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Let’s Open Some Cards!

Sunday, September 17th, 2023

When we went antiquing a few weeks ago, I picked up a motley collection of old trading card packs for a song. In addition, I had a couple of other notable packs aging on a shelf. Let’s open them all now…

These Fievel Goes West cards date to the release of the film in 1991. This was the ‘junk wax’ era, when publishers gave anything a card set, and one wonders what the demand was for these cards? I’ve never seen the film and after glancing at the pictures on the cards never want to. The only positive I have about these: the card stock is heavy, the print quality high, and twelve cards per pack is bounteous. But I’ll be trashing these regardless 🙂

I once saw an entire box of these All My Children cards on sale for only a few dollars, and almost bought it only because it was so cheap. I’m glad I didn’t, since these cards (also released in 1991) are trash. Of the ten cards in my pack 4 of them were quiz cards with no art (the bottom two in the pic are the fronts and back of such cards) and the others are just studio photos of characters. I’d say even a rabid fan of the soap (which I have never seen) would be disappointed with this low-effort set. Into the bin they go!

These six packs of Megametal cards (from – once again – 1991) cost a shiny quarter each. I’d never heard of the set but gambled that with six packs my chance for a hologram was decent so I bought them all. The cards are decent if generic: a photo or album cover image on the front with some fluff quote on the back. What makes the set amusing are some of the included bands: have you ever heard of M.O.D., The Front, Heaven’s Gate or Dark Angel? Sets like these puzzle me, since it’s extraordinarily unlikely someone would be a fan of all these bands and would they buy multiple packs just for the 8% of cards that are Bon Jovi?

I got a hologram! A shame it’s L.A. Guns. If you want it, leave a comment, otherwise it’s heading to the trash with the rest of these cards!

A more recent pack now, from 2018. The Doctor Who card license is currently in the hands of a company called Rittenhouse, who prints high quality card sets with lovely art reproduction, loads of informative text and overloaded with chase cards such as autographs and costume pieces. The problem is their cards are too expensive, and a single pack of these Who cards retail for $10. With only five cards per pack, that’s $2 a card and they’re absolutely not even close to worth this price. It’s easy to ignore these sets right now because they’re ‘new Who’, but if Rittenhouse turns their attention to classic Who and in particular the Pertwee era, I’ll be miffed!

I picked up this pack of Bass ManiaX cards earlier this year in Japan for only ¥50 (about 40 cents). Released in 2000, this was a trading card game that seems to have disappeared from the internet as I can’t find anything on it (even the official webpage printed on the packs is gone). From the contents of this pack it seemed to have fish, lure, event and technic cards, and translating a few cards I’m guessing the goal was to catch fish – that were upside down on the table – for points.

I love buying clearance card packs in Japan because you never know what you’ll get. This is a classic example of ‘weird Japan’ (who was the target audience for a bass fishing tcg?!?) but even though the set was probably doomed to fail the production quality is high and the cards themselves feel better in the hand than an MtG card printed today.

So there we go. Five more card sets never before seen on this blog, many of which arguably should never have been seen at all! I’m always on the lookout for more, so let’s hope this isn’t the last post of its kind 🙂

Posted in Miscellaneous, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Stardisc Trek

Sunday, August 27th, 2023

A few weeks ago I purchased this in an antique store:

A sealed box of Star Trek: TNG ‘Stardisc coins’! Released in 1994, this was a product I don’t remember but likely would have ignored at the time since ‘stardisc coin’ is just another synonym for ‘Pog’. Yes, this is a box of Star Trek Pogs!

The box contained 36 packs, each of which has six Pogs. I paid $21.75 for the box, or $0.10 per Pog. Would you have bought it?

The packs promise much: “A must for the true Trekker”! Note also the spelling of ‘colour’ and the tease of rare gold versions. I tore open the first pack with some dread…

Each pack contains three cards, each of which has two Pogs. Immediately this seems to be a second-rate product, since you need to punch the Pogs out yourself. This is tedious, and even after opening only two packs I hardly wanted to start.

Each pack also includes a checklist and instructions on how to play a ‘game’ with the discs. These are of course laughable, and I very much doubt the writer ever believed anyone would play it.

The checklist is important since the Pogs themselves don’t have any name on the back, which is unusual since they are uniquely printed (with a number) so they could have easily added the name. Also it’s worth mentioning that the quality control wasn’t great, and more than a few of the ones in my packs were damaged:

The back of the wrapper includes this laughable statement:

At a 1/72 rate, I had a 50% chance of opening the gold Pogs, so I was surprised that I got them in only my third pack! Here they are:

At this point you’re noticing that each card contains two Pogs, which means that for the set of 60 there’s only actually 30 unique cards (since the same two are always on the same card). So in the box of 36 packs, there are 108 cards which could – in theory – net more than three full sets. These statistics seem to hold up, since I was able to complete the set in half the packs, and I completed a good quality (no damaged Pogs) set in about 2/3rds of the packs:

This is a terrible product. The print quality is high, but who wanted these? No one ever played the game with them, and ‘collectors’ would have just put them in a box and forgotten about them immediately. They’re just a ‘thing’ that has no use or even purpose, manufactured and sold simply to profit from that bizarre Pog craze of 30 years ago.

I’ve got a few unopened packs left. If you want one let me know. Even if you don’t, maybe I’ll send you one anyway 🙂

Posted in Collecting, Miscellaneous, Trading Cards | 4 Comments »

NYC: United

Wednesday, August 9th, 2023

I woke feeling the weight of two very active days. Many said to me ‘take it easy’ on this trip, and I’ve really tried, but even my east days seem to consist of a lot of exercise!

