Barter trade with a former Topps employee

I recently swapped a pair of CDs for a box of various cards. I love those rare times when I can swing a barter trade, as they just seem more special or whatever than a purchase or straight cards-for-cards deal.

The story of this one is a guy on a FB group for an old band I like was looking to buy some bootleg live CDs he owned back in the day. His popup profile thing said he worked as a designer at Topps, which got my attention so I reached out about the possibility of a cards-for-CDs swap. Turns out he was no longer at Topps, and that they were "crazy stingy" during most of his tenure, but he had a small box of hits from pack rips a decade ago before things got too bad at the company. He shared blurry overview photos of the cards, and nothing jumped out at me in particular (sadly no Ohtani or Judge autos to choose from), but there were a few nice cards and a good variety of stuff I could have fun sorting through, with plenty of stuff that would slide nicely into my collection. Since he wasn't too attached to the cards and I wasn't too attached to the couple of rare CDs I had from his wantlist, we were able to work out a deal where I got the whole lot of cards.

Kicking off with these big three. There were a few baseball autos in the lot, but funny enough the best of them is a mascot. Clark's 2016 Opening Day auto is especially neato considering that was the year the Cubs finally broke the curse. The Abe Vigoda ginter relic is pretty great too, for those of us old enough to remember him (or at least his funny later appearances on Conan). But the Sting relic/auto #'d 26/50 might be the top card of the lot. I'm not even a big wrestling guy, but I know he's a good name to pull there.

Highlights from the several relics, including a couple pinstripes. The former Topps guy I traded with is a Mets fan, so that might explain why they have more representation in the lot than other teams. (Yankees and Dodgers were both conspicuously absent.)

I'll show the rest of the baseball stuff at the end, but now strap in for some Star Warin'.

A pair of sketch cards with cool original artwork of fan favorites from the classic trilogy: the rancor and Boba Fett. Love these.

 
Figured I should show the backs in case anyone is interested in the artists, though I'm not going to take a stab at deciphering the names. I thought it was funny to see a stickergraph on the back of a sketch card, but I suppose since it's a Chrome product, they wanted to throw a plasticy border on it so it could count as a Chrome card (because of course Chrome surface wouldn't work for most types of sketching.) Pretty sure it's my first embedded sketch like that.

Some parallel/insert SW stuff. The Luke Skywalker is /50 on the back.
 

A couple manurelics, including a numbered Han Solo, plus a pair of "authentic film cel relic" cards that you can hold up to the light...

..to peep a still from space. Neat!

This trio of Star Wars autos aren't big names but still cool to add. Ralph Brown had a minor role in The Phantom Menace (with Alien³ and Wayne's World 2 among his other credits), with Phil Eason also working on Episode I. Turns out Yaddle is a female of the same green species as Yoda and Baby Yoda. Eason (d. 2021) also did puppetry work on Little Shop of Horrors (1986) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2005). Rajia Baroudi was a voice on a couple episodes of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. (Yours if you want it, Zippy!) She's done lots of other voice acting over the years and appeared on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers back in the day. That card is a parallel numbered /10 on the back, so that's cool. Oh, and Lady Yoda is /25.

 

Walking Dead hits don't do much for me, never having watched the show, but still cool to beef up my non-sport collection or possibly use as trade bait (Specifically, I would love to get that creepy zombie sketch card out of my house! lol). Katelyn Nacon and Corey Brill (#'d 10/10) are the autos. The dual relic (#'d 10/50) confused me because those people look familiar but it's the characters' names, not giving the actors' real names anywhere on the card. But I looked them up and the guy is Steven Yeun (most familiar to me from season one of Beef) and the lady is Lauren Cohan (who I've seen pop up in various TV shows over the years). Sonequa Martin-Green is less familiar to me, but she played a main character on the show Star Trek: Discovery and was on a couple episodes of New Girl.
 

Some more solid pro wrestling cards.

UFC. I don't know any of these guys, but I looked up the Frank Mir 10/10 red parallel, and there's one on COMC for $50, for whatever that's worth (Less than $50, one would assume). Like with the Walking Dead cards, I'd be down to trade these burly dudes for cards that better suited my interests, and may eventually put them on my TCDB for-tradelist.

