Two Packs of Topps Fright Flicks

When do you consider the Halloween season to begin? For me, I consider it "fall" or Halloween season pretty much when stuff starts appearing in stores. A lot of stuff started popping up in late July this year (looking at you Cracker Barrel and Michaels) however, for the sake of this blog, I'll say that Halloween season starts September 1st. Well, guess what, today just happens to be that day. I figured what better way to kick off Halloween season here on the blog than with two packs of Topps Fright Flicks that I've been holding on to for this very occasion.

For those not familiar, Fright Flicks features stills from 80s horror movies with a  somewhat comedic or cheesy caption. I think it's a pretty unique set, it's not for everyone though as some of the cards are honestly a little gory. However, they are definitely unique. My long-running goal is to put this set together as I think it'll be an interesting addition to my collection.

Pack 1

#41 Darn It, I Forgot the Marshmallows! (Nightmare on Elm Street II)

#26 Sorry - Wrong Answer! (An American Werewolf in London)

#24 Well I'll Be a Monkey's Uncle .. Oh Yeah, I Am. (An American Werewolf in London)

I already had the "Nightmare on Elm Street II" card according to my want list. The other two cards are from the "American Werewolf in London" film, which I can honestly say I've never seen.

#40 No Job is too Big for Your Local Exterminator! (Alien)

#29 Now You Put on the Bunny Outfit! (An American Werewolf in London)

#22 I Tell You, That Nuclear Plant Is Safe! (The Fly)

Yay! Three cards I need here! As you can see, the set not only covers horror but also sci-fi which I guess maybe "The Fly" could be classified as. Not sure, I'm not into those kind of horror movies. I did see "Alien" once and sort of enjoyed it.

#73 I Said I'd Give Blood But This Is Ridiculous! (Nightmare on Elm Street III)

Sticker #2 Long Live The Queen (Alien)

#21 Now Don't Get Cross! (Fright Night)

#7 Baby, You're the Greatest! (Vengeance: The Demon)

And I'll close the first pack with three more cards I need. I'm not sure if I'll keep the stickers yet. I've heard of "Fright Night" and "Nightmare on Elm Street III" but I've never heard of "Vengeance: The Demon" however a quick search on IMDB shows that it's better known as "Pumpkinhead".

Pack 2

#31 Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who's the Grossest One of All! (Nightmare on Elm Street III)

#36 What Do You Mean? I Just Had a Manicure! (Fright Night)

#41 Darn It, I Forgot the Marshmallows! (Nightmare on Elm Street II)

The second pack begins with two cards I need and one card I don't.

#11 Open Wide and Say Aaah! (Aliens)

#10 Darn! Now I'll Have to Learn Shorthand! (Fright Night)

#59 The Label Said Not to Open Before Christmas! (Aliens)

Three more cards I need! After seeing all these "Fright Night" cards, I think I might have to find it to watch.

#81 Hey, You're Right - I Can See Myself! (The Fly)

Sticker #8 Predator

#79 Phooey - Nothing's Good on TV Tonight! (Nightmare on Elm Street III)

#62 Charlene, Something Inside Me is Yearning to be Released! (Aliens)

And three more cards I need close out the pack. I'll freely admit, that card from "The Fly" kind of grosses me out.

I love the backs of these. The old-school movie marquee on the bottom with the card number is so cool. Each card also has a brief ghost story on the back. These were my favorites from each pack. 

Out of two packs, I ended up with two duplicates (the same card strangely) but these definitely made a dent into my set build.

Cleaning Up at the Card (and Video) Shops

I finally had a bit of down time this weekend. The family and I went to visit my mom and my aunt who was staying with her as she was in visiting from Tulsa. We went out and about yesterday, had lunch, took the kids out and got them toys and school supplies for my oldest. Then we dropped the kids off at my moms and then back out on another excursion, this time to two of my favorite places in Dayton, Mavericks Cards and Comics and then GameSwap Kettering.

I looked around Mavericks for a bit, saw a few interesting things but then I came across a dime box, which is a rarity for them. I dug through the box and it was mostly Topps and Bowman base cards from this year and last year but I did manage to find a number of good cards, 35 in fact, that I need to scan in. To save space here, I'll cover them in a future post.

 In addition to the dime box cards, I nabbed the last five packs of Gypsy Queen. You never know what'll be left in the box when there's just a few packs left. I'll take my chances on these and open them up soon.