I ate the remainder of yesterdays sub for breakfast before heading here:

It’s the United Nations. I wanted to once again visit the stamp counter, which had been closed for over three years due to Covid. After waiting in very hot sun to get through the multiple steps of security I was in… and had to wait a bit longer for the stamp shop to open 🙂

Unfortunately the stamp selection wasn’t as large as last time I was there, and they also weren’t selling postcards. I did have some on me (here’s a protip: always carry spare postcards just in case) but hardly enough for everyone. I’ll know next time.

Now I’m on the train in my private ‘roomette’ trying hard not to fall asleep as we travel along. I had fun in the city and I bought me and KLS some fun stuff but it’s a little bittersweet that summer is now coming to an end and work begins again very soon.

I guess I’ll look forward to our fall trip to NYC in only two months 😉

Posted in Miscellaneous, Trip | Comments Closed

NYC: Empire

Monday, August 7th, 2023

I’m in New York City for an end-of-summer mini vacation!

Today I did a lot of shopping, a lot of walking, and a lot of eating. It rained a bit before lunch, then got very hot and humid, so it was a bit of an uncomfortable day. But to this veteran of hostile climes, I barely felt it!

I’m here to visit two more observation towers, and todays destination was the Empire State Building. It opened in 1931 and was the worlds tallest building for almost 40 years, and still ranks as one of the tallest (and very likely the most well-known) buildings in America. People have been ascending to the observation level for almost 100 years now, and today it was my turn.

It wasn’t very busy, and I was able to enjoy at my leisure the many displays visitors pass through on their way to the elevators. These include extensive histories and historical artifacts, a curved ‘theater’ showing excerpts from the hundreds of films in which the ESB has featured, a section where King Kong himself looks through the windows at you as you pass, and a gallery of celebrities that have visited the tower over the years, only one of which impressed me:

And then I rode the lift to the 86th floor for some sky-high views of New York City:

The green patch in the middle is Bryant Park, and the black and gold building on this side is the hotel I’m sitting in right now! As you can see it was a bit hazy today, but the views from the outdoor observation level were still fantastic. If you look closely you can see three buildings disappearing into the clouds in the distance: these are all residential skyscrapers. Imagine living with views like this?

Here’s the view in the other direction (south) toward Battery Park and the Statue Of Liberty (which isn’t really visible in this pic, but I could see fairly easily from the tower). I’ve given these pics a ‘ye olde’ filter since there was a sense of history being up the ESB. It wasn’t my first visit, but I barely remember the other time 18 years ago and the full experience is a lot more professional and impressive now.

Of course they exit you through the gift shop, where I briefly considered buying Bernard this lovely King Kong stuffed doll, before coming to my senses and heading onto the streets again to look for dinner.

Speaking of food: here’s what I ate today! A turkey sub, two mochi donuts (from different shops) and a chicken kebab from the just-opened and new to America ‘German Doner Kebab’ chain. It was delicious!

Tomorrow: another tower. Stay tuned…

Posted in Miscellaneous, Trip | Comments Closed

Funspot (Part 2)

Wednesday, July 26th, 2023

I had a novel idea: play some games at Funspot, do as well as I could, and then compare my scores to the world records. It turns out this was more difficult than I anticipated!

For starters, it’s often difficult to find any high scores for certain games. The obvious source would be Twin Galaxies, but that’s a site with a lot of baggage and it’s hard to judge the accuracy of many of their records. Even worse, it’s hard to even find records on their abysmal webpage!

Secondly, since most arcade games have dip-switches that allow the operator to adjust difficulty, it’s not always as easy as comparing a score to one recorded online since I may have played a different version of the game. I think this is likely for Funspot, which (obviously, and understandably) seems to set their games at the hardest mode.

Thirdly, certain games have ‘tricks’ that seem to disqualify high scores when used. The enforcement of this seems dubious to say the least: Pac-Man for instance has patterns that every master player uses, but the ‘t-block’ in Qix is apparently frowned upon if used in a high scoring run. Suffice to say I didn’t know any of these tricks, and used none!

I played dozens of different games at Funspot, but for fourteen of them I recorded my scores (some of which came from multiple attempts) to compare to the records. For three of these (Gaplus, Galaga ’88 and Marble Madness) I was unable to find reputable high score info, and for the remaining eleven here are my scores plotted as a percentage of the world records:

Overall, I’d say I did fairly well! Sure my 9,545 points in Missile Command wasn’t too close to the world record of almost 104,000,000 but I only played for a few minutes where the record took 72 hours! And my ten minute score of 128,552 on Star Wars wasn’t bad since the world record (300 million) took 54 hours. I’d say everything from Qix (a game which becomes incredibly difficult very quickly) upwards is impressive, and Track & Field is, if I may be so humble, a stupendous achievement!

I’ll be the first to admit I’m a little rusty. I used to be able to effortlessly defeat Black Tiger on one credit, but this time my game (2.1% of the world record) only reached stage two. I only destroyed two Death Stars on Star Wars and I didn’t even use the legendary ‘triple flapper’ method on Track & Field! But I’m happy with my results after only a few attempts and will refer back to this post when next we visit to try and improve on each game 🙂

This post also gives me a new topic to ponder: compared to every other player in the world, I wonder which game I’m the best at?

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous | 1 Comment »

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