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In The Cards

Sunday, May 6th, 2018

I found this at Walmart last week:

‘New low price!’ meant $10, and of course I bought it. Twenty packs for that price was a steal, or seemed that way before I knew what it contained…

Here’s the contents:

Interesting mix. 11 different sets, including 4 packs of collectible card game cards. Nothing newer than 10 years, one of set (Anastasia) 24 years old! I’m guessing these have been in a warehouse a long time…

So let’s examine these in detail:

The Power Rangers cards are based on the film and are pretty boring. The plus is that each pack has a foil card, but the minus is that those foils are awful. Each card also has a strange Amerocentric trivia question on the back like this:

Can you get it without decoding the answer?

The X-Men cards have awful art, from the early days of computer-aided colouring. The less said about these the better. But what’s this on the wrapper…?

Each pack has an entry form for a contest to win a baseball card (then) worth $451k! Wikipedia informs me this card was indeed won, sold shortly afterwards for $641k and is now valued at $2.8 million!

The Anastasia cards are pretty normal for an animated film. I got one chase card (cut into an unusual shape as you can see). I’m pretty sure I’ve got packs of these in other boxes like these in the past so I’m guessing they were overprinted and undersold!

The Panda cards are unremarkable, but I got this flashy monkey card that will make a great Xmas gift for Bernard. And I also got this badass tattoo:

Fear the Fur indeed!!

The game cards are mostly garbage – useless cards from unwanted expansions for forgotten games no one played. But I got a rare token (?) from The Simpsons and some crazy gold Power Rangers card so that was good?

I’ve not seen Igor or Despereaux and judging by the cards I don’t want to! They’re uniformly brown for starters, and both seem to have uninteresting and somewhat ugly design. At least I got another chase in my Igor pack – and a Despereaux sticker that will no doubt end up on a postcard 🙂

Which brings me finally to the Space Jam cards. Again I’ve never seen the film, and frankly have always thought it’s probably awful, but take a close look at that card, specifically the bottom right corner…

Yes that’s a scratch-off panel!

My card may be a Grand Prize winner! I may have won a trip to Hollywood! It’s a shame it expired 21.5 years ago… but I’m still interested if I won? Should I scratch it off?

So that’s that! Worth $10 do you think? Or were these better left in the warehouse?

Posted in Collecting, Retro, Trading Cards | 2 Comments »

Meanwhile, At Work

Saturday, April 21st, 2018

Some quick shots from my office…

Only two of the above we’re provided by me. The rest came from colleagues, friends or students. In time this was noticed, and other students thought it was a good idea…

So it spread! I put the four Australian ones on the side there, but again most were from others. As were…

Israel, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, Austria, Norway! So many places I haven’t been (as well as some I have). Where will I get cards from in the future?

Posted in Collecting, Postcards | Comments Closed

We Boldly Went

Sunday, March 4th, 2018

Yesterday was my birthday, and despite the exhaustion I felt from opening an obscene amount of gifts we somehow managed to drag ourselves over to Dave and Busters to ‘play’ this:

I’d seen this a few weeks back when I was here with Y and J, but I hid my excitement from them because clearly this is a machine that only weirdos would be excited by.

It’s one of those sliding-floor token machines, where you drop ‘coins’ down a ramp in the hope of having them push other coins off the edge (the front of the above image) so you can win. In other machines of this type you can win the actual coins, but in this one you win tickets (for the redemption shop) and trading cards!!

As you can see it’s Star Trek themed, and there’s eight different card designs, with sixteen different cards in total because there are uncommon ‘limited edition’ versions of each. The machine periodically drops cards or plastic tokens down onto the playfield, and these can fall into the hopper and ultimately can be redeemed for tickets. The metal coins are recycled back into play automatically.

It’s a lot of fun. Dangerously entertaining perhaps. Aside from the lights and sounds (such as a phaser every time you drop a coin) there’s also a combo bonus, the thrill when a new card or coin falls onto the playfield and – best of all – the joy when something of note actually falls off the edge!

After an hour of play, here’s what I’d won:

The plastic tokens were worth 15 prize tickets each, and we had 68. The cards are worth points as well (100 or 200 for limited versions) but you have to turn them in so I didn’t redeem mine. With the 1020 total tickets we earned I bought this (for 1000) tickets:

And… it’s terrible! It barely turns at all and will likely be trashed quickly 🙂

So here’s some analysis. In total I sunk $45 into the machine, from which I got 1020 tickets which were redeemed for a $5 toy. But we also had an hour of fun, and (most importantly) I also left with these beauties:

6 of the 8 cards, 2 in limited edition versions. These are extremely nice, very high quality cards and I like them a lot. So much so I may return to get the other two (Chekhov and a Tribble)! The game is super fun, and I can’t deny I’d like to play it again.

