan Tourist Board exhibit. I was just throwing all the free handouts into my bag and didn’t even notice it was a clear file until I got back to the hotel. It promotes a 2022 short anime that reimagines Japanese castles as transforming robots, which was partially funded by local tourism agencies.

Loads of exhibitors were selling TCG cards, mostly Pokemon and One Piece, but one booth seemed to specialize in Weiss. I’d been considering buying a Weiss box for a while, they had them for a decent price, so I bought this Nikke one. I’ll let it age a year or few before opening.

Speaking of TCGs there were also a few being launched at the con. They all had the whiff of scam about them – companies wanting to cash in on the current TCG mania – but I wasn’t going to decline a free promo card. Maybe I can sell it for a fortune and retire one day. Or maybe not 😉

I’ve put most of ‘the cute stuff’ together. This is what I bought specifically for Kristin, and all of it came from artist alley booths. The envelope with Korean text is a blind pack of animal stickers, and the frog pin was also a blind box item. The bottom left is a capybara coaster. Had KLS been with me we would have purchased much more like this!

Even though it wasn’t a con purchase, here’s a bonus pic: dollar-bin comics purchased at Midtown Comics. I have no interest in recent superhero comics, but always find the late 80s and early 90s stuff a fun read. I wonder which of these will be best and which worst?

The World Of Bootleg Chinese Waifu Cards

August 5, 2025

I bought this a couple of weeks ago:

It’s a box of ‘Goddess Story’ cards. These are Chinese unlicensed ‘waifu’ cards featuring girls from anime and video games. Some refer to these as ‘Goddess Story TCG’ but they’re strictly for collecting only: there’s no game element.

Here’s a pack:

And here’s the five cards that were inside:

From the top left, we have characters from Love Live, Oreimo, Needy Streamer Overdose, Gundam and Demon Slayer. All the characters featured on the cards are from existing properties – 24 in total are represented in this box alone – and none of them are licensed. These cards therefore exploit the (lack of) Chinese copyright laws to use the artwork without credit or payment.

The cards are extremely high quality. They’re all glossy and well made, most of them have some type of foiling and the rarer ones are embossed and have very fancy foil effects. Even the most basic cards feel better in your hands than a Magic The Gathering card, and this quality belies the bootleg nature of this product, and is one of the reasons it’s become so popular.

There’s six levels of rarity in this box, shown above. Rare cards (the lowest rarity) are not foiled, but all the others are. The four levels about CR (SR, SSR, SER & SCR) are textured with embossing effects as well. Apparently SCR cards are very rare, and I was lucky to get even one in my box (which I haven’t finished opening). Can you identify the characters/series on the above six cards?

I first heard of these during the pandemic, and saw them available on places like Etsy about two years ago, although I felt they were overpriced at about $5 a pack. When I was in Australia earlier this year a shop at Charlestown Square was selling individual packs at A$14 each (!) which was eye-opening, so when I saw on Amazon a price of only $13 – for an entire box of 30 packs – it was time to buy in. I was so impressed I quickly purchased a few more:

Only one of these boxes cost more than $20, and it was only by a few dollars. Each of these are different sets, although the bootleg nature of the product makes it difficult to determine in what order these were released (there’s no dates and the set codes are inconsistent). Furthermore the box I have opened contains some cards not listed on the checklist at the back of the box.

At this point I’m sure some of you are shaking your heads (“He bought ten boxes?!?”) but these scratch the itch of opening trading card packs, are very cheap, and the cards are shiny and pretty! I’ll be opening these packs for years 🙂

I’ve been buying these on Amazon, and the vendors usually send bonuses with the orders. To my surprise this has included promo packs and the included cards are shown above. I like that two of these are tarot cards. Imagine the difficulty of assembling an entire deck!

And then there’s the above. It turns out other Chinese companies are releasing similar products, and I’ve bought a few of them as well to evaluate. These were a little more expensive than Goddess Story and seem to promote themselves as higher quality cards with fancier treatments (including heat-sensitivity, glow-in-the-dark and gems). As you can see I haven’t opened any of these yet; I’ll save them for a special occasion!