After Maverick's, I headed a few doors down to GameSwap. I've mentioned it before but GameSwap is a super cool place with movies, VHS tapes, arcade games, and all kids of other miscellaneous stuff. Think of it as a tribute to a video store. I need to do a post on them someday. Anyway, I always like to check out their VHS section for old wrestling tapes and I found two good ones.

WCW tapes are extremely hard to come by and usually when I do find them, they've got a serious markup on them. This tape of WCW Uncensored from March of 1999 was only four bucks. 

They also had the pay-per-view event that followed it, Spring Stampede, for five bucks. This is a pretty notable show in that it featured DDP's first WCW world title win.

I also took a gander around the DVDs and Blu-Rays. They didn't have any of the movies on my want list but I did happen across this WWE Blu-ray from a few years ago. I picked it up from the local library when it came out and I really, really enjoyed it. For eight bucks, I couldn't pass this up either.

Finally, I noticed these at checkout. I was like "wait, you have Fright Flicks cards?!" I had to grab a two packs to put towards my set build. Plus these cards are just plain fun to open anyway.

As I mentioned, I'm working on scanning the dime box cards from Maverick's and I'll have a post up about those soon! I'll also share the contents of the Gypsy Queen packs and Fright Flicks packs in future posts as well. The Fright Flicks packs might wait until closer to Halloween and as I might go grab a few more between now and then, if they have any left.

Blog Bat Around: What I Collect

A week or so back, Night Owl made a post about some of the items he collects and just recently followed up on that by officially declaring a blog bat around on the subject. Typically, I don't usually participate in these "Blog Bat Around" type subjects, mainly by the time I have a chance to write about a subject, I'm about 2-3 weeks behind everyone else. However, I'm at a rare point where I'm pretty much caught up on everything (except for a few trade packs I got in the mail recently) so I figured I would jump in on the fun of this particular topic.

I've really enjoyed reading the posts others have done on this particular subject, especially those of my regular trade partners, and it's provided me more ammunition to add to my trade box. Reading want lists and such is nice but really, when it's broken down simply in a blog post, it's much easier to keep track of.

At first I decided to split my collecting interests up into three different posts, however trying to focus on my collecting interests by sport turned out to be a pretty lengthy task, so I decided to summarize my collections in the different sports and other areas I collect.

1. Baseball

Baseball is the primary sport I collect and as far as teams go, the Reds and the Indians are the primary teams I collect. I also go after defunct teams such as the Expos, Browns, Senators, Pilots, Brooklyn Dodgers, Milwaukee/Boston Braves, and the Philadelphia/Kansas City A's. As far as player collections go, there's just too many to list. On my want list page, I did put down a pretty extensive list of players that I quote "collect" but it's just merely a guideline. If I had to pick though, probably my top player collections would be of Barry Larkin, Bronson Arroyo, and Dennis Eckersley.

In terms of sets, the main set I'm trying to complete currently is 1984 Topps, which is my birth year set. I managed to score the Don Mattingly rookie card in last year's Secret Santa package and I'd say I'm probably about 50% complete on the set, but I need to update my want list on that to be sure. Another set I'd like to get started on would be 2002 Upper Deck Vintage, as that was the only set I managed to complete during my initial foray into collecting. I haven't really started on that at all yet though.

Some team sets I'm currently trying to track down are the 1969 and 1970 Seattle Pilots cards from those particular Topps sets. The Pilots to me have always been a curiosity to me, being the only "one and done" team in modern MLB history, and so I thought it'd be pretty cool to have all of the Pilots cards from the two Topps sets to feature them. Also, in the vain of curiosities, I'm trying to piece together all the Washington Nat'l League error cards from the 1974 Topps set. I've already got the Willie McCovey and a handful of others but that's been a collecting mission of mine for as long as I can remember.

Of course, there's other stuff beside just teams, team sets, and players I stay on the lookout for and that would include things such as buybacks, cards of "short term stops", cards of players on teams they never actually played for (aka "zero year cards"), oddballs of defunct retail chains such as Hills, KB Toys, and I guess now Toys R Us could be included in that), card of players in throwback uniforms, vintage team cards, and pretty much any random vintage cards as long as they're in decent shape.

2. Hockey

Over the past few years, I've become a pretty big hockey fan, so much in fact that I buy the NHL.TV all access subscription every year so I can watch the teams I follow and because trying to find a hockey game that's not on NBC is a major chore. The current NHL teams I tend to collect are the New Jersey Devils, Calgary Flames, Edmonton Oilers, Columbus Blue Jackets, and the Arizona/Phoenix Coyotes. Both the Cincinnati and Dayton areas have a rich minor league hockey history so if I can track down cards from Cincinnati teams like the Cyclones or Mighty Ducks or former Dayton teams like the Bombers and Gems, then I go for those too.

