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In Brighton

Saturday, August 27th, 2016

A few weeks ago, when we were in Brighton, I visited a stamp shop. As in stamp collecting, a hobby so nerdy that even I hesitate to discuss my ‘collection’.

I bought these first day covers:

Several animal-themed ones and one each commemorating the marriages of Charles and Andrew.

The guy that ran the tiny hole-in-the-wall store was very friendly, almost a bit too much so, and went out of his way try to find stuff I wanted. Since I was there on a lark, and only purchasing decades-old 50p first-day covers I was bemused by this.

Once I decided what I wanted he told me to take them for free! This was a bit weird so I insisted he take at least £1 – which he did – before he then went into a tale.

He said when he was young someone did something nice for him without expectation of repayment or any other obligation and he wanted to do the same for us. He then gave us these:

They are (so-called) Cinderella stamps, issued by St Moritz in 1940 to commemorate the Helsinki Olympics. Cinderella means they’re not real stamps (never authorized or used for postage) but they are still of interest to collectors. There were four colours in total; he gave us two each of three of them.

He was proud of them, and gave the gift sincerely. We waited for the catch that never came, until we realized he was simply a friendly old man that probably was cheered up by us stopping in that day. He didn’t claim the stamps were worth much (on eBay right now the 6 are maybe $15 total) but said if we sold them when we are his age we may make some money 🙂

Of course I’ll keep them forever. And for just as long I’ll remember that friendly old guy in Brighton that gave me these curious 75+ year old ‘stamps’!

Posted in Miscellaneous, Otaku | 1 Comment »

A Good Investment

Friday, July 15th, 2016

Back in 1996, specifically on March 26, I purchased this gameboy game:

It was the first Yu-Gi-Oh game released in the USA, and was pretty good for it’s time. Here’s some screenshots:

Obviously the USA version is subtitled, but you get the idea. I played the game, enjoyed it, put it in a box and forgot about it.

Look again at the cover, specifically the blurb at the bottom right: “3 Limited Edition Official Game Cards Insider!” Now I didn’t actually play the card game when I bought this (and never have) so the cards were little more than a curiosity to me. And for at least a decade they remained in the box with the game, unopened and unplayed.

Some years ago I removed them when I collected all the cards I had all over the place and put them into card boxes. Even at the time though I didn’t take moment to consider if any of them had value, although I was remotely aware that some of the cards I had acquired over the years must have been rare if only due to their age.

After this post, something triggered in me and I went and dug up my old Yu-Gi-Oh cards – including not just the three in this game but others that had come in other games or free with magazines – and looked up to see if any of them had value.

That’s when I did a double take!

That photo shows two of the cards that came with Dark Duel Stories. These were my cards, the exact ones that lived under a bed for almost 20 years. These two cards alone were each ‘worth’ over $100, by which I mean there were dealers on the internet prepared to pay me at least that much for them!

I’ve never actually sold anything of mine, but this was too good to refuse. After a quick chat with the guy that runs my local game store (who declined to buy them himself) I packaged up the three promos and a MTG card that I had pulled from a booster 9 years ago and sent them away to one of the leading secondary market websites. Here’s what I sold:

And about two weeks later my cheque arrived for an astonishing $460!

Individually, I got $20 for Exodia, $100 for Tarmogoyf, $100 for Dark Magician and an amazing $240 for Blue Eyes White Dragon!

Doing the math, based on the $20 cost of Dark Duel Stories and the $3.50 cost of the Magic booster, this works out to returns of 15.5% (over 20 years) and a whopping 45% (over 9) respectively. I should have bought 100 copies of Dark Duel stories 🙂

I was in denial this sale would go through until I actually received the cheque, because it’s hard to believe there is such value in Yu-Gi-Oh cards. But I have learned that the cards included with the game I purchased 20 years ago are amongst the ‘holy grails’ of collecting, specifically the ‘Blue Eyes’ since it was the first promo card released in the USA and has such a flashy foil effect on it.

I hope it eventually goes to someone that has wanted it for years and loves it. Even if it costs him $500 🙂

Now what should I do with the money?

