The horror of it all

Like most years since starting this blog, I had planned on doing on something special here for Halloween. But, as is so often the case these days, lack of time, and to a lesser degree, sucky health things, have conspired against me. So, instead of doing some elaborate and/or creative post, I find myself scrambling at the last minute for something to replace that with. The only thing that I can think of is to do what I did last year, which was to go through all of my scan folders (I have so much stuff waiting to be blogged about!) and pull out anything and everything that could possibly be interpreted as holiday appropriate.

I couldn't find as much as last year, but what I did find will have to do. My only solace is that at least a few of the cards in here are not the sort that one is likely to come across on the blogs very often.

1980 Topps Weird Wheels #'s 27, 36, & 49

This is a set that I've only recently become sort of enamoured with. I've known of its existence for a long time, but had never really paid much attention to it until I came across some of them on COMC. After looking at some of the singles, I found myself unable to pass this trio of monster/spooky themed vehicles (and their drivers). I don't think the set sells for very much, so that may be in my future as well.

1994 CARDZ Julie Bell #19

I'm too old for video games now, but there was a time way back when I could've been a called a "gamer"-- though, we didn't use that dumb term back then, thankfully. I, like a lot of kids, enjoyed horror themed games, this despite there not being very many such games at the time. One of the few exceptions during the early to mid 90's was the Splatterhouse series. I never owned any of them myself, if only because I never actually saw any of them for sale anywhere. I did, however, rent the heck out of volumes 2 and 3 on the Genesis. Looking back, they really weren't all that great, and old me now thinks that such games shouldn't have been being played by kids, but as they say, "It is what it is", or in this case, "It was what it was". I couldn't imagine wasting any of my remaining time on these sort of games now, and while I do wish that I would've spent some of those youthful years more wisely, it is still a period of my life that I'd like to not forget; and finding a card like the one shown that represents the series is a good way to help me remember. It'd also serve as a reminder for time misspent; lest I ever start to slip back into my old less productive ways.

1940 Bridgewater Film Stars 8th Series #18

Dorothy Lamour is best remembered for many things, horror not being one of them. That being said, she did appear in one of the Creepshow 2 stories. I liked the first film as a kid (not as an adult though), but the sequel never did much for me.

1993 Topps Jurassic Park #135

Despite some scary moments, I don't think anyone would classify Jurassic Park as a horror film. The picture's animatronic dinosaurs were created by Stan Winston (as on this card) though, and he himself was known for creating/designing many a scary thing throughout his career.

It's also scary to think how long it took me to get this card. It had been on my want list for years. One wouldn't think that a single card from a base set that came out in 1993 would be so hard to obtain, but this one proved to be quite elusive.

1935 Gallaher Portraits of Famous Stars #44

Beetlejuice may not be a horror picture, but there's no shortage of Halloween-esque doings in the film. It was a small part, but Sylvia Sidney's role as Juno is very memorable. That's partly due to it being a good character, but even more so because Sylvia had been appearing in pictures for a lot of years by that point, and knew what to do when she was in front of camera.

1974 Topps Monster Initial Stickers #NNO

Artwork-wise, I've always thought this set looked like it should've been a Japanese release. I've never looked into it, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if the images were at the very least done by Japanese artists. All things Dracula and Godzilla were major staples of my childhood, which now makes this one of the more nostalgia-inducing cards in my collection.

1950 Dutch Gum Series A Black & White #9

Barbara Hale is best known for her role as Della Street in Perry Mason, and this card was gotten for my Perry Mason collection, but the card itself works well for this post, as she also appeared in The Giant Spider Invasion. It's been decades since I last saw that picture, but I did like it quite a bit as a kid.

1995-96 TV Week #3

Depending on the episode, The X-Files could very much be considered a horror show. Looking back, I personally think that many of the episodes would've held up better had they focused on horror more often. The scary standalone episodes are still very watchable, much more so than the jumbled story arc's that just kept getting more and more nonsensical with each passing season. Chris Carter was good at creating shows, but bad at knowing where to take them once he got them greenlit.

The photo on this card was originally used for a magazine cover, back when the show was the hottest thing around, and you couldn't go more than week without seeing our intrepid agents on the cover of some periodical. I remember those days quite vividly, though, at this point it feels like that was multiple lifetimes ago.

1969 Globe Imports #NNO

I grew up with the Universal Monsters. I wouldn't even want to guess how many times I've seen a couple of their flagship films. In some ways those were like security blanket for me as a kid. Depending on which day you asked me, I'd say that The Wolfman is my favourite, but I could just as easily say Dracula, too. Young me would have said Creature from the Black Lagoon was his favourite, and would've had evidence to back it up to, as he wore out our VHS copy.

