Hepcat

Hake's Auctions and Ebay have been my two main sources but not surprisingly games in unused condition just don't show up that often.

Here I am watching Balticboy get out the dice for a round of board games. I have to watch him closely to make sure he's not substituting loaded dice. He's like that. This gorgeous Man from UNCLE game just arrived on Friday: I had to rearrange the shelf containing my board games slightly to make room for it:

The stereo is in a different room than my comics, which are fortunately readily portable. Here are a few more items in my comic room. First is a signed and numbered Neal Adams print: Here is a reproduction of a Vampirella cover done in chalk by a local Toronto artist that I purchased at a comic con in 1983 or so: Here is the original movie poster artwork for the 1972 rerelease of the "Song of the South": Finally, here's a stained glass window of Brer Fox and Flower that I commissioned for the door between my comic room and the upper porch:

I'd be there already if I did! I have neither of those two items. Toys even higher on my list of priorities are a Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist Laboratory, King Zor, Odd Ogg, the Ideal Haunted House Game and the Hamilton's Invaders sets.

Well I already have a shot of the Terrytoons game in inventory: That and the Casper game gave me the inspiration to pick up more board games.

I'd not yet thought of collecting vintage colouring books. I wonder if there are guide books on those.... I have about a half dozen vintage water paint boxes though. If, however, you want to see close-up shots of anything, just let me know. I've loaded several hundred pics of my collectibles into my Photobucket account over the last four months. Here I am showing off my thermoses and lunch boxes to my buddy Balticboy:

Being from London myself, I commend your loyalty to O-Pee-Chee! I really like the Wacky Packs cards but my collection of Wacky Packs only fills one smaller two inch binder right now. Nor do I have any of the earlier issues. The reason I haven't focused more on Wacky Packs to this point is the same reason I've focused more on Atom Age and Silver Age comics than on Bronze Age. I was born in 1952 and the Wacky Packs came out after my time. I'll post some scans of the wonderful 1960 Leaf Foney Ads set that was a precursor to the Wacky Ads though.