As I mentioned previously, I collect defunct baseball teams and hockey certainly has it's share as well, heck there's even a whole defunct challenger league (the WHA). I'm always on the lookout for cards, mainly vintage, for teams such as the Quebec Nordiques, Hartford Whalers, Cleveland Barons, California Golden Seals, Atlanta Thrasher, and Cincinnati Stingers to name a few. In fact, just like the Seattle Pilots cards, it's one of my collecting missions to get every Stingers card from the O-Pee-Chee WHA sets that were produced in the 70s.

Just like baseball, there's too many player collections I have going on to list, some I actively seek out cards for (Jaromir Jagr, Shane Doan, Martin Brodeur) and some I've yet to officially declare that I'm collecting their cards (Braden Holtby, Ilya Kolvachuk) but if it's a star player or even a player I recognize from watching a game on TV, then I'm pretty likely to pick up their card. I also collect a lot of the players that were popular when I was a kid (Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Joe Sakic, etc.) or are in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

I also collect any vintage hockey I can get my hands on, any of the WHA O-Pee-Chee cards, and any oddball cards as well.

3. Pro Wrestling/UFC

I've been a wrestling fan since the mid 1990s and to be honest, the wrestling cards back then and even into the late 90s were pretty pitiful. Once Fleer got the rights to WWE cards in the early 2000s, things really starting getting better. Since then, I've been into wrestling cards. I usually get cards of wrestlers I enjoy watching on TV both past and present. I'll buy a few packs of Topps WWE cards here and there as well, but I mostly focus on singles.

As far as UFC cards go, my interest in that has definitely waned over the years. I'm more of a fan of the original UFC stuff from the 90s but I will still watch the TV fights here and there if I have time. Topps usually includes cards from old school fighters like Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, and Royce Gracie in some of their releases. Also, Jessamyn Duke (a distant cousin of mine) was on the Ultimate Fighter a few years ago and had a few UFC cards produced of her, so I try to get those when I come across them.

4. Football

I'm not a big football collector but if I find older cards, I might snag a few up here and there, especially of Hall of Famers. I do like the cards that Panini puts out in some of their sets of retired stars and Hall of Famers, so if I stumble across those in a dime or nickel box, I'm apt to potentially get those as well. I'm also on the lookout for USFL and XFL cards, since I'm big into that sort of thing, but that about the only thing I'll grab in the way of that sort of stuff.

The only cards I really actively seek out in terms of football are Cincinnati Bengals cards, and even there I'm pretty selective. I won't buy just any Bengals card, it has to be of someone like Andy Dalton or A.J. Green or older stars from the 80s and 90s like Boomer Esiason, Anthony Munoz, Jeff Blake, Corey Dillon, Cris Collinsworth, Ickey Woods, Ken Anderson (not the wrestler), etc.

5. Basketball

I'll admit it, I don't really watch basketball at all, not even when the NCAA Tournament is happening. I've tried. I played some youth basketball at the local YMCA in grade school, and couldn't get into it. I even tried to watch a little bit when the Cavs were in the the Finals the past few years and it's just not for me. However, that hasn't really stopped me in terms of collecting. I'm always on the lookout for Cincinnati Royals cards and ABA cards, plus cards of Oscar Robertson and Jerry Lucas.

6. 1988 Topps Fright Flicks

I don't remember exactly when or where I heard about these cards but when I did, I knew I had to try to build the whole set. I found a dealer a few years ago at the HorrorHound convention who was selling packs of the stuff for five bucks each. I bought one pack just to try it out and, as a fan of classic horror and sci-fi, I was hooked. I've only got about 16 of these in my collection currently.

7. Racing cards

I got back into racing cards last year thanks to Panini's Donruss set. I really enjoyed busting open packs of it and trying something new. I just recently went back and thumbed through some of the cards I got from those packs and I forgot how neat they were and I'm planning on getting a handful of packs again this year.

8. Pokemon cards

Even though it's not officially listed on my want list, I have a five year old son who is in to everything Pokemon. I managed to get him into collecting Pokemon cards and he's already got a half a binder full of cards. While I don't understand the whole concept behind the show, nor do I understand how to play the official game, it's still a fun father/son activity that we share every so often.

