Gearing Back Up

If you follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed I'm getting a strong urge to start blogging again.  I suddenly have a lot of incoming new material, and the desire to talk about it is back as well.  I'll start off light right now though, because not much of the new hotness is here yet and I haven't scanned anything at all in a couple months.

So for today, it's just a couple really cool, very cheap sketch cards I picked up on eBay back in the early spring.  I think it was only around $8 total for the two of them.  They are both by the seller, one Joshua Dyson.

Bayley..

First up is WWE star Bayley.  The wacky wavy inflatable tube men in the background were a brilliant touch on this sketch.  Anyway, WWE has almost completely squandered the unbelievably amazing character work that made her probably the biggest star NXT had ever made to that point on the main roster almost from the jump, but anyone with a functioning brain had to figure that was gonna happen (see Wyatt, Bray).  She's awesome and I still believe in her though.

Ms. Marvel II (Kamala Khan)..

The older I get, the less time I have for angsty, sad sack superheroes with pointlessly tragic backstories.  So Kamala just spoke to me immediately, and I've been squirreling together a little collection of her ever since.  This is my second sketch card (not counting the one I drew myself), and I also have two 3x5" index card sketches (also from eBay, also pretty cheap), and a couple inserts and a magenta printing plate from various Upper Deck products.  Also I think I might have a button of her?

Anyway, as you can see, these are relatively simple sketches.  But there is a lot to like about them.  The large variance in thickness of the lines shows some very clear confidence in inking that I don't even have myself after more than a decade of being back at my drawing board.  That the lines are still rather bold even at their thinnest gives the artist's style a fairly unique voice and makes the mostly flat colors really pop.  It gives them a very cool, cartoony vibe.

I also appreciate the relative rarity of the subjects.  There's plenty of stuff of Bayley out there to collect now, but her autographs & relic cards & action figures & such often aren't often in my price range, and the opportunity to own original art of wrestlers is much, much harder to come by, especially cheap.

Kamala's been around long enough now for her to show up in a few licensed sets & on the sketch cards therein occasionally (she also has one of the very best Marvel Legends figures in recent memory, which I also own), but there's still just not that much stuff available.  There doesn't seem to be much in the way of non-licensed original art out there of her either, be it sketch cards or larger work, so I gotta jump on what I can find.

So yeah, these were a couple excellent finds and I'm grateful I was able to pick them up for so little coin.  Thanks, Joshua.  I hope you're out there somewhere still creating art.

That's all for now.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next...

High End Heroes (and Villains)

2015 Fleer Retro Marvel Elektra Blue PMG...

While I was going insanely overboard during COMC's Spring Cleaning sale, I also won another a cool lot in one of my very few forays onto the eBay this year.  The above Elektra-fying blue beauty actually came from the COMC sale, but the lot also comes from the 2015 iteration of Upper Deck's high end Retro Marvel set, so I figured she fit in with them better than a leading off a COMC Miscellany post.  Precious Metal Gems are also a low-key White Whale, so getting both a red and blue in short order (and both of characters I like!) was pretty cool.  Just need a Rogue & She-Hulk from 2013 and I can close the book on Marvel PMGs for good.

...#'ed 30/50!

Now onto the lot itself.

The low-tier inserts..

They all mimic the backs of the originals pretty decently..

These are some of the low end inserts from this high end set.  They mimic early-'90s releases.  Most have autographed parallels.  There will be one later.

Regular Metals..

Backs..

The regular Metals are easier gets too.  PMGs are their parallels, which come in the above Blue /50 and below Red /100 (which are one per box) varieties, as well as the far beyond my means Green, which are numbered out of only /10.

Flair..

Flair backs..

Flair are where the inserts start to get a little more interesting, and they have their own, honestly rather forgettable, throwback parallel.  They're on sturdier stock though.  I didn't get any of the higher tier of inserts in this lot, which are mostly based on sports base and inserts sets from the late-'90s, though there's a couple vintage-styled inserts in this iteration of the set as well.  Certain ones can even outstrip the price of Red PMGs, despite none of them being numbered.

There are also sketch cards, and I do have one from the 2013 set, but that'll probably get its own post somewhere down the line.  I did get a couple autographs though.  Have a looksie,,,

Falcon (base) and Iron Patriot (Skybox)...

...autographed by Mark Brooks and Stuart Immonen..

Here are the autos.  Falcon is a base auto and Iron Patriot is from the same insert set as Ares.  I dig the gold ink.  Nice choice.  Immonen is a recognizable name.  Shame he's not the auto on Falcon.

Storm Red PMG...

We've finally reached the end of this post, and the Precious Metal Gem that was the centerpiece of the lot.  Mohawked Storm.  Nice.  I got all that for just a hair more than the blue PMG cost by itself, and way less than half what all of it would have cost me individually on COMC (and those comparisons were made back during the huge Spring Cleanup sale!).

...#'ed 83/100!

Almost done, and not a moment too soon.  I've been blogging about sports cards off & on since March of 2008, and this is first time in all that time that I've ever managed an entire, uninterrupted week of posts!