Groan! A rookie Orr, several rookie Gretzkys and Messiers! Even if they were in rougher condition you can now mention to your mother that she may have thrown out well over a thousand$. Well then you can also show her this precis I've written up on the extent of my fanaticism: Comic books and other collecting activities have been a big part of my life since first grade. The first comics I can remember reading were the Harvey Felix's Nephews Inky & Dinky.The first comics I can recall buying were the Dell Cicero's Cat 1 and 2 in the summer of 1959 - which I now have once again in pristine, near-mint condition! The first superhero comic I distinctly remember reading was the Archie Adventures of the Fly 11, which featured a dandy two-headed dinosaur in 1961. I remember reading it at the local drugstore, before they chased me out! The first DC superhero comic I can specifically remember reading was Green Lantern 11 in 1962 which a buddy on a farm outside of London, Ontario had. I still remember how it filled me with wonder at the time. A copy of JLA 8 that I read at summer camp a couple of months later that same year clinched the deal. The first superhero comic I bought shortly thereafter was Justice League of America 14. I still need better copies of Fly 11 and Green Lantern 11 but I have a very satisfactory copies of JLA 8 and 14 now. These comics had a lifelong influence on me. But so did the bubble gum cards I collected and model kits I built as a kid. Despite the fact that my boyhood treasures all went by the wayside at some point in time, I never completely lost interest in these things. Throughout high school and university I always wished I still had my comics and cards. My first job after university was in 1977 and by 1979 I was back to collecting. Big time. I collect comics from 1945 to 1980. My concentration is Silver Age DC such as Justice League, Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Atom, Hawkman, Mystery in Space, Sea Devils, Challengers of the Unknown, Metal Men, Wonder Woman, Tales of the Unexpected, Teen Titans, Fox & the Crow etc. I'm just about solid in my main titles going back to 1962. For example, I have all the Justice Leagues going back to 1960 with the exception of issues 5, 6 and 47. I also collect other titles like Fly, Jaguar, Black Cat, Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, Space Adventures, Gorgo, Herbie, Turok, Dr. Solar, Lone Ranger, Gold Key Phantom and many Atom Age Jungle and Adventure titles including Sheena, Jumbo, Space Western and Commander Battle & the Atomic Sub. I have a few Harveys such as Casper, Wendy, Spooky, Little Dot, Little Audrey and Hot Stuff and quite a few Dell Funny Animal comics. I also have a very good collection of the car humour mags such as Drag Cartoons, Hot Rod Cartoons and CARtoons. I also collect the Warren horror mags such as Creepy and Eerie and the Skywalds. I have a collection of several dozen Mad magazines from the late fifties and early sixties as well. My collection of CFL cards and such from the fifties to 1972 is among the best in the world. I also have a very nice collection of hockey cards from 1957 to 1973. I also have hundreds of baseball cards although these I've not pursued aggressively. I have thirty binders of sports cards, over three quarters of them from before 1973. I also collect non-sport cards primarily from 1948 to 1972. These I find even more interesting than sport cards. Favourite sets in my collection include You'll Die Laughing, Funny Valentines, Mr. Foney's Foney Ads, Zorro, Robin Hood, Sports Cars, Civil War News, Casper, TV Westerns, Goofy Series Postcards, Wacky Plaks, Fight the Red Menace, Batman, Space/Target Moon, Crazy Cards, Round-Up, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Monkees and Spook Stories. I haven't yet found Mars Attacks and Battle sets in sufficiently high grade. These two sets would be excruciatingly expensive. All in all, I have 32 binders of non-sport cards of which over 85% are pre-1980. I've also accumulated the original wrappers for dozens of these sets. As you can imagine, the wrappers can be particularly tough to find. My collection of premium coins - Shirriff hockey, football, baseball, cars, warships, space etc. - from potato chips and jelly desserts is among the best in the world. I collect unbuilt figure model kits - the Aurora monster and other figure models, Hawk Weird-Ohs, Revell "Big Daddy" Roth, AMT Star Trek vessels etc. I have the majority of the ones I want the most. For example, the only Roth kits I need are Surfite, Scuzzfink, Boss Fink and Robin' Hood Fink and and the only Aurora monsters I need are the King Kong, Godzilla and Mummy's Chariot. These are very tough to find. I also collect unbuilt Aurora and Hawk plane and ship models from the sixties and some drag and stock car model kits from the seventies. I currently have 146 vintage boxed model kits in my display cabinets. I also have 33 unbuilt slot car kits from the sixties, primarily Monogram and AMT. As you might imagine, these are particularly difficult to find. I currently have nineteen Mint in Box board games from the sixties including Casper, Terrytoons Hide n' Seek, Outer Limits, Shindig, Howdy Doody Adventure, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Deputy, Mighty Crusaders, Johnny Ringo, Dracula, Superman, Spider-Man and Lost in Space. I also have a modest collection of other toys including a Three Keys to Treasure Bagatelle, eight Kenner Presto or Sparkle Paint Sets, three different Hasbro Marble Mazes and some Hamilton Invader items. I have a couple of dozen Mint on Card Duncan Spin Tops. The "toy" I most covet is a Mint in Box Mad, Mad, Mad Scientist Laboratory chemistry set which I had as a kid. I've also taken up collecting NM unused kids' lunch boxes with their thermoses. I now have 22 thermoses and nineteen lunch boxes. The Steve Canyon lunchbox and thermos is the oldest of these but others include Shari Lewis, Casper, Atom Ant & Secret Squirrel, Woody Woodpecker, Famous Monsters of Filmland and Yogi Bear. I have a small collection of Lionel HO trains. Eventually I'd like to have a 1/29 scale garden railroad outside with Aristocraft and USA Trains equipment. I'll model a 1950s scene and mix 4-8-4 Northern steam engines with GP7 and GP9 diesels in my layout. I haven't really gotten into Pez dispensers, Corgi or Matchbox cars, or Hot Wheels - yet. Maybe in another ten years. I also collect refillable soda pop bottles, 16 ounces and smaller, and 1/4 pint and 1/2 pint round painted label milk bottles from the 1920s to the 1950s. I specialize in Ontario dairies. I now have close to two hundred bottles plus several dozen Pepsi and other collectible milk glasses in a custom built kitchen pantry with glass doors to store and display the bottles. I have a couple very nicely restored Beaver gumball machines from the sixties. As soon as I create the space in my kitchen, I intend to acquire one of the pop machines from the sixties where you pulled the bottle out toward you horizontally. I also really want one of the small metal Wishing Well thermometers which hung in many variety stores when I was a young boy. I love music and am constantly adding to my record accumulation of over 500 LPs and 200 CDs. My favourite artists include the Rolling Stones, Doors, Animals, Jethro Tull, Kinks, Who, Cream, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Spirit, Yardbirds, Zombies, Troggs, ? & the Mysterians, Jay & the Americans, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Jeff Beck Group, Buddy Guy, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, James Brown, Junior Walker & the All-Stars, David Bowie, Blondie, B-52's, T-Rex, etc. I have a small collection of Rolling Stones 45 sleeves and concert programs. I play my music on a Thorens TD 240 turntable with a state of the art Ortofon 2M Black moving magnet cartridge which incorporates a Shibata line stylus, a Marantz CC4001 CD player, a Marantz PM7001 70 watt per channel amplifier and a pair of Monitor Audio Silver RS8 speakers. I'm also getting a custom hardwood base with interlocking layers of sound deadening baltic birch built for a new old store stock Garrard GT-55 turntable I picked up on Ebay! It will anchor a second system in my bedroom which includes a pair of BIC Venturi 5312 speakers. I have a small coin collection as well of primarily Canadian silver coins but I have some U.S. ones as well as the odd gold coin. I also adore classic and muscle cars. I had a 1987 Buick Grand National but that was stolen in 1992 out of the parking lot of a banquet hall when I was attending a friend's wedding and then trashed. A project I've not been able to get around to doing due to financial limitations is restoring my candle apple red 340 powered 1973 Dodge Charger which needs an engine rebuild. I had Jesse at the Hemi Shop in London install the engine back in 1981.... Collecting is a terrible compulsion to be sure.