So there it is, my collecting habits in a nutshell ... well, almost a nutshell as this got a bit more wordy than I thought it would. I hope this provided everyone some more insight into what I collect and, in some cases, why I collect certain things. An also, as I said in the beginning, a big shout out to Night Owl for introducing the topic and declaring an official "Blog Bat Around".

Baseball, Racing, and ... Freddy Krueger?

As you saw in my previous post, last weekend I attended the card show at the Nutter Center. However, that wasn't the only card related thing I did. After the show, I headed over to TCI Sports Fan, a card shop I've written about before in my "Card Shop Chronicles" series, that was about 10 minutes down the highway from the venue. I had my mind set on getting some newer packs to rip since I figured it would be my only opportunity to do so for a while but there were some other very specific cards I was looking for as well.

Last year when I went to the Horrorhound Convention, I grabbed a pack of the Topps Fright Flicks cards from 1988. Since then, I haven't seen hide nor hair of those anywhere so I figured if anyone would have them, it would be TCI, since they literally have every sort of sports or non-sports trading card (except for gaming cards) available. I asked at the desk if they had any and Terry, the great guy who runs the shop, winced a bit and said he remembered having some but wasn't sure if he did anymore. He pointed me in the direction of display case that had the bottom filled with 25 cent non-sport boxes. He said if there were any, they would be there. I took a gander and it didn't take long for me to find them. There were a bunch of duplicates but I did manage to grab eight new cards for the set I'm building.

Most of these are from the Nightmare on Elm Street films but there are cards here from other films such as Predator, The Fly, Alien, and Fright Night. I'm not particularly one for gross out creature feature films like The Fly but they are a necessary evil in a set like this. I'm more for the suspense/thriller/slasher type films like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, etc. The other attraction for this set is that this is the only set (well, until last year) that had cards from the original Ghostbusters movie. Unfortunately, there weren't any of the Ghostbusters cards from the set to be had in the box I found. Perhaps I'll dig a little deeper next time I stop in. I have a feeling though that those are going to be the toughest part of completing the set.

Fright Flicks cards weren't the only thing I was after though. 

My main reason for heading to the shop was to get some packs of some current stuff to tear into. One of the things I really wanted was some 2017 Donruss racing. Now, I'm not really into watching NASCAR but I saw the Beckett Box Busters video of this and thought it would be pretty fun to get. Plus, it's always good to spice things up with a bit of variety. I'll share how I did with these in a future post.

Also coming in a future post will be these packs of Donruss baseball. Even though Panini doesn't have the MLB license, I still enjoy the Donruss cards as you get a lot of fun stuff for a decent price. As of this writing, I haven't torn into these but stay close. I did pretty well when I bought some Donruss on a whim last year so perhaps my luck with this will continue.

Finally, since they were completely out of Heritage, I picked up four more packs of Series 1. While I've already opened ten packs of this, it never hurts to pick up some more. Plus, I really like the cards this year. I'll share these in a separate post as well. Since I bought so many packs, the shop owner was nice enough to throw in the Fright Flicks cards for free without me having to even ask.

And thus, another fun trip to the card shop concludes. Speaking of card shops though, while I was at the card show, there was a vendor there from a new shop (well, new to me). I plan on checking the place out this weekend and who knows, I might find something fun.

1988 Topps Fright Flicks Cards

I first mentioned these back in the spring when I filed a report on the HorrorHound Convention. These cards were produced by Topps in 1988 and ran the gamut of horror films of the time, from the first three Nightmare on Elm Street movies to other movies like Fright Night, Predator, Day of the Dead, and yes even Ghostbusters. For the longest time, this was the only place you could find cards dedicated to the original Ghostbusters movie, that is until the Ghostbusters cards came out earlier this year from Cryptozoic. Anyway, I grabbed this pack at the aforementioned convention for five dollars, which is about the best price you can find on these. There are nine cards per pack and one sticker, let's see what I've got.

The first card is from the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie. I haven't seen that movie in quite a long time and I think it's time I need to revisit it. I don't really consider Ghostbusters a "horror film", it's more of a comedy but I can see why it was include as fans of the movie would buy the cards. This Slimer card is really cool though. Another movie I don't consider a horror film is Predator. I classify it as more sci-fi and I've only seen it a handful of times. It's a pretty good movie but the only thing I remember from it is Jesse Ventura stating "I ain't got time to bleed".