Michelle Waterson here will probably stick in my collection, however, because she's kinda cute and has a cool looking signature.
 

We're getting close to the end now, with this group of misc. cards, including a Candace Parker commemorative flag patch (numbered to 19/99), a layered Emmitt Smith card (075/194), and a James Taylor "First Pitch" orange refractor. My face lit up when I noticed the serial number...

Christmas Card! I've seen fire and I've seen rain, but I never thought I'd see a James Taylor card among my 12/25's. There were 2 or 3 other /25 cards in the lot.. and I've always got my fingers crossed for lucky #12 in the run, but rarely score them organically like this.

And the rest! A few PC guys in here. The Luke Weaver RC auto might be ok if it wasn't from that ugly-ass Topps Gallery set. Brandon Finnegan is the one non-blue ink auto (17/25). A couple Yadi's. Abe Vigoda base card to go along with the relic from before. Clive Walford is the Raiders auto at the bottom. 

So yeah, this was a pretty sweet lot that I got for not much effort on my part. Not like I've listened to those CDs in years (and have them ripped to a hard drive for when I do want to hear them), but I can appreciate the guy's quest and glad I could help him out.. especially since it resulted in a nice boost to my card collection. Also neat to do a trade with somebody who worked at Topps.

Oh, and the same day I got this package, I also received my haul from The Collector's anniversary celebration extravaganza, so that's another fun "rip" on deck. I'll try to post about that stuff on his blog's special day (8/21), per his request.

Steven Universe box finally busted

Back around 2017, some of my co-workers were really into a Cartoon Network show called Steven Universe. Ben, a guy I'd affectionately describe as a "cool nerd", would talk about what happened on the most recent episode, and it was such mind-bending craziness that it was hard for me to wrap my head around the words coming out of his mouth. 

 

But yeah, they all seemed to love it, and I eventually checked it out and got into it too. It's a weird kids' show at its core-- some good conflict/action parts and silly/cute parts-- entertaining for all ages and with a lot of positive messages regarding gender and race not hidden too deep below the surface. Not sure I should even bother trying to give a synopsis, but basically the characters are sorta like superhero aliens who can combine with each other into other characters (called "fusions") and have adventures while living in a quaint beach town that frequently attracts space monsters that need to be dealt with. There's a big wikipedia entry if you're curious to learn more. It's currently streaming on HBO Max (and Hulu?), I believe.

Back in summer of 2020, inspired by a baseball-themed episode I had just watched, I whipped up a few Steven Universe customs in Photoshop. After teasing them in a tweet, Shawn (aka Corky on the cardsphere) let me know the show had real cards released in 2019. Not long after, I pulled the trigger on a box from Dave & Adams via eBay for $60. Summer '00 was a crazy time and so when the box arrived, I set it aside for a rainy day.. and eventually decided to wait until I finished watching through the show to bust it. (I even started drafting this here post back in 2020 where it sat basically blank until now.)

And hey, guess what, I finally finished watching the show just this month! Well, there's the main show (5 seasons), then a movie, then a final/epilogue season (under the name "Steven Universe Future") to kinda wrap things up. Full disclosure, I'm still watching through the Future show, but the cards only cover seasons 1-5, so I didn't see the point of holding off the box break any longer.

This box was the only "unopened product" I've been sitting on for the past few years (ie, the covid-induced hobby bubble era), pre-dating my big move to the new house 2.5 years ago. (That's the big milestone for me keeping track of my recent past: life back at the old house vs. new house.) Kinda sad to open it... especially seeing that the cheapest box on eBay now has an asking price of $375. lol. I should have stocked up back when they were $59.95!

But no, if I buy a box to bust, I will bust that box, my friend. #collect

Cryptozoic did a great job with collation. I got a full complete base set (featuring a gold foil star in the corner), a few base parallels (pink foil star), and 3 complete insert sets. I actually ripped several packs while watching the Steven Universe Movie, and it was serendipitous for me to be able to look at the cards to help figure out what's going on (I was wondering about a fusion on screen, and bam, I pulled the card that explained on the back how that particular fusion was made).

