Winning

It's been a been long time since I've done a fluffy "Here's some crap I won on eBay!" post, in fact after going back through the archives, I can tell you that it's been over eight months since such a post appeared on this blog... so I guess one could say that I'm overdue?

So I'm gonna do just that today, but before I get to those fluffy eBay wins, I've got to give some public thanks for a very unexpected win that came via a contest on Twitter.

Between people's unsolicited political opinions, and the apparently never-ending Astros saga, Twitter has been pretty unbearable as of late, even more so than usual. I've stated recently that I'm down to about five minutes or less spent on the site per day, well, in recent weeks you can probably knock that estimate down by another three minutes or so.

Now if you've ever spent any time on Twitter, you know that there are no shortage of contests, and if you haven't, well, there's a lot of contests! As far as cards go, these contests are usually for some autograph of whoever's the current flavor of the week, which I never enter, in fact I hardly ever participate in the giveaways, that being said -- I did recently come across one that was worth entering.

I don't know what I was more surprised by, the fact that @Very_Cool_Cards was willing to give away a 1968 Topps Game Hank Aaron, or that I ended up winning said playing days card of the true home run king? That was a rhetorical question by the way, as me winning would be the bigger surprise of the two. It's been a few weeks since the contest, I still can't believe that I came out on top, especially since were at least 150 people that entered (many of whom were probably much more deserving). I just finished cataloging my humble little Hank Aaron collection this past weekend, and after doing so, I can say with all honesty that this one is now amongst my favorites -- it was also my first "good" Topps Game card, so that was pretty cool too.

I hadn't had the good fortune to have any real contact with Damon, the man behind the Twitter handle, before this, but hopefully that'll change going forward. Thanks again for the contest, Damon. You made this particular blogger very happy!

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One of the twice a year super mega card shows is happening in Nashville this weekend, and I had been looking forward to it for months, but I found out a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't be attending (more on this in Saturday's post), so I decided to use the money from a recently sold card, money that had been reserved for the show, and spend it elsewhere. This "elsewhere" ended up being eBay.

I don't spend very much time on the eBay anymore, between the ever increasing shipping costs, as well as the ever increasing amount of people who seem to have no idea how to properly package stuff, it's just not worth the effort most of the time. However, I do still check for certain things from time to time, one of those things being cheap vintage monster/horror magazines (don't worry, there are more cards below). Usually these searches don't yield much, as there are still a lot of collector's out there who are willing to pay big bucks for such magazines, thus not very many cheap one's showing up.

It was during one of these searches, that I found two different sellers who were auctioning off fairly decent sized collections (60's-00's), all of which were ending on the same weekend. The first seller had nothing but magazines, while the second seller had magazines, comics, and even cards.

Despite thinking that I probably wouldn't actually end up winning anything, I still went through all of both sellers items, and added a bunch of stuff to my watch list, then a funny thing happened... I won some stuff... from both sellers no less!

I can't remember who recently said that we should be sharing the names of the good sellers on eBay, but I agree, especially as the amount of bad one's continues to increase. So, with that in mind, here's the first group from mikestoysoc:

Up until now I had been completely unaware of Monster Fantasy, granted it only ran for four issues back in '75, but still...

I ended up going a little outside of my comfort zone to acquire the first, and...

...second issue! Number's 3 and 4 were available too, but having never read the magazine before, I didn't want to take the chance that they might not be any good -- after reading the first one, I can say that I should've taken that chance. But oh well, I can always try and get the other two later on.

This is probably a good time to mention that I'm not going too deep into these right now, because I'm toying with the idea of doing a series later in the year for Halloween, and these, along with some of the other magazines in my collection, would likely be revisited (and much more in-depth).

I can even begin to tell you how much I LOVE obscure one-off's, and this one fits the bill perfectly. I realize that the subject matter isn't for everyone, but it still makes me wonder why someone would go through all of the trouble to get a first issue printed ('77), and never do a second? As an aside, I don't how a kid was ever supposed to try and save their allowance back in the 60's and 70's, I'd never even be able to make it past a comics rack/magazine stand without spending all of my weekly allotment.