Left to right, these cards are from Vengeance: The Demon, Nightmare on Elm Street II, and Poltergeist. I've never seen, let alone heard of Vengeance but that scene they chose looks pretty creepy. I haven't seen Nightmare 2 but it's on my list to check out. I need to do that soon as Halloween is approaching fast. There was a remake of Poltergeist last year that did horrible business and I've never seen the original either, but that clown just looks creepy.

Closing out the pack are cards from three movies I've never seen, Fright Night, Poltergeist as I mentioned above, and Day of the Dead. Since I have no knowledge of these films, I'll speak to the card design a bit. It's very clean and simple, just a still from the film with a somewhat cheesy caption on it. 

The backs are equally as clean. There's a brief story on the back and I really like the design on the bottom with the film title in the marquee. 

There's also a sticker included in the pack, here's the one I pulled. I'm writing this during my break at work so I pulled this image from Trading Card Database. It's not my favorite sticker of the set but if you put all of them together, you form a nice collage of sorts.

Overall, this was a really fun pack to break into and if I can find more packs for a reasonable price, I'll definitely get more as I'm planning on building the set and collecting the four different wrappers. It's nearly Halloween and I've got a few more Halloween related posts before putting Project Halloween in the books for the year. 

Road Report: HorrorHound Convention 2016!

Every year, I get invited by my friend Tim to go to the HorrorHound convention and every year something comes up, be it an unexpected expenditure or otherwise, and I can't make it. However, this year I made sure my calendar was clear and set aside some extra cash to head down and take in the convention. I would have taken more pictures but the convention center was absolutely packed and you had to keep moving otherwise you'd get run over.

The main draw of the convention were autograph guests and horror icons such as Doug Bradley (Pinhead from "Hellraiser), Elvira, Nick Castle (Michael Myers in the original "Halloween"), Charles Cyphers, Kane Hodder, Ari Lehman, and WWF legends Demolition (Ax & Smash) and Chyna. While I didn't feel like dropping $50 per person on autographs, I wandered around the vendors room and checked out the Horror Host Hall of Fame Ceremony.

Elvira (R) with Count Gore de Vol

The Hall of Fame ceremony kicked off with an lifetime achievement award presented to Elvira. While she didn't stay for long (as the event was running late to begin with and she had to get to her autograph signing), I was able to get a somewhat decent picture of her accepting the award. The other reason I wanted to attend the ceremony is because my friend's girlfriend's step-dad (known on TV in the Dayton area as A. Ghastlee Ghoul) was being inducted as well. It was pretty cool to see clips of all the inductees such as The Adviser, Count Cool Rider, Dr. Morbius, and Ghost Host among others.

After the Hall of Fame induction was over, my friends and I wandered around the vendors area. There was a ton of stuff there that I was really could have bought, but my budget wouldn't allow it. So instead, I found some good stuff that wasn't too terribly expensive.

Funko dolls are an addiction and these were the best of the Funkos I could find from the one vendor that didn't have a horrible markup on them. I'm a big fan of anything Ghostbusters and this Slimer was perfect to grab there, too bad I couldn't find the other characters. Another thing I enjoy are the original Universal Monsters (The Mummy, Frankenstein, Dracula, etc.). Again, this was the best of the batch that I felt like getting.

Michael West is a local author that was peddling his wares at the show. My friend, his girlfriend, and I each bought a book for $10. This particular one called "Spook House" jumped out to me simply because the cover looked really cool. The old saying is to never judge a book by its cover so hopefully it's good but if it's not then at least I didn't pay that much for it.

Finally, the best thing I bought at the convention and then main thing I was looking for in the vendors room ... FRIGHT FLICKS!!!! If you've never heard or seen these cards, then you're missing out. It's only a 72 card set but features stills from the first three Nightmare on Elm Street films along with Alien, Poltergeist, Predator, Fright Night, and Ghostbusters. It's actually the only trading card series that features cards for the original Ghostbusters film from 1984. Nine cards per pack with one sticker and one stick of bubble gum (which I did not try).

The nine cards that were in the pack and I managed to get one of the Ghostbuster cards featuring Slimer raiding a food cart. The middle card of Freddy Krueger is from Nightmare on Elm Street II.

The back of the cards. There's a little story on the back and the marquee on the bottom tells what movie the still is from. I think this is a series that I'll definitely have to work on collecting, especially if I can find more packs. This pack cost me $5 but it's worth it because boxes of these go for about $70 or more on eBay.

This is definitely a convention I'll head back to next year as it was a lot of fun and for a person like me who digs horror movies, it was a great experience!