I’ve got over 300 packs of Goddess Story cards now. Want some? Let me know 🙂

The Fortress Of Necross

July 21, 2025

Rewind back to a typical day in the life of other me in Japan in 1987. I’d been playing Famicom Dragon Quest all day long and was heading to the game center near the station to play the new game Rastan that I’d read about in the latest issue of Comptiq. On the way I stopped at the konbini to grab a snack and saw this:

It’s called ‘Fortress Of Necross‘ and if the name alone didn’t win me over the art and words ‘Role Playing’ certainly did. I immediately bought it and found a little bag of chocolates inside as well as a smaller inner box containing cards and a plastic toy.

I quickly realized this was a heavily RPG-inspired toy series, and it reminded me of many of my other interests such as the Famicom games I was playing (Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy and Zelda) or especially my beloved TRPGs including Fighting Fantasy and Sword World. I quickly bought more boxes and built up a collection, learned more about the lore of the evil necromancer Necross and the heroes trying to defeat him, and even played the game utilizing the cards that came with the figures.

I was absolutely hooked! These toys seemed like they were made just for me.

Of course back in 1987 I knew nothing about what was being sold 7500 kilometers away and my snack choices never came with any sort of toy. I didn’t learn of the existence of these toys until almost three decades later.

The figures are about an inch tall, and include the good-aligned hero characters (about 8 per series) and many evil guys including Necross and his generals. The figures were packed randomly, and with 40 different ones available collecting them all would have been quite a challenge! They were massively successful, and over the next decade Lotte released 8 series – 320 figures in total.

As the line continued it began to include characters not restricted to standard sword and sorcery fantasy, including robots and gods, and the last set was even based around the Cthulhu mythos:

These are beautifully designed and sculpted little figures, and had these been available to 15-year-old me I would have gone mad for them. A few years ago I decided to get a few for myself as nostalgia for the other me that never existed.

This turned out to be easier said than done since these little guys are very collectible and prices can be eye-opening. Finally, during this past trip to Japan I found a few for cheap and finally began my ‘collection’:

Let’s look at each of these in order:

First we have Wood King (from the third series) who seems like a strong guy since his stats are high and his bio says he is a Demon King. The game involved drawing enemies randomly from a bag and getting progressively stronger as you defeat them, but I think this guy would be one you wouldn’t want to draw early! Each monster also came with an item that can be used to help defeat other monsters.

The Numelian (second series) is a weak monster that is apparently a ‘friend of the octopus’. He comes with a compass that helps defeat a Tengu monster. His figure is fairly small (about 2cm) and wonderful detailed for its size.

And lastly we have the Worm (third series) which is a giant worm that helps fertilize the magical woods. It seems to be of average strength.

As this toy line continued, various special features were introduced. This included some figures also being available in transparent plastic (such as my Wood King and Worm), to colour-changing plastic and eventually figures with removable plastic ‘gems’. It seems some of these fancier versions are especially rare and collectible, and I’ve seen examples well over $100 (for a single figure) in Japanese shops.

Necross toys are an example of keshi, or miniature plastic/rubber figurines. Many lines exist, and three are shown above: Kinnukiman (‘Ultimate MUSCLE’ in the west), Villgust and Monster In My Pocket. I actually recall one of the latter at Charlestown Square newsagent sometime in the early 1990s. I believe it was a dinosaur and I liked it, but I have no memory of what I did with it.

While these sorts of toys had their heyday in the 1990s, they’re far from dead. These days they have been returning in Japanese gacha machines – I’ve got some Ultraman versions – and there are blind-boxed Godzilla ones as well. Lots of indie creators make and sell them, and there’s even been some revivals in the west. Nostalgia for the old ones seems to be picking up as well, and here’s a (1 inch high) metal anniversary version of a Kinnukiman figure that I also obtained from a gacha machine:

I very much doubt I’ll ever buy any more Necross figures, but I’m happy to now own the three I do. They’re a glimpse into the memories of the other me that paradoxically seems to become closer the further away those years become.

Now excuse me; I’m going back to my other childhood, during summer 1987 in Japan. I’m home from the game center, my pocket full of Necross toys, and it’s time to watch the latest episode of Kamen Rider Black… long, long ago in the 20th Century…

Robot Claw