Interestingly despite the cards all being original series characters, the machine is branded with characters from many different Star Trek series. Will they be cycling in new cards over time?

I also have a few doubles of some of the cards. To get one at random, leave a comment explaining why Enterprise was the best Trek series 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Games, Otaku, Trading Cards | 3 Comments »

Masters Of Magnetism

Thursday, February 22nd, 2018

That’s our fridge, or rather a portion of it. Every available inch (and more! is covered in magnets. Eventually we ran out of space and am now covering the insides of our metal front doors. Is there no end to this magnet-buying madness? Not in sight, surely…

This post is a somewhat random showcase of some of this sprawling collection. Sometimes they have a story, sometimes not. But it shows the variety amidst the madness 🙂

This weird alien magnet was one of the very first we got. It was purchased about 25 years ago from an unusual discount store in Utica, where we lived at the time. This guy has therefore graced five fridges in his life, and still has pride-of-place.

Incidentally this type of magnet – rectangular plastic printed front with magnetic back – is very common now and ubiquitous in stores everywhere. But back when I got him the shape and size was novel, and coupled with the art one of the reasons he caught my eye.

Two of the many examples of (often free) advertising magnets. The first was given to me at a bookstore in mid 2000, and the second we probably got when we bought subs at the now defunct restaurant. In addition to these, we have everything from rental car agencies to lawyers offices to pet grooming services to even meat sellers magnets on our fridge!

A lovely magnetic memento crafted for us on the spot at a work event my wife’s work put on a few years back. A star of our collection 🙂

This is an example of a ‘kept gift’. I bought this for someone whose name rhymes with ‘Learned’ and never gave it. If he finds out he’ll curse me forever until he remembers the bird magnet I just gave him for his birthday, which he will then tweet a picture of along with the message: “Best gift I’ve ever been given!”

Tacky 3D tourist magnets are rarely bad and often – as in these examples – fantastic. There’s quite an assortment of these on display, each as garish as the next. This is a category that grows with every trip!

Speaking of trips, this is a cross-stitched Stonehenge magnet KLS made from a little kit purchased right at the Stonehenge visitors center! It’s a lovely thing, only about an inch square, and another prized magnet.

This is a weird one. I purchased this in NM when I visited Florence years back and it’s to date the only magnet I have featuring Satan. Although I do have a Cthulhu… ?

Last but not least one of my very own creations, an invader made of Perler beads. I made several of these and gave some away. In fact I’ve been thinking of making more. Want one?

That’s it for now, but there’s many others, including in categories not shown here (such as lenticular, otaku, ‘naughty’ and wrestling). Want to see more? Let me know!

Posted in Collecting, Crafts, Home, Miscellaneous | Comments Closed

The Stamp Collector (Final Part)

Saturday, December 23rd, 2017

This series turned out longer and more work than anticipated but as we all know, all good things must come to an end.

The largest portion of my stamp ‘collection’ is still affixed to the hundreds of postcards I have stored together in a box. From all over the world and spanning over twenty years, these contain a fascinating selection of stamps and cancellations.

The New Zealand stamps on the postcards sent by Bernard were quite special and varied, but I also like the mini airmail stamp attached to the Swiss stamp and the (very unique!) Death Valley cancellation.

There’s those Star Wars stamps attached to a postcard I sent from Hawaii a decade ago. There’s the only postcard I ever received from Italy (and boring at that) followed by an example of my creative stamping from England.

Those were both from Oz last year, and you may have seen these on your cards? Australia seems to have doubled down on large and lavish animal stamps these past years, and I always seek them out to include them on postcards.

In fact I’ve got no problem whatsoever eating up large portions of the back of a postcard with lovely stamps…. like this:

Which is another specimen I sent KLS last year. I’ve done the above several times over the years, but this one may be my masterpiece!

One thing I’ve learned doing research for this series is that while collectors prefer stamps to be as pristine as possible, there are certain stamps that are more collectible if they had been used for postage. This is why I particularly like the ones attached to my postcards, since they were used to mail stuff to me!

In a few days I’m off to Australia again. This time, when you get your postcards, spare a moment to appreciate the stamps. It’s likely I put as much thought into them as I did the card itself or even what I wrote on it.

I hope you found this series interesting. I ended up much farther down the rabbit hole than I ever expected, and at times even I couldn’t see light, but I’m glad I’m out now and can move on with the usual topics 🙂

Posted in Art, Collecting, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Stamps | Comments Closed

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