When a Little Goes a Long Way

I like to take pleasure in the simple things. Mac and cheese is my favourite food, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a good read and Dumb and Dumber cheers me up on a rough day. Although most of my days are packed with activity, I love to revel in the quiet as much as one possibly can in a house with two young children who have a knack for running laps around the main living area as if they were Usain Bolt basking in his own greatness.

As far as cards go, simple can be a great thing too. Done right, white space is aesthetically pleasing. Other than Topps' recent blank sketch cards they put in Topps Baseball, here's a card that has some of the most white space I can recall off hand:

Scooby-Doo: Mysteries and Monsters Case Card CL1 (Inkworks, 2003)

Scooby-Doo: Mysteries and Monsters Case Card CL1 (Inkworks, 2003) (Back)

The card comes from Inkworks' 2003 Scooby-Doo: Mysteries and Monsters. It was a case topper. I recently picked it up for a few dollars simply because it made me laugh. I grew up loving (and being scared of) Scooby-Doo and I love cards about cards. This self-referential masterpiece gets them both with hilarious results. Even the back takes the minimalist approach. Clearly, this is an instance where less is more and there's some complex thought behind its simplicity.

A Tribute to Mom - The Top 5 Cardboard Moms

Mother's Day was two days ago and only now are you catching a post about moms on cardboard. This would be indicative of one or more of the following:

1. Life has taken over everything else.
2. I'm poring my spare time into a brand-spanking new site and need to convert and transfer another 1000-or-so pages of content.
3. I was too busy talking to my mom for the past couple of days.
4. I'm a slacker.
5. I believe that every day should be a day we all think especially highly of our mothers.

You decide. I'm going to countdown five of my favourite moms that I found digging through my collection. I'm probably missing a bunch, but here's a good start to get things rolling.

5. Sarah Connor - The Terminator franchise.
Let's see, she fought off killer robots from the future, got knocked up by her son's closest ally who technically wasn't born when he did the deed to conceive her and she can tote a mean machine gun. Ms. Connor was a little paranoid about the future, but I think she had a pretty good reason for it.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day Filmcardz Rare R5 (Artbox, 2003)

This card comes from Artbox's Terminator 2 Filmcardz series, perhaps my favorite Terminator set produced. The photos are printed sort of like oversized slides, giving them a unique look and feel. This particular card is a "Rare" insert. Linda Hamilton, who played Connor, also signed for the set.

4. Carmela Soprano - The Sopranos
Gold digger? Perhaps. She certainly must have known what she was getting into when she married Tony Soprano. But I'll let you in on a secret - The Sopranos was all about the familial structure of the Sopranos and Carmela was the driving force. The gangster stuff was cool and all, but I really dug the overriding themes of the series.

The Sopranos: Season One Le Belle Donne BD-1 (Inkworks, 2005)

Unfortunately Inkworks' set based on the show;s first season was a monumental flop. It hit shelves with a ton of hobby hype but within a couple of months prices were falling fast. I attribute it to the lack of big-time signers on the autograph checklist, but The Sopranos: Season One is seriously one gorgeous set. This particular card is from the Le Belle Donne insert set, a simple yet elegant take on the ladies of The Sopranos that resided outside of the Bing.

3. Missy - Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

So she's not really Bill's mom, but Missy is "Mom." Awkwardness ensues as Bill's best friend Ted fawns over the hot mama.

Bill and Ted's Most Atypical Movie Cards 27 (ProSet, 1991)

 Bill and Ted is one franchise that could easily be resurrected in the hobby, for at least one set. In 1991 ProSet combined both films into one bland set featuring lazy full-bleed photos and very short text on the back. But it's Missy.

2. Mama Fratelli - The Goonies

Growing up I wasn't sure if Mama Fratelli was played by a woman or someone in drag. I don't mean that disrespectfully. Rather, it was an awesome gimmick. Clearly, the late Anne Ramsey thrived taking on roles that required a tough-as-nails matriarch. Mama Fratelli wanted only the finer things in life for her boys. Presumably a single mom, all she desired was for the family to have what they deserved.

The Goonies 9 (Topps, 1985)

Topps' set based on The Goonies was standard stuff for them during the 80s. Cards and sticker with puzzles on the back. Such memories. The biggest chase element comes with a handful of stickers having variant puzzle backs. 

1. Carol Brady - The Brady Bunch

Is there really any competition? Probably not. Although let's debate for a small second whether or not Carol Brady really was the All-American mom pop culture has made her out to be. Yes, six kids is a handful. But Alice is the one looking after the house most of the time. And raising the kids? She passed the problems off to Mike more often than not. And it was Mike who threw the briefcase in court that made the scammer turn his head, thus getting poor Carol off the hook for a fender bender at the grocery store. Still, it's Carol freaking Brady.