I'm ashamed to say that I avoided Scary Monsters for a really long time, primarily because I didn't think that a contemporary monster magazine, written by contemporary writers, could be any good, and boy was I wrong... which is precisely why one shouldn't judge a magazine without ever having read it! The articles are actually written (mostly) by folks who were fortunate enough to be around during peak monster madness, i.e. the 50's and 60's. If I hadn't found a cheap beat up copy at a bookstore a few years ago, I may have never given it a chance. Since then, I've picking up more cheap copies whenever I come across them, which is very often by the way. This seller only had a few issues, and few of them were drawing an unusual amount of attention, but I was still able to grab the 2011 & 2012 year end annuals.

If you click on this seller's link, you'll see that they don't have a great rating, but the had decent combined shipping rate, and more importantly, they pack my magazines really well, and to me that's all that really matters.

Alright, on to seller #2, aka bthoven14. They had a lot more variety available in their round of auctions, but they were also offering free shipping, which meant that it was also a lot harder to land things on the cheap.

See... more cards! They had multiple copies of this Kaline Nu-Scoops, in varying conditions, and I think I might've gotten the very last one (I kept getting outbid on the others). Not only is this just an awesome card, but it also happens to be my first Nu-Scoops. And if I'm being completely honest, I'm always forgetting that this set even exists, then I see one that Nick got at a show, and I'm like "Oh yeah, that's a set, isn't it?". Now that I finally have one, I even went and looked at the checklist, bad move, there's apparently quite a few cards that I didn't know I needed and/or wanted.

For all of you back addicts out there.

It wasn't until I started pulling apart all of my abandoned set builds, that I realized just how many cards of Boog I had, certainly enough to warrant yet another player collection. This seller had a bunch of 1970 Scratch-Off's, and many copies of each card, including Boog. I didn't get the nicest copy, but I did get the cheapest, and it is unscratched, so I'm content with the purchase.

Starlog was always very hit-and-miss for me, some issues were really good, while others were almost unreadable. There used to be a place in Portland called Periodicals Paradise, which in it's original guise, sold nothing but back issues of magazines. It went through many changes over the years, and moved locations many times, becoming a little less of what it was each time it did so. But in it's original form, and original location, it was just about the greatest store that has ever been. I bring this up, because way back when, 25+ years ago to be more specific, they used to always have back issues of Starlog for a buck each -- and I haven't seen one in the wild since they left their original location. This one obviously didn't come from the wild, but it was just a shade over a dollar, and looked interesting, so...

And finally, a non-annual issue of Scary Monsters. This seller packaged everything really well too, so you can take solace in that should you ever decide to throw any business their way.

I actually bought stuff from three different sellers over this particular weekend, but after dealing with two stand-up individuals, it should come as no surprise to hear that the third ended up being a flake. After a couple of weeks of nothing, I contacted them to find out what's what, and got the old "Sorry, my dog fell down an abandoned mine shaft, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". Then it was "Sorry, you know that abandoned mine shaft that I mentioned my dog falling down, well, now an asteroid has hit it, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". which was then followed by "Sorry, you're not gonna believe what happened now, you remember that mine shaft that my dog fell down, the one that was subsequently hit by an asteroid, well, now a mountain has fallen on it. Darndest thing I ever saw, it just tipped over, right onto that asteroid crater, the one where the mine shaft that my dog fell down was, but I'll be sure to ship your item out right away". I may have exaggerated this series of messages just a tad, but it's close enough for you get the gist. I did finally request, and get, a refund, as they clearly had no plans of ever sending anything. Thankfully the item in question wasn't anything rare, or otherwise hard to come by, but it's still kind of sucky when you think that you're going to get something, and then because of some incompetent human, you don't.

So there you have it, not nearly as much stuff as would've come from the card show, but I'm good with that. This group has a quality over quantity feel to it, and that's something that I most certainly wouldn't have been able to say about the haul that most likely would've been brought home from the show.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.