Saving mummy with an eBay coupon

I've never had much interest in any of the various social media platforms, no real reason why, I just knew that they weren't for me. Despite knowing this, and against better judgement, I did join twitter ranks a few years ago -- primarily because I was hoping that my being there would put more eyes on the blog.

For awhile there it looked like being member was indeed helping to direct more traffic towards the blog, but lately I'm not so sure. It probably doesn't help though that I don't tend to spend very much time on there, and what little time I do spend on there has been dwindling considerably in recent months. It's the politics, and the selective outrages, I just can't handle it! I loathe politicians, and I don't get riled up by trivial things, so there just isn't a whole heck of a lot on there for me. And sure, there's plenty of talk about collectibles, pop-culture, etc. -- but even fluffy topics like that tend to generate arguments, which then usually leads to name calling, ya' know, because people aren't allowed to have dissenting opinions anymore, it's been outlawed by the internet. Oh, and folks live tweeting while their watching a sporting event, yeah, that's terribly annoying. I get it, the fix is in, the league doesn't want your team to win, so the refs/umps have been instructed to only make calls that will hamper your team's efforts :)

That being said, the site has allowed me to keep in touch with other bloggers, which is a good thing, and it's even allowed to me to get know a few bloggers a little bit better... which is an even better thing! The only other good thing that I can think of that's come from my spending a few minutes a day on the site, is the ability to know when there's a hot new eBay coupon code out there, especially those of the $3 off when you spend $3.01 or more variety. I noticed just such a code being talked about last week, and even though I didn't hear about it until the last day, I was still able to find something of interest to use it on.

I keep hoping that one of these days I'll run out of sets that fall into the "How is it that I didn't know this existed?" category, but until then I'm stuck repeating that oft used phrase. Given the environment that I grew up in, the 1975 Topps Comic Book Heroes set should not be new to me, but it is, well, at least relatively speaking it is, I've known about it for a few months, but still...

After finding out about it, I perused the 45-card (sticker) checklist and identified seven cards that I wanted, one of which was The Living Mummy aka N'Kantu, who was very short-lived character from the 70's. It was during that time that Marvel really went all in on trying to repurpose the Universal Monsters, and history now tells us that their efforts were less than successful, that is unless you're anything like me, and you wish that they would have made more books with these characters... no matter how bad the stories were!

This particular copy was priced at $4.88, which I would normally consider to be overpriced, but after using the coupon I was able to get it for $1.88, and I can live with that, especially given the fantastic condition of the card.

So, the moral of this story is, Twitter sucks, but is still worth checking from time to time, if only because it might end up saving you some money. I for one would never know of these coupon codes if it weren't for Twitter, as eBay doesn't seem to go out of their way to advertise them, so I've got to rely on those who spend considerably more time online than me for the occasional assist.

And I'm sure that some of you are getting tired of hearing about it, but just in case any interested parties still haven't signed up for this year's Secret Santa, you can do so here.


Thanks for a taking a moment to look at my page.

A potpourri of purchases

I was going to start today's post by talking about the fact that my buying of stuff has been down this year, at least through the first five months. This has been due to many things, namely a much tighter budget, throw in some depression, add a pinch of just a lack of interest in general, cover in foil, place in oven for two hours at 350 degrees, remove from the oven and let stand for 10 minutes, and you've got yourself a perfect cheapskate loaf.

Now I say "was" because I just had to go and make my most expensive purchase of the year on eBay last night, which means that today I will have to list a couple of items for sale - items that I know will sell quickly - that way I will be able to pay for said expensive item when the credit card bill comes. It'll probably be a while before this item makes it into a blog post, but in the meantime I'm sure that there will be few people out there who are curious to know about what was gotten, so without spoiling too much, I will just say that it's from an Age when things were Golden :)

So anyways, expensive item aside, I haven't been buying very much this year, especially from eBay. But not "buying very much" isn't "haven't bought anything", so, minus the Goodwill purchases, I thought I'd do a little catching up and just toss everything from the last five months into a single post!   

About a month ago there was a card on eBay that I kind of wanted quite a bit. As is the case with most sellers that have an auction item that I'm interested in, I went ahead and looked at the rest of their items to see if the shipping could be reduced by buying more, this lot of Ichiro 2012 Chrome orange refractors sort of caught my eye, the only bad thing was that it was ending three minutes before the thing I really wanted. In general, I prefer it when secondary items are ending after the main item, just in case I don't get that main item. Even though I don't like to do so, I bid on, and won, this lot, the bad news... I didn't win the much desired card! Had these been ending after the loss, I probably wouldn't have bid on them (even though I'm now sort of hoarding cards with this image on them), but that's not how things worked out, and I got them. At $3.25 for the pair, I guess it didn't turn out that bad, as I would've got them on COMC if I had seen them at around $1.60 apiece -- if I'm sounding negative at all, it's probably just because I'm still slightly bummed about not getting that main card.

My mom and I have been ordering from the Edward R. Hamilton catalog for over, geez, twenty years now (how has it been that long?). In the days before they had a website, we would do a couple of orders per year, now it seems like it's just one, or maybe two a year. Usually it's just one of us finding a few things and then asking the other if they want to get in on the order, and so it was last month when my mom let me know that she was going to be getting a few things, and was I interested in anything. I used to buy a ton of books from the catalogs, but I don't know if it's just that their selection isn't as good as it used to be, or if the amount of good books being published has gone down in the last twenty years, but either way, I just don't get very many books from them anymore -- mostly just DVD's these days. So, with this order of hers, I only ended up getting a CD this time, albeit a pretty awesome 3-disc compilation. This is a pretty solid album for just $5.95, I mean there is a few songs that you'll find on just about any 80's compilation, but for the most part, it's stuff that you don't usually see on these kinds of albums, definitely some deeper cuts on this one, a few of which were new to me.

