Category: Trading Cards

Retro Wax Packs (Part 4)

  • September 10, 2024

I’ve got some more retro packs of trading cards to open! Once again these are all from the wax era (the packs are sealed with wax), which means they’re (almost) all over 40 years old. I’ve had these for about a year, so let’s see what’s inside…

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (Topps, 1991)

These date from the last years of the wax pack era, and by now Topps has abandoned bubble gum. I’ve shown a few other series from this period before, and these cards are similar in design.

The cards all have nice shots from the film, surely of interest to young fans. As you can see the borders and basic design aren’t too different from the Star Wars series from over a decade earlier. Even in 1991 the cards were still printed on non-glossy cardstock, which I still prefer to this day.

The backs contain the usual story synopsis. To this day I’m not sure I’ve even seen this film. I probably should.

The pack includes a single sticker, which unfortunately is not die-cut. The back of the sticker is a puzzle piece, and with only one sticker per pack I imagine completing this puzzle was a costly task.

Overall it’s a decent product, although it’s from the post-80s era with the lesser quality stickers and too early for the flashy chase cards of the mid to late 90s. If you like TMNT, these would have been great.

Magnum (Donruss, 1983)

I watched this show when I was a kid (why?) and I loved trading cards even then. But I don’t remember ever knowing Magnum cards existed, and without any monsters or spaceships I probably wouldn’t have bought a pack even had I known!

The cards are great, and I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence or not but of the eight in my pack more than half featured the ruggedly handsome face of Tom “I was almost Indiana Jones” Selleck himself.

The pack included a stick of gum, which had weirdly puffed up during the 41 years. It had a disturbing smell (of mold?) as well, and had strongly adhered to the card. I discarded both 🙂

The majority of cardbacks are puzzle pieces with just a single card containing a pithy thought from Magnum himself. Did kids enjoy this?

There were no stickers, and while the cards were well printed I doubt they would have appealed to anyone outside of the small group of card-collecting Magnum fans. I’m guessing it didn’t sell well.

Alien (Topps, 1979)

This is a somewhat ‘famous’ card set and I’d been after a pack for years. It wasn’t inexpensive, at about $8, but it was fun to finally open a pack again…

The cards are beautiful! Obviously following the Star Wars design template, these show off the movie extremely well, and would have been a wonderful collection for fans back in 1979. Remember these were the days before VHS, and cards like these would have been one of the only ways for people to see images from the film outside of the cinema.

The gum was rancid and moldy but hadn’t stuck to or damaged any cards. No, I didn’t eat it!

Most of the backs contain tantalizing snippets of puzzle art that I don’t recognize. Did Topps commission art for the puzzles since the movie poster was too simple and since Giger art would have been inappropriate?

The remainder of cardbacks contain a story summary. I like the egg border!

Here’s my die-cast sticker! Certainly not the best from the set, but charming regardless. I wonder if this actor has a copy of one of these to this day?

And one single card has an advert on the back.

These are fantastic. I recall opening one or two packs of this as a child, although I only remember sticking (with glue) a single card into my scrapbook. I wish I still owned that scrapbook; what a blog post it would have made! I’d love to find a box of this for a decent price, and complete the set 🙂

Classic Doctor Who Trading Cards

  • July 8, 2024

I bought thirteen packs of Doctor Who trading cards last year and I think they’ve aged enough. Time to open them!

As you can see there were four series, released from 1994 through 1996. Unusually these were printed by an American company, but even though I knew of them and looked for them at the time I never saw them sold here. They of course only cover classic Who, since the relaunch was several years away when these were printed.

The above shows the contents of a series 1 pack. Ten cards, each nicely designed (especially for the time) and with a great deal of text on the back. I would have loved these thirty years ago!