Interesting about those 1958-59 hockey cards. They were the first sports cards I ever had as a kid. I'd found four of them on the street in the late fall when I was in grade one. The first three were Detroit Red Wings, but the last one was a Chicago Blackhawk. When I saw that big Indian crest, I knew that had to be my favourite team even though I could not yet read the team name! The set is not quite complete. It's missing the Bobby Hull card. Back in about 1980 I had purchased a Hull card from an antique and assorted junk dealer for the princely sum of perhaps $15. At the time I thought it was in perfectly acceptable condition. It was actually in VG with rounding/wear of two of the corners. By the mid-nineties my condition demands were a lot higher so I banished the Hull from my collection. I traded it to a dealer for something like $1100 in credit. He put it up for sale for $1600 cash and it sat for years. He'd overpriced it. I've not yet replaced it. There are two problems. One is that demand for the Hull is very high since it is his rookie card and the supply is reduced by the fact that it was the last card in the set and thus more prone to pocket damage. The price of a NM Hull is thus egregious. The second is that the 1958-59 Topps hockey are prone to toning/yellowing - or else the card stock used was not consistently white. I want the whitest ones though which further reduces my selection. Moreover SGC does not penalize for toning so I don't trust their grading. Fortunately, I care not at all for centering and SGC penalizes off center cards so that creates a potential niche for me. My ideal therefore is a sharp, white card that's centered 80/20 to bring down the price to an affordable(?) $1200 or so. There's also another half dozen or so cards in the set that I'd like to upgrade to whiter ones but admittedly I'm being more than slightly fanatical.

Practice makes purrrfect. And often I get The MAN to help me out.

Finally, here are three shots of my bottle and glass pantry in the kitchen: Here I am picking out an LP from my hoard to spin on my turntable: And here I am on the rooftop deck of the luxury quarters I maintain in The MAN's spacious abode: And that's it for now, folks!

No longer my "comic room" but here are a few pictures of my sundry toy cabinet in the spare bedroom:

Here now are a few pics of the main model cabinet in my comics room:

Here also are pics of some of the cards that I have from the 1960's:

That's not my cat. I don't keep slaves. That's me. Here's a first look at the trading card side of my collecting activities: Here I've recruited The MAN to hold up some of my binders containing bubble gum cards from the 1950's for me: And here is a pic of the original art to one of the Funny Valentine cards above:

Here are some shots of my comic and magazine cabinets: My comics are all in Mylites/Arklites backed by Thin X-Tenders/Halfbacks. I've not yet Mylited my magazine collection though. It's in the third, half the fourth and the fifth row of the cabinet to the right of my comic cabinet. The top row and the second row of this cabinet are presenting false fronts. I've just put up a few high nostalgia comics from 1963 for display purposes. Behind them is just miscellaneous junk. The other half of the fourth row consists of comics waiting to be Mylited. I've run out of Halfbacks and need to put in an order for several hundred comic ones and probably a thousand magazine ones. Hopefully that will be sufficient for at least another ten years.

Here are the most recent pictures I've taken of my comics and collectibles room. I'll start on the left as a fellow walks in the door. Here first of all is my lunch box, board game and model kit overflow cabinet:

Nice books John! (thumbs u

Nice one! A title far too often overlooked by Marvel zombies. (thumbs u

Wow! You just continued your streak of posting the most awesome book on the page! (thumbs u

So do I! (thumbs u

Now those are really nice copies! (thumbs u

Simply incredible once again! You have a remarkable talent for coming up with the best copies I've ever seen of super tough early Silver Age books that only really advanced collectors even have on their want lists.

Good stuff! You're not going to get noticeably better copies than those regardless of how much you pay.

Yes, so do I. I pick up high grade copies of Felix the Cat, Inky and Dinky and early Casper, Spooky, Wendy, Hot Stuff, Devil Kids, Little Dot and Little Audrey whenever I can!