The die-cut vinyl record theme cards don't have parallels, but the other 2 insert sets also do the pink foil parallels gimmick ("pink deco"), netting me one each.

I wasn't aware of the whole pink deco parallel thing at first, and when I first pulled the Rose Quartz, I was like "oh, that was cool of them to do Rose's card in pink," but no, that was just a coincidental lucky pull, evidenced by the base gold pulled later.

My sketchcard was a solid one. Looks to be pen & colored pencils with a fair amount of work put into it. Taking a quick look at the 200+ sketch cards from this set on eBay, I'd say this is among the more desirable. And check it out, this character is named Ruby. Ruby isn't exactly a main character, but is one of two gems who combine into Garnet (who is a main character.. yeah, it's confusing if you don't know the show. [There are actually several different Rubies in the show, adding to the confusion.]).

My dog is named Ruby, so the sketch is right up my alley, but it's a coincidence-- Steven Universe didn't contribute to her naming, at least not consciously. But funny enough, another former co-worker of mine (who joined later but had independently been a fan of the show already) has a cat named Peridot after a character on the show.

Irma "Aimo" Ahmed seems to be a popular, respected sketch card artist, with lots of cards featured in products for Star Wars, Marvel, and DC. So yeah, nice pull there.

Sketch cards and autographs are seeded about 1 per box, but not guaranteed. As I picked up the final pack having not yet pulled an auto, I was feeling bummed about my box lacking any ink. But thankfully the last pack delivered the goods.

The Rutile Twins aren't main characters either-- I'm only vaguely familiar with them-- but hey, still a nice card. Gotta love a heart doodle. Ashly Burch has done a lot of cool stuff in her career, mostly video game voice acting, such as The Last of Us Part II and the Borderlands series.

Wikipedia tells me the Rutile Twins-- a Gem with two conjoined bodies from the waist up-- are a part of a group called the Off-Colors consisting of "fugitive Gems from Homeworld, first appearing in season 5, who lived in hiding underground because they are regarded as defective or do not conform to Homeworld's expectations."

A crazy thing is I couldn't find any copies of this card on eBay while taking a curious look at market value. Not in completed listings either. Despite being numbered to 225, it's evidently a tough pull. Compare it to the similar auto in the set of Kate Flannery (who was Meredith on The Office, so not exactly a nobody), also numbered /225, and that card has several examples available to buy online. Weird.

There are a bunch of autos from the set that I'd love to add to my collection-- keep in mind I have completed the autograph set from the only other Cryptozoic product I ever busted (Ghostbusters)--, but other than that Kate Flannery, they don't seem to be very plentiful/affordable, so I probably won't hit that mission too hard, but may keep an eye out for cheap outliers that might pop up.

There's one specific voice actor of a recurring character that sadly doesn't have an autograph in the set which would otherwise be a no-brainer for my collection. Joel Hodgson, best known for Mystery Science Theater 3000, plays Bill Dewey, Beach City's mayor for most of the show's run. Guess what, I made a custom for the card-that-should-have-been.

I purposefully made the signature look "off" in case anyone missed the "Inauthentic" edit. Not trying to trick anyone, just making a fun card. I grabbed the signature image off the internet.. off one of my own old blog posts actually-- it's from a signed DVD from Joel to me personally (I didn't meet him, but had an acquaintance facilitate). So that's a little easter egg for me. (Speaking of dusty drafts I'm [still] working on, chances are I finally finish my big MST3K post sometime this year too, by the way, where I'll show off all my [real] MST autos and stuff.)

Now here are the customs that I originally designed in 2020, but only finished and printed the other day.

It's a simple original design using screenshots from that one baseball-themed episode. Welp, technically Garnet didn't actually play in the game but rather it was her component characters Ruby and Sapphire (note Ruby behind the dish), so I fudged it to get her a standard card. Backs are kept simple but with an additional screenshot. I'm happy with how these turned out and think they complement the Cryptozoic cards nicely.. would have made a fun insert set! (FYI to anyone at Cryptozoic, Fanatics, or whoever.. I'm freshly on the job market and would love to find a creative role of employment in the hobby. Hit me up!)

As with all my customs, they're not for sale, but feel free to talk me into a trade if you want.