Posted in Miscellaneous, MTG, Otaku, Time, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Video City

Tuesday, July 12th, 2016

In 1983 Topps released a set of trading cards based on popular video games of the era. Here’s an advert:

As it turns out, two of the games mentioned in the marketing – Centipede and Q-Bert – were not even in the final set, called Video City. Here’s the single unopened pack I recently purchased for about $8:

It was in remarkably good condition considering the age, and the wax seal was also unbroken. When I opened it, I was pleased to see the stick of gum hadn’t adhered to any of the cards. Wherever they’d been, they were stored well!

Each pack contains 3 scratch-off game cards like these:

The instructions are on the back:

The packs also contain three sheets of stickers:

The game cards are lacklustre, but I’m very impressed with how vibrant the stickers are. They’d look great on postcards…

There were several video game themed trading card sets in the early 80s, including Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Dragons Lair (!) and Zelda. Although released by a few different companies they mostly all followed the same format of stickers and game cards. I’ve been trying to get a pack of some of these sets (especially Dragon’s Lair) a while with no luck. If you ever see one, keep me in mind 🙂

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Trading Cards | Comments Closed

Cadash

Sunday, May 22nd, 2016

Today I dug out my TG-16 for a bit of retro gaming. Before I knew it, I’d spent a couple of hours in one of my all-time favourite games, Cadash.

I played this religiously back in the arcades when it came out in the late 80s. It’s a ‘platform RPG’ heavily inspired by Dungeons and Dragons with a good level of challenge and lovely graphics.

Of the four characters, I was always partial to the Ninja. The game plays quite differently with each though, and they’re all fun. I remember back in the day beating this in co-op with MMN many times.

The above shot shows me fighting a stroper, which is lifted directly from the D&D Monster Manual. It doesn’t stop there though, since the game also includes ‘eyes of the deep’…

And even ‘galeb duhr’…

It was only ported twice to consoles, and the TG-16 version is far superior to the Genesis port since it contains all 4 characters and better graphics. However continuing is impossible, so finishing it is a good challenge!

There’s the unusual ‘turbochip’ cartridge, one of only five I have for this now obscure system. Back when I bought the Turbographix it was because of Cadash, and Even though I do it only rarely, I love that I can get it out and play it again whenever I wish 🙂

Posted in Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku, Tech | Comments Closed

We Are Providence

Friday, May 13th, 2016

We drove to Providence today, on day one of our little getaway. I’d been considering such a trip for years, but after recently reading the newly reprinted Ramsey Campbell book ‘The Thing In The Lake’ the trigger had been pulled.

It was finally time to pay my respects to Lovecraft.

The first stop was a wonderful store downtown that promotes the memory and legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, an author (mostly) obscure in his life but now recognized as one of the most influential American authors to have ever lived. His contribution to the genres of fantasy and horror can hardly be underestimated, and I’ve been a fan for about 30 years.

The store had some remarkable items, and the lovely proprietress gave us a map of providence with all the Lovecraft sights on it. Afterwards we walked a few minutes to a local library to see this bust (which had been partially funded by Guillermo del Toro):

And then we headed to our primary destination, the Swan Point Cemetary. Specifically this small and somewhat unassuming tombstone:

Lovecraft was poor in his time, and upon his death didn’t even get his own gravestone (the above was erected over 50 years later). Initially he was only on the Phillips tombstone, behind me when I took the above shot. (Yes, I placed the tiny Cthulhu on top, but you can see offerings left by others – including foreign coins.)

Ironically he wrote about this very cemetary in his stories, as he did about many other sights in Ptovidence. He was a somber man, very poor and (as he believed) unsuccessful. If only he could have known how famous he would one day be, and how in a cemetary packed with incredible edifices the one that most people would come to visit was the tiny stone with his name on it.

Mr Lovecraft: your imagination was boundless, your stories timeless and I’ll always be a fan.

It was late in the day when we finally got to our B&B and we’re gobsmacked by how beautiful it is!

That’s the dining room we’ll eat breakfast in tomorrow! Everything in here is beautiful, and it’s probably much fancier than I deserve 🙂

Tomorrow we’re off to the zoo, only a hop and skip from here. Expect photos of animals!

Posted in Art, Books & Comics, Miscellaneous, Otaku, The Unknown, Trip | Comments Closed

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