|
Surfing My Site
Main Page
The Not-So Famous DILBART
|
A Look in My Closet Pt. I - Obscured Collector Card SeriesWritten 2-5-01
Keeping tradition by cleaning my closet once every Halley Comet passing, i fell into a serendipitious yet rather peculiar myraid of stuff that i knew longer existed. Things i thought I threw away, including a layer of sediment from early 90 - early 91. My recent discoveries alone could commandeer 4-6 critiques and articles by me. As a lazy person, however, ill cut it down to 1 for today. Ill talk about collector cards since they were a major part of my latter elementary school years. Probably if you weren't sheltered by your mother at a very young age, you would recall vaguely of "The Garbage Pail Kids." When my brother asked me if i knew what happened to his collection, my vaguest recollection was of disgusting cards with kids names and habits. In retrospect, they didnt leave very fond recollections at all. Last summer, i cleaned out the attic, with those cards, and some Ninja Turtle rarities being my objectives. I never did find the cards which so inspired my cardhunt. But later that summer, i went to a flea market and behold found a box of those cards in their original wrappings. (Even the bubble gum...hmm) I guess the guy was a collector because 3 packs for 8$ was a hefty fee for good ol' nostalgia. I coughed up the money and walked away victorious holdinga series 4 pack and 2 series 10 packs.
Heres a little more history...Garbage Pail Kids was a blessed little card collection produced by Topps in the 1985 and lasted till about early 90s (date?), which predominately took its toll to middle schoolers in 87-88. They were cards with a sticker on the front that featured kids that resembled the Cabbage Patch Dolls and on the back was some type of fun activity or comic. There were 15 series produced and each series had about 90 cards. When the third series just about arrived, they became extremely popular. About four years later, Gruesome Greeting Cards came out by Topps also. After looking at both card sets for quite some time, i could make a credulous opinion that those artists at Tops are on something. They're the only company i know that puts on stuff like this to the jilted generation. I believe that Gruesome Greetings Cards never fully made it like GPK, not only did it produce a measley 44 cards, it was competeing with its predecessor who was far more charming. And less expensive at that. Today the whole set is worth 8$ on ebay. WCW Cards were the strangest set of cards i purchased in the early 90s. I recall buying 10$ worth but never reading or looking through the cards. I simply opened the package and placed them in a bag. Its wierd now that i think about it. This series wasnt as popular as the 2000s series are now. With the AIDS scare in the late 80s, i noticed all wrestling went into underground following and we never heard much about wrestling in elementary school sans the few backyard fights we'd have. Some guys are familiar in hear. Remeber the lot such as Ric Flair, Doom (the A-team theory) , and Sting? I wonder what ever happened to them... Anyhow, im sure the set is pretty much worthless, ebay sources tell me 10-13$ for this set which is pretty much a 1:1 ratio as i paid for it 10 years earlier. Email me if you want them;For dirt cheap
A favorite card collection was one to glorify our neighborhood dads over near Iraq. You probably remember the famous "Desert Storm Cards" in 1991. I thought they were they best things back then. I remember going to the nearby comic store and picked up handfulls for 30 cents each. The thing i liked about them was the cheesey paparazzi photographs on each. Dont get me wrong though, i highly regarded these as surrogate MAGIC cards before MAGIC hit the shelves causing power over competeing neighborhood kids. We'd have a game of 'war' for cards we wanted.
Mr. T and the A-Team were a pretty cool set of cards, although i never got the luck to buy em as a young kid. And probably since they were mostly minted in 1983, i couldnt readily get them now. I included this as a wierd card because, Mr. T, is...well....wierd in its own fashion. Still these must be worth something because my efforts are fruitless on getting a pack cheap on ebay. Dukes of Hazzard is a car fetish phenomenon. Your friends arent collecting them, but 30 year olds are crazy on their 80s boxes of cards and the Dukes are just a staple of it. Ebay prices are still pretty high. I also recall seeing and looking at them at my cousins house pretty often. They deserved a spot on this artical.
Heres a tidbit of pop-culture.
|
The first two series back then were very hard to find and still are. The craze became so overboard that they produced balloons, pinups, a movie and eventually a cartoon. The cartoon never made it to air because of angry protests by parents. I remember my brother keeping them hidden from mom, and i myself kept my mouth shut dispite my talkative demeanor in those days. Oh yeah, that brings me to another aspect. Parents. They didnt like it. In their opinion it was demoralizing to us, as if 80s cartoons didnt already. The last two series produced were from '88. Lastly, the best thing about the series was that they costed only 25 cents a pack. Extremely cheap.
All wanted my Syrian Flag Sticker and the revered M-1 tanks, and poor Lt. Gen. Kelly's ugly card was helplessly traded as another card for the ones we wanted. As i thumbed through the cards i noticed theres a card of Gen. Powell and Sec. Cheney. Too bad they're not the rookie cards. Still they arent as popular as hoped. The trusty browse on ebay shows a less than avg. demand for these cards with prices of no greater than 15$
The last card set ill cover today is the famous, and well loved TMNT trading cards. Minted in 1989 by Mirage Studios, they were an instant success. It was an 88 card set with a dozen or so sticker cards. These were my favorite during 89-91 turtle craze era. The plot of the card set was of the Turtles very first cartoon break. Mental note: found out what started/debuted the Turtles. I heard it was a comic book, not by Archie comics, but by the original Eastman & Laird team. Interesting, that'll be another post sometime. The coolest thing to do with these cards was mix up the order and pretend its your own story. Pretty infantile but i was 7 or 8 and obviously hadn't matured yet (still havent). 