That about wraps up the post. Any of you readers into Steven Universe? I'm considering doing a rewatch after I finish it up since I feel like I didn't really "get" the show sufficiently till the latter seasons. Now that I know what's going on better, I think I'd pick up on more stuff happening in the earlier seasons. But yeah, fun show.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, everyone!

Seeking sketch card artists!

I haven't been a big sketch card collector up to this point. I have a few in my collection, but I think they were all either pulled from a pack by myself, or sent to me by trader buddies, or drawn myself. I can't recall ever just buying a sketchcard for myself.

But last year I joined the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Trading Cards group on Facebook, and there is a focus on sketch cards there, with members of the group frequently showing off their 1/1 MST3K sketches. There are also a good number of working sketch card artists in the group, so it's not uncommon to see commissions being offered and sought out.

That got me thinking... What would it take for me to pony up and commission a sketchcard for my collection?

Welp, I've come up with a list of ideas that would get me excited to see in sketch card form. Consider this post a solicitation of sketchcards based on any of the below ideas. If you are an artist and would be interested working something out, please drop me a line with your price, an idea of what you've got in mind for my sketch, and perhaps some examples of your past work. I can be as hands-on as you want.. either let you do your thing and more-or-less surprise me (based on suggestions in this post), or if you prefer I can provide source images and work with you on a specific idea for you to draw.

I'm looking for 2.5" x 3.5" (standard baseball card dimensions), preferably on a solid hunk of cardboard, like the thick blank/dummy cards that are often put into packs to trick pack-searchers. I realize the smaller dimensions might be a limitation to artists who want a big canvas on which to create, but for purposes of this request, I'm looking for a standard size card. That said, I'm very open to creative "interactive" type stuff happening on the card.. windows you can open.. 3D effects.. whatever, as long as I can store it with my other cards. Oh, and I'm fine with either vertical or horizontal cards.

I've got a stockpile of dummy cards should the urge to sketch arise. I should mention I don't really care if the sketch is on an officially branded sketch card template or an aforementioned blank card. I understand that sketch cards on "artist proof"-type blanks typically cost more for commissions-- For example, a baseball player sketch on an official Topps-branded sketch blank is seen as more desirable than a blank dummy card. But for me, I really don't care about that. I'd rather pay less for a "blank" card than pay a premium for an "official" blank to be used.

Ok, so here are some of my ideas...

 Glow-in-the-dark. Do you have any glow-in-the-dark paint/ink? If so, I'd love to have it liberally applied to my sketchcard. Man, I love glowing stuff in all its forms, artwork most definitely included. It's not a requirement to get me excited about a sketch, but it sure helps!

"Mashup" sketches. I'm not really interested in standard drawing of the subject (see below for subject ideas). For example, Crow from MST3K.. I don't have much interest in commissioning a boring drawing of Crow that's essentially similar to many others already out there. I want there to be something cool/funny/interesting going on.

One idea that really perked me up is having my favorite characters (again, see below for subjects) inserted into my favorite album covers. For example, instead of the Fab Four, have Crow, Tom Servo, Joel, and Gypsy crossing Abbey Road. Stuff like that! Below are some examples of favorite albums of mine that I think would be fun with such treatment.

Tom Servo as the focal point of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea's cover would be likely to cause me to pass out from joy overload!

(Pardon the NSFW papier-mâché.)

...Just a few possibilities, but feel free to run any other ideas by me or ask me for a bigger list and I'm sure I can come up with lots more. Alternative rock, indie rock, classic rock.. Plenty of stuff I'm into and I could likely find common ground with any prospective artist.

I also love the idea of my favorite characters put into baseball cards. Like put Crow in a 1965 Topps design or maybe Tom Servo could be in the 1989 Upper Deck design calling to mind the iconic Ken Griffey Jr rookie card. Stuff like that.


SUGGESTED SUBJECT IDEAS

* MST3K - As mentioned, I'm a huge Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan. Crow and Tom Servo are probably the 2 subjects I'm most interested in getting on a sketch card. And to a lesser extent, Joel, Mike, Gypsy, The Mads, and really any character from the show's long run (though the Comedy Central era will always be my favorite).