TV's Coolest Classics Dream Girls D4 (Inkworks, 1998)

TV's Coolest Classics Memorable Moments M5 (Inkworks, 1998)

 Mrs. Brady appears in a couple of sets. There's the Topps set with the classic wood borders from back when the show was on the air. But a decade ago Inkworks came along with TV's Coolest Classics and gave the lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls a more modern spin. So what does that mean: holofoil sparkles with the Dream Girls inserts and corny embossing on the TV-inspired design of the Memorable Moments card.

I tried looking for moms in the sports section but they proved elusive to find. Anyone got any leads?

To all those moms out there, it's still Mother's Day around these parts. Thanks for making us who we are. And a special thanks to my mom who passed on my guinea pigs to a more deserving home but didn't take my cards out to the fire pit.

The Inkworks Well Finally Appears to Be Running Dry

More than a year after going out of business, it looks like the flood of excess autographs might finally be on the horizon. But not until Razor releases one more set chalk full of them.

2010 Razor Ink Vault will be the company's final set that focuses on Inkworks autographs. Boxes will contain four random autographs plus an unopened non-sport box. This is up one autograph per box from the first Ink Vault release.

Last year's Razor Ink Vault was my favorite product to bust. Packed with value, even when you don't get a major name, the surprise factor and the breaking of a surprise box was a lot of fun. At $50-60 it was like paying around the original cost of the box (now deflated because most were closeouts of Inkworks leftovers) but with an additional trio of autographs.

This time around the price doesn't rise but you get one more autograph at the same price.

I do have a hunch that autographs from Inkworks' final release, The Spirt, could play somewhat prominently as it was put out just before the company went under and all were redemptions. This would likely mean that there's loads of leftovers as the expiration date was not at all flexible. Add to that that the set was a massive disappointment sales-wise (largely because the movie sucked so much rather the the product, which is actually an excellent set). At least if this is the case, the autograph lineup for The Spirit isn't that bad as it includes Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie King, Paz Vega and Dan Lauria, the dad from The Wonder Years.

With the first Ink Vault and Razor Ink Archives, Razor has already flooded the non-sport market with Inkworks autographs. This has had both pros and cons. Personally, I've been able to snag lots of autographs that were out of my price range before. But for dealers who saw some prices drop more than half, I can certainly see them being a little saddened by this.

I don't fault Razor for the market flood as they weren't the ones who produced the cards in the first place. They also didn't hold such a significant amount of autographs back.  These cards were always around. So whether they hit the market all at once or the trickled out as they had before, the idea of rarity was completely manufactured. Razor has stated that this is their final "Ink" release. If they bought a big chunk of Inkworks' leftover autographs then at least now people won't have to speculate how much more is sitting out there and the market can once again balance itself out.

2010 Razor Ink Vault Sell Sheet

The Greatest Autograph Signer Ever

Forget Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Wayne Gretzky and Tiger Woods. Billy Drago is the hobby's greatest autograph signer.

For most, the name Billy Drago probably doesn't mean a heck of a lot. For me, he's the creepy bad guy not named Capone in The Untouchables, one of my all-time favorite movies featuring machine guns. But other than that, he's a character actor with roles in such ill-regarded sequels like Tremors 4; Delta Force 2; Martial Law 2; Lady Dragon 2; Cyborg 2; Mirror, Mirror III; and Convict 762. I didn't even know there was a Martial Law, Lady Dragon or Mirror, Mirror to begin with. And yes, I know that Convict 762 doesn't preceed Convict 761, although if it did I'd hope that it starred Chuck Norris and Carl Weathers in a fight to the death.

So for a guy who has largely made a career out of B-sequels, why would I hold him in such high regard. Behold, mere samples of some of his cards from various Inkworks Charmed sets:

Even sticker autographs don't stop the guy:

These aren't 1-of-1 or super-rare variants either. Every card Drago has signed is this way. The shorest inscription I've seen is, "Yours in death, Billy Drago."

The time and dedication Drago has put into his cards has pushed many of his cards into the realm of about $50. Prices vary, especially with the flood of cards that have hit in the last year following the Inkworks bankruptcy.

Many of the inscriptions follow a common theme of fear. Most are hilarious. Besides the poetry and witty quips, I've also seen some doodles and other creative uses of the card. Seeing the short stories Drago has put onto cardboard further puts into perspective the scribbles many athetes and stars try to pass off.

Darryl Strawberry Returns to New York...

...as a member of the latest season of Celebrity Apprentice.