1996 Fleer Metal Universe #84

Being surrounded by floating eyeballs would be pretty scary, right? Well, maybe a little less so were you to be wielding a baseball bat at the time.

This scan was kind of poopy, so I tried to go the photo route as well...

That's a tad better.

1934 Godfrey Phillips Stars of the Screen #49

Frederic March ranks pretty high with me in terms of favourite actors. No matter how much time passes, and how many different versions are made, Fred's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde will always be the best, and his portrayal of the title character(s) will forever stand amongst the better performances in a horror picture.

Normally I try to remember to scan the backs of any older cards I'm gonna show on here, but it appears that as far as the cards in this post go, I only did so for this one...

1978 Wonder Bread Battlestar Galactica #12 

Roy Thinnes starred in one of my all-time favourite television movies, The Norliss Tapes. Like many of the 70's television movies, especially those of the horror variety, Norliss was made as a pilot. Its creator, Dan Curtis, was shopping it, along with Kolchak: The Night Stalker around at the same time.  Kolchak wound up getting the okay, while Norliss faded into memory. Both shows were similarly themed, so there wasn't any chance of both of them being picked up. Kolchak is my favourite show of all-time, but even so, I would've very much liked to have seen where a Norliss series might've gone. I've often thought that if I were a writer, and one who was inclined to do fan fiction, that Norliss would make for a wonderful series of books.

1937 Sinclair Film Stars #16

Colin Clive does not have very many cards, so it feels like cause for celebration whenever I get one of them. He, of course, is best known for his portrayals of Henry Frankenstein in Universal's Frankenstein and its sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. It's hard to believe that all 19 of his films were made in span of just seven years. Having not been one of the actual Universal Monsters, I suspect that, had he not died so young, he would've easily shed any possible typecasting in the future.

Hopefully some of you will be doing something fun tonight, i.e. something holiday related. Me? I'll probably just be doing my usual boring old man stuff, i.e. nothing holiday related.

This just in (sort of)

Looks like the busyness that's kept me, well, busy, all through October, has carried over to November... yay!

This first week has been blur, which is a good, and bad. Good because I haven't had to pay any attention to any of this election nonsense (not that I would've anyway), and bad because I haven't had much time for the blog, or anyone else's for that matter. I know that some people like to be busy, but I'm not one of them, I prefer having lots of free-time, and lots of options to fill said free time.

Besides work and other commitments, the weather has suddenly got really nice again (low 70's), so day's off are being spent outside trying to finish up projects that were started during the summer, and starting others that there wasn't enough time to start during the summer. I mean I usually spend my days off outside no matter what the weather's like, but there's more incentive to do so when it's warm.

I suspect that this might be another 5-6 post month, and probably all of the "look what I got" variety, although a couple of them will probably look more like today's hodge-podge, which will basically just be a "look what I got" on steroids. The more meaningful/substantial stuff is gonna have to get pushed back to December, maybe even January.

Nobody can ever seem to agree on anything these days, but I think one thing that we as collectors can agree on, is that unexpected mail from fellow collectors is always awesome. Chris, known far and wide as The Collector (he's also expanded his empire with The 1993), recently sent me just such an unexpected PWE, and it was awesome!

Multiple player collections were added to, from three different sports no less. One of the cards even triggered the return of an old memory, namely the repacks that Toys 'R' Us used to sell back in the 90's. Does anyone else remember those? Despite buying my fair share of them way back when, I had seemingly forgotten all about them, that was until I saw this Dennis Rodman Pro Vision. Just remembering them is pretty neat unto itself, but I even know why this card brought the memory back too, that being because I can now recall getting one of those repacks and finding three 1994-95 Jamal Mashburn Pro Vision's in it, and I'm fairly certain that three were not supposed to be in one pack.

I went and tried to look to see if anyone had any of those old repacks for sale, but can't seem to find any, of course if people aren't listing them as 'repacks', that could explain why I'm not finding any, but I don't know what else to search for them under? I'd really like to find a few of these now, especially the Toys 'R' Us ones, or any other that came in clamshells. Those were nice because they limited the cards ability to move around (unlike the modern Fairfield repacks), so the cards within them usually stayed in pretty good shape, even when being jostled about by store employees.

I probably had half a dozen copies of this card at one time, but as of this PWE's arrival I had none... it's nice to have one again!