* Pee-Wee Herman. I love Pee-Wee and would be very interested in sketches of him and/or his Playhouse friends. Again, not looking for just a boring sketch of Pee-Wee standing there smiling.. I want to see him doing cool stuff, like again, thrust into my favorite album covers or something else unexpected.

* The Simpsons. Yep, big Simpsons fan. Would love to get a sketch of any of those characters. Again, stuff like put into album covers.. or another cool idea would be mashing up these subject ideas. For example, you could put Homer between Crow and Tom Servo riffing a bad movie! You could have Pee-Wee doing his Tequila dance at Moe's Tavern. Stuff like that!

* Other stuff I'm into and would likely dig characters/scenes in a sketch card:
- Classic Nintendo games (Mario, Metroid, Zelda, etc.. and especially less-popular personal favorites of mine Maniac Mansion and Bionic Commando)
- Star Wars (Baby Yoda?)
- The Goonies
- The Mighty Boosh
- Flight of the Conchords
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force
- G.I. Joe
- Ghostbusters / Real Ghostbusters
- He-Man
- South Park
- Rick & Morty
- AVGN
- Mr. T
- Steven Universe
- Ducktales

Here's a sketch I made for myself a while back that conveys the basic spirit of what I'm looking for (but hopefully executed with better artistic skill than I've got). It's Egon from The Real Ghostbusters bustin' an 8-bit Boo ghost from the Super Mario Brothers universe. And it has glitter on it and glows in the dark!


* My favorite baseball players would be neat as drawn by artists skilled at human likenesses. Again, I'm not looking for a standard sketch of the guy, but rather something creative, such as Tony Gwynn fighting Bowser or crazy crap like that! See also Pro-Vision Fleer cards. I'd be most interested in relatively obscure (non "superstar") players I collect such as Nate Colbert, Dick Allen, Bill Madlock, Bip Roberts, Hoyt Wilhelm, Mike Reinbach, Dave Henderson, Rod Beck, Julio Franco, Ken Caminiti, and Fred McGriff. For better known options, I could also be down with Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Vin Scully, Satchel Paige, Reggie Jackson, and Rickey Henderson. Active favorites include Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr, or Mike Trout. I'd especially love to see guys in "unfamiliar, yet really happened" uniforms.. I'm talking like Clemente as a Dodgers farmhand.. Dick Allen on the Oakland A's at the end of his career.. Reggie Jackson as a Baltimore Oriole.. Bill Madlock as a rookie on the Rangers.. niche stuff like that.


So there you go! A pretty open-ended prompt for artists to run with and create something I'll love and will be happy to pay for.

Which begs the question, does the artist get paid before making the card or after it's done? I haven't really commissioned anything like this before, so I don't know exactly how it works. But we should be able to hammer it out. I should clarify that I'm looking for professional sketch artists who have had cards packed out in real products from the likes of Topps, RRParks, Rittenhouse, Cryptozoic, etc. If you're an amateur artist, I might still be interested, but I'd probably rather trade you for it than buy. Like, any of my trading partners are welcomed to try to surprise me with a sketch they made based off any suggestions in this post.. that'd be awesome!

So again, please get in touch if you'd be interested whipping up a sketchcard along these lines for me. Thanks!

Like Spinning Plates? LOVE Spinning Plates!

Woo.. my first completed rainbow of printing plates!

I've got a Gavin LaValley Bowman plate rainbow (or two?) going where I'm only missing 1 plate, but this is my first time having all 4 plates for a card.

This was kind of cheating, though, as I got these together in one shot direct from indie card manufacturer Richard Parks. I know him best from these Mystery Science Theater 3000 cards RRParks Cards put out (3 separate series), but he's done a bunch of other licensed card sets, from classic oldies like The Three Stooges and Zoro to more modern properties like Sharknado.

Long story short here, I ended up with an extra MST3K autograph and then a guy named Stephen on the Facebook group for these cards needed that one to complete the auto set he was building. Richard is sold-out of that particular autograph card, but he facilitated the trade by offering up a printing plate suite. I requested my set of plates be for one of the Steve Vance art cards, as I think they're awesome, in the spirit of classic lobby posters of the 50s and 60s.