A nice touch is that the first three series continue numbering and share design, and it’s almost impossible to tell which particular series a card comes from if you don’t look at the number. Here are cards from each of the first three sets:

Series 1 and 2 have a small (about 1 in 500) chance of autographs in the packs. Of particular interest to me was the Jon Pertwee autograph apparently possible in series 2, and there were traces of excitement in the house as I opened the packs. Alas I was not lucky, and in fact only got two chase cards between all 13 packs:

The leftmost is a glossy card that has a puzzle piece on the back, and the rightmost is a very nicely done foil card (both these came from series 3 packs). These are of average quality for chase cards of that era, and I think would have been satisfying enough to pull from packs.

The 4th series was a surprise. Not only is the design completely different and the numbering resets, but the cards are uglier, many of them are poorly aligned or even miscut and the text written on the back not as good. If I’d bought these in 1996 I would have expected consistency with the first 3 sets (based on the wrapper) and would have been disappointed with the changes.

Overall though, it was fun opening these 30 year old packs of cards, and I’m happy I only got a single double and now have about a third of the full set!

Now let’s go back even further… almost fifty years to be precise!

Back in 1976 Ty-Phoo tea (in the UK) had a promotion called The Amazing World Of Doctor Who. This comprised a booklet, wall chart and set of 12 trading cards randomly packed into boxes of tea. Here’s the full set:

I bought these (for only $5!) at the antique store we visited the other day. They’re in incredible condition for their age, and as a relic of now-ancient Who they’re fantastic. As a fourteen-year-old I would have treasured these!

The back of each card has the name of the character/monster shown, and information on how to buy the book. Based on the rates quoted, you’d have needed to drink a lot of tea to collect a full set of these, so I suppose I’m fairly lucky I own them!

They’ll happily live in a case in a box in a chest for ever 🙂

  • Posted in Blog
  • Robert

Autographs: Actors

  • November 23, 2023

In 1930 a signature machine called an ‘autopen’ was invented. This device can reproduce signatures automatically, and while intentionally designed for government (so an official could quickly ‘sign’ many copies of the same document) in time it became used by celebrities. Famously Queen Elizabeth started using autopens exclusively from 1959 which makes any of her signatures since then reproductions.

Autopens are often used to ‘sign’ collectible items – such as books – and very rarely is their use disclosed. It’s possible that some of the books or cards I’ve shown already have autopen signatures on them, so there’s an element of faith involved in buying a signed item. To avoid this, autograph collectors tend to prefer personalized or inscribed items since they show the signature is authentic.

Today I will show our autographs of actors, many of which are personalized and most of which were obtained from the signer in-person. There’s some famous autographs here today!

Lots of Doctor Who to start: Here’s two separate signed photos from Peter Davison (the 5th Doctor), both personalized. I got the one on the left myself at NYCC, and Adam got us the one on the right.

And here’s the 8th Doctor, Colin Baker. He was friendly and gracious when we met him also at NYCC, and I recall he was just sitting there mostly ignored by the crowd. This was years before the Who revival and I imagine he was nearly unknown to the average American convention-goer.

Here’s the 8th Doctor, Paul McGann. Adam got this for us as well, and it’s my favourite Who autograph. I hope the rumours of him getting his own series on Disney+ are true!

Even more Who, and once again thanks to Adam for all of them. I can only imagine how many Who autographs he has in his own collection!

This last Who item is a bit different; it’s the autograph of Nicholas Briggs, who has worn many hats in the history of the series but I’m calling him an actor today since he’s done most of the Dalek voices since the revival. I got this myself from him when he was at NYCC.

Moving on from Dr Who, the above is the autograph of none other than Warwick Davis! He’s been a lot of characters in a lot of shows (not to mention played himself in several), but he’s perhaps best known for playing Wicket the Ewok in The Empire Strikes Back. He’s a very well-known actor, and this is another contender for the most famous autograph we own.

And keeping with Star Wars, we’ll end today with the autograph of none other than George Lucas’s son Jett. I got this in 2017 one from a $60 (yes sixty dollar) pack of Star Wars cards. Every pack had an autograph but only a few of the signers were famous people. As you can see, mine wasn’t 🙂

As an addendum, let me once again recall the day I met Q (to get an autograph), which was still a surreal experience even all these years later.

Only one more day of autographs to go. What will the category be? Will there be anyone very famous? Wait and see…