It wasn't my intention to do so, but I ended up selling a few cards on the Twitter, the money from that sale was then used to get this 2018 Classics Eric Dickerson orange Optichrome (#'d 14/15). Not a bad trade in my book, sell four cards that I don't want, and get one that I do.

As some of you undoubtedly know, eBay just recently had another one of those get $3 off when you spend more than $3.01 coupons, and I used mine to finally see/get Be Kind Rewind. I feel like I've been trying to see this movie for years now, I have found used copies at various places during that time, but there's always something wrong with the disc (scratches, food residue, etc.), so I decided to take advantage of the coupon and finally get it, which I did for exactly $0.61 after the discount. As for the film itself, I knew going in that it had some flaws, but overall it was still a solid movie, there were plenty of laughs to be had, heck, the "remaking" of Ghostbusters was worth the 61 cents alone.

While I was looking to use that $3 off coupon, I came across this TV Guide from October of 1960. The price with shipping was $3.28, so I could've used the coupon it, but the DVD would garner more savings so I used it on that, and then just went ahead bought this separately. This issue is probably going to get it's own post at some point, so I'm not discuss it too much today, but the one thing that I wanted to point out...

... is that it was a Portland copy, meaning it's got local listings, which is what I always look for when buying older TV Guide's/TV Host's. Kind of interesting too that this came from a seller in MA, Arthur was a long way from home!

I forgot to add this purchase to last weeks Progressions post. I make no claims as to being a Derrick rose fan, but I still couldn't pass up half a rainbow for $4.

Another movie that I've sort of been wanting to see for awhile now, so being able to find it one of the $3.79 bins at Walmart wasn't too shabby. I still haven't watched it, so I can't yea or nay it yet.

I just recently talked about going for a full page of Robert Parish Super Star's, and this just another cheap addition for that pursuit.

Yours truly makes a slightly distorted first appearance on the blog, and in a shark's mouth no less :)

Back to Walmart for this one, this time from the $5 DVD bin. The jury's still out as to whether or not this was a good buy or not, as I've only watched two of the movies so far, Malibu Shark Attack (bad, but had it's moments, and was still watchable), and Shark in Venice (terrible, couldn't even make it halfway through, somehow Stephen Baldwin's acting is getting even worse with age). I'd say that if two of the remaining six are watchable, then it won't have been a bad get.

More Ichiro! And another Trading Card History refractor to boot! This is my third one now, I kind of like to get a page of these as well. I absolutely love these, but it does bug the crap out of me that no matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to capture the rainbow effect via camera or scanner.

I went from January to the middle of March (roughly) without buying anything on eBay, apparently this was too much for eBay to handle, because I got an email from them saying that they missed me, and was given a coupon for $5 off if I spent $10.01 or more, which was nice, but it really did read like "we miss your money and here's something to encourage you to give us some of that missed money". I guess it worked though, because I obliged and bought a couple of TV Host's from the 90's, Portland editions again.

For me, depression and nostalgia go hand-in-hand, I am unable to experience one without the other, so I've been plagued by both for pretty much all of this year. One of the things that I'm almost always nostalgic for is Cable television from the 80's and 90's, especially since cable and satellite suck so much now, and don't even get me started on that streaming nonsense. If you lived an area that had Paragon cable (oh Paragon, why did you have to go away?), than you most likely had TV Host's as well, and boy do I miss those weekly listings. I couldn't get the whole page, but you can see how great these were from the above photo. This partial 3 1/2 hour window from 1996 (in the first photo it's from the issue that features the premiere of Millennium!!!!!) has more to offer than a day's worth of cable/satellite programming now. These too will eventually be getting their own post, so I'll just say that before last night's item, these had been my most expensive purchase of the year, and at $15 that isn't saying much -- like I said, I just haven't been interested in too much as of late.


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.

Big spender

Like a lot of folks, I recently took advantage of the $3 off eBay coupon.

Like a lot of folks, I too heard about it on the Twitter... and who says that the site isn't good for anything?

And like a lot of folks, I haven't been very card minded as of late. I wouldn't necessarily refer to it as "burnout", so much as it is that my interests have just been directed elsewhere. Because of this, I initially searched for just about anything but cards (comic books, DVD's, etc.) in my attempt to find something cheap to use the coupon on.

After my first round of searching, I couldn't find anything non-card related, at least nothing that was going to be ending during that two-day window that the coupon was good for.

Begrudgingly, I did end up looking at cards. I couldn't find any one card that was just a shade over $3, so I ended up getting three cards, thankfully the coupon was still good when buying from multiple sellers.

I am not a Jordan fan, and I'm overly fond of the 1998-99 UD Choice Starquest cards ('97-98 was much better), so why did I get this card? Uh????? I guess all I can say is that I don't already have one, and I knew that it was going to be cheap.

Unlike the last card, I was, and still am, a big fan of LJ. I'm also big fan of Prizm parallels, and even though I already have 3 or 4 of these green's, it doesn't hurt to pick up another copy.

This Chris Webber rookie isn't my third purchase, it was included with the LJ... not a bad bonus card!

Now that's a pretty card (please ignore my crooked picture)! I don't have too many of the light blue prizms from the 2015-16 set, so it's not really much of a stretch to say that this one is now the best of the bunch. Oh, and I will definitely be looking for more copies of this card.

After applying the coupon, I ended up paying .49 cents for each of these three cards, which isn't the greatest deal ever, but I would've been willing to pay the same amount had I come across them at a show, or even if I saw them on COMC, so...


Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.