Devil Doll is a cool one to get, playing off the whole puppet thing of the Bots. It's a 1964 British horror film about an evil ventriloquist and his dummy, directed by Lindsay Shonteff. It stars William Sylvester (best known for 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Yvonne Romain. It was featured in an October 1997 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (episode #818), and was later released on DVD by Shout! Factory in 2010. I believe this artwork was originally created for the DVD release, and was then later shrunk down to card-size for the RRParks product.

Looks like you can rent-stream it on Amazon for a couple bucks. Seems to be free on YouTube too.

And that's not all! Richard also surprised me by including a bonus sketch card in the package...

Wow! Is that Crow channeling his inner Dee Snider? Rock! I'm somewhat of a closet headbanger, cranking up hair metal hits from time to time, and a big GNR fan (if you count them in that world). Jamie Hitchcock is the artist on this 1/1 sketchcard. Matt Prigge reminds me that this moment is from the Space Mutiny MST3K episode.

Very cool. Big thanks again, Stephen and Richard!

Richard Parks has proven himself to be cool as heck time and time again. In fact, he's been so cool with me that I signed up to back his latest Kickstarter project which is a card set for the cult classic Manos: The Hands of Fate. This all-time-worst movie is best known for being featured in a MST3K episode. While I like it fine, I wouldn't necessarily include it in a list of my personal favorite Top 10 MST3K episodes. But again, Richard has been such a good dude to me that I backed the project in part just to do him a solid and say thanks. And I encourage anybody else to check it out too. The deadline to back it is right around the corner (Ends at Sat, April 25 8:59 PM PDT). So you need to hurry! But if you're reading this in time and are interested, here's the Kickstarter link.. check it out! He puts out really fun card sets and if you're into old b-movie stuff I think you'll be glad to get in on this. And again, he'll treat you right. I only wish the likes of Topps and Panini could be so involved with their customers and make sure everyone is happy. Great guy!

Thanks for reading and see you next time.

A completed Star Wars custom booklet + a surprise sketch

We just got back from seeing The Rise of Skywalker. I thought it was great! Apparently much of the internet didn't like it, though I haven't read anything about it, trying to go in with untainted expectations. I'm glad I was able to avoid any spoilers. I loved it.

Speaking of Star Wars, here's a custom "booklet" I've been working on for a few years. Recently got the final piece to consider it completed.

Here's the front. I made this overlay for a James Earl Jones auto card (shared with Martin Short under there).

The other side features David Prowse, the actor in the Darth Vader costume most of the time in the original trilogy.

Opening the booklet reveals a photo of Prowse with his helmet off.

Opening it up further reveals some more. The Jake Lloyd auto checks off childhood Anakin. Picked that up a year ago.

Here's the last card I needed to finish the booklet.. Hayden Christensen, Anakin as a young man. Snagged this card a little while back. I targeted this particular card because it's an on-card signature, plus take a closer look at the serial numbering...

Christmas Card!

And with that, I consider my Darth Vader / Anakin Skywalker custom autograph booklet complete!

Yes, there are still more names I could theoretically add who've portrayed the character in some official capacity, such as Bob Anderson (Episodes V-VI lightsaber battles), Sebastian Shaw (unmasked in Episode VI), Spencer Wilding/Daniel Naprous (Rogue One), as well as voice actors Ben Burtt, Brock Peters, Matt Sloan, David Birney, Mat Lucas, and Matt Lanter.

But I'm content calling it good with the 4 main actors known for being Vader/Anakin. I don't think auto cards are readily available for those other guys anyways, but who knows.. maybe someday I'll try adding on.

Yes, the "booklet" is just 4 penny sleeves taped together, but hey, a real Topps booklet card featuring autographs of James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Jake Lloyd, and Hayden Christensen would likely cost you a couple thousand bucks or more. My custom creation ran me significantly less than that. I'm pretty happy with it.

-   -   -  - - --o

Bonus Star Wars content!

Wes, the Pancake King, was kind enough to include me in his Lucky 13 holiday mailings. I had patience and put the package under the Christmas tree, waiting a week or so to open it.

Boom! In addition to the '92 Bowman-style Pancake King, check out the sketch card!