As for the lot itself, most of it I expect to be keeping.  PMGs ain't going anywhere.  If I trade the autos, it'll probably just be for autos on characters I like more.  All the ladies will go in my hottie binders.  Cyclops can stay, because he is a great character that very few people, including many X-Men writers understand and respect.  Ironically, their attempts to turn him into unlikable jerkass have made him a much more interesting, complex character than he'd ever been before.  On top of that, while ol' Cyke has gotten all deep & interesting over the past decade, eternal rival Wolverine has kinda truly become embodiment of the lame, overrated, overexposed Marty Stu a proud few of us had always known and professed him to be.  Glorious.

Whew, rant mode off.  I do have other destinations in mind for a few of these, like Iceman going to Gavin in my trade with him, since Bobby's younger self was recently outed in the comics, on questionable grounds, and via rather carelessly skeevy means.  But it is what it is.  Pack War, Cardboard History, and Johnny's Trading Spot might have a card or two waiting for them when I finally get their packages sent over the next month or two.

That's all for now.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next...

When In Doubt...

... Post sketch cards!

Josie by Fer Galicia

Yeah, I've been keeping up with my scanning surprisingly diligently now that I have a desk and the scanner is at eye level, but I haven't gotten around to following up my latest attempt to get this cannoli stand up and running very well.  So at this point, I have no idea what scans are supposed to go where, or when... or why.  Thus, random sketch card pick-ups it is!

Pulp Girls sketch card by...

...Dennis Budd!

I scored this trio of 5finity sketch cards as a cheap lot from what turned out to be the same seller as Raz' bunch from his recent post not long after he picked up his at auction (this was a BIN of multi-time failures to sell).  They only set me back a grand total of $9.99 + $3.50 shipping.  Well under $5 a card, even after shipping.  I think I've only managed a better per-card rate on lots maybe three times in all my years of collecting sketch cards, and they were all at least 7 cards strong.  One was an absolutely insane 57, but that's another story for another time...

The Pussycats by Kate Hayward..

Sketch cards don't even have to be that great for me to be willing to pay under $5, but that wasn't really a problem here.  Fer Galicia is one of favorite sketch card artists, and the main reason I picked this trio up.  His card probably worth what I paid for the entire bunch alone, and I'm happy to add another to the binder.  Dennis Budd is another nice name to get from the lower end of the sketch card marketplace as well.

Happily, everyone signed their names, which doesn't always happen..

I'm not as enamored with the art on the third card, which is by Kate Hayward.  A quick search of cards by her available on eBay indicates her work can vary in quality dramatically (my work is the same way, tbh), and while I this isn't one of her strongest efforts, it looks like she has some legitimately great stuff out there, and I wouldn't hesitate to pick up more of her work should it fall in to my ever feeble price range.  As for the card in my possession, it does feature the entire band on it and the colors are excellent, so I still like it enough that I don't really have any inclination of moving it without a pretty good reason for doing so.

That about wraps it up for this post.  Thanks for stopping by!

Until our next...

And We're Back... Again!

Yes, and I might actually hang around for a little while this time!

Some noticeable changes have taken place over the past month.  First, the reason I disappeared all of a sudden.  Both my computer AND my tablet ate it within a few days of each other, somewhere in the 8-12th of July neighborhood.  However, my most likely extremely annoying penchant for aimless wandering allowed me to luck into a very nice, very cheap new laptop before the month was out.  It's specs are pretty much baseline, but that's what you get for $250 (well, $400 originally, but it was on sale), but it does everything I need it to right now.  It also has an excellent 7-ish hour battery life as its one real plus tool (seems to charge hella fast too).  I've spent these first couple weeks getting acquainted with it and adding a lot of my typical bells & whistles (Open Office, MAME, etc), and now I'm finally starting to get into the swing of things again.

I didn't forget that I owe a few people some cards, which I will try to get done before Halloween, at the latest.  It will probably be sooner, but I'm still under the gun even more than usual money-wise, since I'll be paying my laptop (and the service plan) off through at least October, so I'm just trying to be cautious with the date & not get anyone's hopes up.

Around the same time I got the laptop & started getting it ready for action, my little brother was in the midst of his big move to Texas to be with his girlfriend (which may have been the single most successful, relatively drama free long distance move in human history).  Anyway, this is worth noting because he left me his ginormous desk on the way outta town.  Not that there was room for him to take it with him anyway, since it's a good three feet long in one direction, five feet in the other, and both sides are two feet wide, but he is, at least for the time being, leaving behind journalism for what seems to be a job that's more along the lines of social work.

So yeah, I'm typing this from that desk right now and it is amazing.  It's not completely set up how I want it yet, but it's already working out quite well.  I have room for my computer, the scanner is at eye level now, and there's still plenty of room for me to draw (or paint, he left me a watercolor sketchbook & some paints too, as well as a little box with an unused Munny and a few action figures), and keep some binders and a few of my favorite toys on it.

Oh, I started running again too!  I'm slow as molasses (I was never remotely fast even at my peak anyway) and my knees are trash, but being active makes me feel better and a little more functional.  I wonder if Antwon moving on played a part in making me take it back up too.  Maybe watching life moving on without me lit a small fire under my ass.  I dunno, but I'm going again, and I like the way it feels.

Losing the computer and tablet hurt, but maybe, just maybe, things are starting to look up.

Since you indulged my babbling about life stuff, I'll leave you with a card stuff.  Here's a recent eBay pickup I just scanned for you to enjoy.  Thanks for stopping by!

2016 Topps WWE Eve Torres..

..Gold Parallel #'ed 4/10!

Until our next...