I had the regular refractor version of this Damon Chrome, but not the base (or the black refractor). A new Brian Grant is always a welcome sight, even when he's in Heat (uni)form.

My quest to collect Reggie Roby's complete run has slowed down considerably, as some of his harder to find stuff is proving to be just that, in the meantime though I am still in need of some of his base cards, 1991 Pinnacle being one of them, or at least it was.

Many thanks again to Chris for this surprise mailing, I really appreciate the thought that obviously went into it.

Moving on...

Some months ago when I was still knee-deep in my year+ long card sort, I came across a small stack of non-sport inserts that I had sort of forgotten about. Well, actually it's not that I had forgotten about the stack itself, it's more like I just couldn't remember what was in said stack, as it had been probably close to ten years since I last looked through it. 

Amongst the many great cards (all of were from the 90's btw) were two X-Files Etched Foil inserts, one from the first set, and one from the third series (1995 Topps Season One and 1996 Topps Season Three respectively). Not remembering that I even had these, it should come as no surprise that I also had forgotten just how good they look (and scan apparently). I've talked a great deal about not wanting to collect sets anymore, but sets be damned, as I decided pretty much on the spot that I wanted to complete these sets. They did them for the first three sets, with six cards making up each set. 18 total cards doesn't sound like a lot to collect, but these things are terribly condition sensitive, and with prices on everything being what they are these days, if I want copies in decent shape, I could potentially be working on this for quite some time (and have a good chance of never finishing it).

Having one from the first and third series, I figured it was about time to get one from Season Two, and thanks to the magic of eBay, I was able to. 

I'd also like to heap some praise upon the seller (dr.zoidberg) of this card for a moment if I may. The original photo/scan on the listing wasn't the best, and the zoom feature conveniently wasn't working, so I couldn't see what kind of shape the corners and edges were in. I sent a message asking for more details, which the seller was happy to supply, and even did one better by sending a better scan of the front, and back. To me this was going above and beyond, especially on a card that was listed for only $1.49. A lot of sellers wouldn't have sent a better scan even on something that was in the $10-20 range. 

Another semi-recent eBay purchase was this 'Toine 1999-00 Stadium Club 3x3 (luminous). I always want to call these Triumvirate's, but I know that for some reason SC felt the need to drop that name for the more generic, and much less interesting sounding, 3x3 moniker, for it's 1999 release. I had planned on getting more from this seller, but this card was the only one that stayed cheap ($1.04 w/ free shipping).

It's been quite some time since I received a card in a toploader with other cards taped to the outside as a buffer, but that was exactly what happened with the Walker. The seller must not be a Cavs fan, because these really got the scotch tape treatment. I took it off for scan purposes, and even though you can't really see it, there's an awful lot of tape residue that was left behind. Not that it matters, I wouldn't have wanted these anyway, I'm just sayin' it's interesting, that's all.

Speaking of the eBay, did everybody read/hear about the new card shipping option that's going to be available sometime before March? It's basically a deal between eBay and the USPS to create cheap tracking for cards (and possibly other small light items later on) that sell for under $20. If it works, PWE sales may become a thing of the past on the eBay, as you'll be able to ship up to four cards, with tracking, for just 75¢. And if were real lucky, it'll put an end to people charging $4.99 to ship a $2 card. For those interested, here's the full article that I saw the other day.

I spent this past Halloween morning running errands, which included stops at Ace Hardware, Walmart, Dollar Tree, and Serenity Thrift. It was at the latter that picked up this gem, which I've never seen for sale anywhere, and haven't watched since it's original television airing back in 1991.

Serenity isn't my favorite thrift store, but apparently they're now doing a thing where almost everything in the store is half-price on the last Saturday of each month, meaning that I'm probably gonna have to try and start going there on the last Saturday of each month.

And finally, I mentioned the Dollar Tree, so I might as well show what I was able to get there last weekend too. Neither of the two closest DT's are one of the ones that get DVD's/Blu-Ray's, which kind of sucks (I'm hella-jealous of those that do live by such stores), but they do get a lot of books, and I've really been taking advantage of their ever changing selection for the better part of this year. My once-a-week stops almost always yield at least one book, sometimes two, but never five! I read The Hike this past week, and still don't know if I liked it or not. It's written in a very modern style (which I usually don't like), but also contains some very original ideas (this I do like). It took a while to get going too, but did finish really strong. I guess I'd recommend it, although I'd say don't pay more than $1 for it, just in case.

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.