Nice! This is Bossk, a big green bounty hunter who briefly (yet memorably) appears in The Empire Strikes Back. I remember having the action figure back in the day. Looks like he got some more backstory in the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars. We just signed up for Disney+ as a bonus birthday present for me, so I'll have to watch through Clone Wars one of these days. Very cool card!

And Wes didn't surprise me with just any random Star Wars sketch card...

It's also a card for my Greatest Gavins minicollection, by artist Gavin Williams. Awesome!

Thank you, Wes! Glad you like the stuff I recently sent you, too.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Bustin' makes me feel good

..bustin' boxes of Ghostbusters cards, that is.

I love Ghostbusters. The 1984 original was my favorite movie for years as a kid, and I was a loyal watcher of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon and owned much of the toy line.. I even had the big headquarters playset which was my prized possession for a time in elementary school.

So I was interested when Ghostbusters got a modern card release in 2016 from Cryptozoic. I was hoping to score a discounted box that year when Black Friday rolled around.. but the supply seemed to have run dry. I also kept an eye out in 2017, but again couldn't find boxes for a good price.

But then finally this past Black Friday, boxes finally popped up for a solid sale price. I added a box to my Christmas list and hoped for the best.

Turns out my mother-in-law kindly ordered a box for me. A few days later, she got a notification that it had been delivered, and was concerned to find there was no package waiting. Assuming it was stolen off her doorstep, she begrudgingly ordered another box (I gotta assume the Black Friday deal was over by then), this second one sent to her work address for safety. And then a couple days later, the original order finally showed up. Rather than go through the trouble of returning one, she went ahead and gave me both boxes for Christmas. Sucks she had to go through that.. extra money and extra stress.. but hey, I was very happy to end up with double the boxes! Her and my wife were like, "Sorry you got the same thing twice." But of course this just means I have twice the chance of pulling something special, so no apologies necessary!

I already completed the 19-card autograph set early last year via the secondary market-- one of my big collecting accomplishments of 2018-- so I'm not really chasing autos now (though I know there are some auto variations [inscriptions] still for me to hope for). My interest in ripping packs is to try building the base set and the inserts, plus take a shot at pulling something cool like a sketch card or an animation cel, or maybe a manufactured slime relic card. Hits aren't guaranteed per-box, though the 3 main hits (autos, sketches, cels) each have odds of 1:36 (there are 24 packs in a box). I'm not great at math, but I think that means each box probably has a couple hits. All I have from this product going into the break are the autos plus a couple animation cel cards.

Should be fun! It's bustin' time...

*busting ensues*

Ok, both boxes each provided me with a complete base set (54 cards) and complete (non-hit) insert sets. That means I have an extra set to trade, if anyone's interested.

The base set is nice enough. It just basically runs through the first movie chronologically over the course of 54 cards. To nitpick, there are some moments that probably didn't deserve a card ("Back to the Lab") and others that I feel should have been included but weren't (howabout "I Feel So Funky" from when Venkman gets slimed? That would have been a cool card.)

My favorite of the insert sets is the Quotes. Some cool images here. A couple of these pictures have been in my screensaver slideshow folder for years now, so it's nice to own the actual cards finally.

The Character Bios insert set is the only one that's not technically complete. Seven cards were included, but there are 2 additional cards which were promo-only, not available in boxes. The Gozer promo card is hard to find, though the other promo, Mr. Stay Puft, can be scored online easily enough. I suppose I'll try to add them at some point to satisfy the completist in me.

Here's a cool puzzle that one of the insert sets creates. You've got to give Cryptozoic a lot of credit for giving consideration to collectors when putting this set together. You may have noticed that all the insert sets are 9 cards deep. And the base set is 54 cards (9 x 6). So it's perfect for paging. Wish Topps and Panini would be that considerate. It's not that hard to do!

There are "Silver Foil" parallels for all base cards and non-hit insert cards. I pulled 6 from each box. These are fine, but don't do much for me. If anyone is crazy enough to be working on a foil parallel set for this product, I could probably be talked out of these.

Time for the hits from Box 1!...

Wow.. 4 hits, wasn't expecting that.

John Rothman is probably one of the most common autos, so not a great pull there, but still nice to get an autograph. He had a small part in the first Ghostbusters film in the library scene, and has had minor roles in some other memorable stuff like the great Tom Hanks movie Big, the holiday classic Jingle All the Way, and one of my all-time favorite tv shows, Arrested Development.

Very happy to pull an animation cel, especially of a main character. Seems to be Peter in an unpleasant situation. Not sure what's going on there, but I'll try to keep an eye out for this scene as I watch thru The Real Ghostbusters on Netflix.

The sketchcard.. well, I was glad to pull one. But this kinda confused me. Obviously some demon-like thing, but doesn't look familiar or seem to fit in the Ghostbusters universe. Looks more like something out of a horror movie. Creeps me out a little, honestly, and I'd be willing to trade it to someone who might enjoy it more than I. It's by artist Sean Moore.

The manipatch is kinda cool. I think those are a tough pull, so it's a decent hit, though not terribly exciting.

Now onto Box 2's hits...

Not bad! Ivan Reitman, director of both Ghostbusters films, is a solid autograph to pull. He's been producer and/or director on a lot of other notable films, including Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981), Twins (1988), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Space Jam (1996), Howard Stern's film Private Parts (1997), Road Trip (2000), Old School (2003), EuroTrip (2004) and Trailer Park Boys: The Movie (2006).

The animation cel is a good one, too.. a nice shot of Egon in contemplation.

Egon hot box! as he's the star of the sketchcard too. Now this is more like the sketch I hoped to pull from these boxes! It was eerily familiar to me. A year ago, I made a very similar sketch card...

That's mine on the bottom. I suspect that artist Joe Hogan and I were looking at the same source image. So that's kind of amazing to get a sketch card so similar to one I made. What are the chances?! The official one is clearly superior artistically, but hey, mine has glitter and glows in the dark!

So while Box 1 had the bonus patch hit, Box 2 had a better auto and better (in my opinion) sketch. Looks like Cryptozoic was doing the "under-promise, over-deliver" thing with their odds, as I pulled an auto, sketch, and cel from each box. Do all boxes typically have all 3 hits? Maybe I just got really lucky beating the odds.

Anyways, that was fun. Even better than I was expecting. Thanks again to my wonderful mother-in-law for the gift. I would still someday like to add the 2 promo Character cards and a slime relic card, but otherwise I feel my Ghostbusters collection can be called good as far as this product goes.

Again, I have an extra base set + inserts available for trade. The 2 autos I pulled are also up for grabs for the right offer, as well as the creepy sketch. Just get in touch if you'd like to work something out.

One more thing before we close up here. I recently added another "bonus" card to my already-completed Ghostbusters autograph set.

It's an auto of "New Janine" from The Real Ghostbusters. Kath Soucie wasn't included in the original set, so I made my own using a different certified auto. About halfway through the show's run, the producers decided to "soften" the character of Janine.

In the third season, some of the character designs were modified. Ray's character design was slimmed down to give the character a less overweight appearance and Slimer was given a tail instead of the formerly rounded bottom and which was reverted to a stub in season 6. The biggest change was to the character of Janine, whose hair was completely changed from being short and spiky to long and straight. Her overall design was softened, as was her personality. Her voice was also softened with Kath Soucie taking over the voice role from Laura Summer. ABC also went back, and redubbed Peter and Janine's dialogue in several episodes of the show with Dave Coulier and Kath Soucie respectively. Changes to Janine's character were eventually addressed (and resolved) in the season 6 episode (#118) entitled, "Janine, You've Changed". [wiki]

For comparison, here's the "Original Janine" auto. Notice the pointy glasses and spiky hair, contrasted with the round glasses and flowing hair of New Janine.

Kath Soucie is a prolific voice actress who has worked on Captain Planet, Space Jam, Tiny Toon Adventures, Dexter's Laboratory, and Rugrats, to name a few projects. She's also been various voices in a few Star Wars animated shows and video games. I picked up this 2017 Topps Star Wars Masterwork auto for $4.24 in my latest COMC order, and it provides a great source for a custom overlay.

Love growing my Ghostbusters autograph collection and will continue trying to hunt down more names to add.

Thanks for reading!