By appearing on the show, Strawberry will cement his status as a C-list celebrity forever. The Apprentice is one of the reality shows I enjoy but primarily because of the tasks they complete as opposed to all of the Donald Trump ego-stroking and soundbites.

Strawberry isn't the only contestant with a cardboard connection. His castmates with trading cards include:

• former WCW Champion Goldberg (several wrestling sets, Inkworks' Looney Tunes Back in Action)
  
• WWE Diva Maria (tons of wrestling sets)
• Cyndi Lauper (had her own set from Topps back in the 1985)
• Sharon Osbourne (part of Inkworks' The Osbournes set, including an autograph)
• Holly Robinson Peete (Topps' 21 Jump Street)
• Poison frontman Brett Michaels (Brockum's RockCards [1991])
• Swimmer Summer Sanders (several Olympic and multi-sports sets and subsets)
• Olympian Michael Johnson (several Olympic and multi-sports sets and subsets)

I wouldn't expect a set commemorating the latest installment of The Apprentice. Comic Images made a set back in 2005. Despite the inclusion of Donald Trump autographs, to say the release was a flop would be an understatement. 

Darryl Strawberry isn't a complete stranger to primetime television. He appeared in the classic Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat," which aired way back in the show's third season.

The Celebrity Apprentice premieres March 14.

Random Card Duke-Out

Boxing Day is less than a week away. Hypothetically speaking, you're having one of those weird West Side Story dreams and you're about to go up against these guys:

Who are you going to have in your corner? Pope Benedict XVI or Hellboy?

Online Surveys & Market Research

A Couple (Hundred) Christmas Cards

It's amazing how many cards there are with Christmas themes. They're not just limited to non-sport releases either. There's plenty of promos and inserts that have a sports theme. A Mick Foley wrestling card crossed my desk last week as well, which I'll eventually scan in. Over the past couple of weekends I've been adding many to an album I created on my Facebook page (shameless plug/plea for fans). I've still got a ton to go, but the album has been created so that anyone can add images to, so feel free to post some of your favourites. One of my goals with the Facebook page is to create similar albums with themes that others can easily add to.

Here's some of the highlights of what I've posted thus far:

Build Your Own Set: Mad Men Autographs

The critics, the Emmy voters, the Golden Globe voters and the show's rabid fanbase may love Mad Men, but there's not a lot of hobby love for the show or its stars. While I think the look of the cable show would carry over beautifully to cards, something tells me it probably won't make the hobby leap. So that leaves fans to comb through checklists and find cards of the show's stars.

Being a fan of autographs, I did just that. The results? Despite having a big ensemble cast, only two of the main players have appeared on certified autographs before.

The first is of the beautiful Christna Hendricks who plays Joan Holloway. Her autograph comes from Inkworks' Firefly set from 2006. Hendricks guest starred in two episodes of the short-lived Joss Whedon show.

The other autograph in the "Build it Yourself" Mad Men set is of Vincent Kartheiser who plays the young and motivated Pete Campbell. Kartheiser signed for Inkworks' Angel: Season Five set back in 2004.

So while a couple of the show's bigger stars have signed in the past, there's no Jon Hamm, January Jones or any of the other main cast.

I'd love to see a Mad Men set somewhere down the line. I won't hold my breath, but if someone like say, Breygent, is considering it, here's one vote for the license.

Nashville: Day Three - An Evening With Steve Martin and Friends

I want a banjo.

That's what I've deducted after catching Steve Martin (yes, the same Steve Martin who did stand up with an arrow through his head some years ago) in concert at Nashville's historic Ryman Auditorium last Sunday.

I'm pretty clueless when it comes to Bluegrass. If it wasn't on the O'Brother What Art Thou soundtrack I probably don't know it. Mixing comedy with some great music, Martin showed the crowd that he truly is an entertainment genius. Even more impressive was how he stepped back and let his backup band, The Steep Canyon Rangers, own much of the musical portions of the show. A few other friends also stopped by for a song or two.

I was a little concerned when I found my seat. When I bought it, I figured being on the floor in the dead center of the stage would be a good thing. Normally it's not. And while my seat wasn't horrible, the balcony at the Ryman hangs very low so much of my peripheral vision was the low ceiling of sorts above me.

The seats were hard wooden pews. Between that and the stained glass windows that were a mere walkway behind me, I should have expected a religous experience from the evening. While not quite that powerful, I do have to say that it inspired me to wanting to play a banjo and becoming a musical storyteller for my future grandkids. So maybe I'm thinking 20 years in advance but at the rate I expect to learn an instrument, that's how long I'm going to need.

The evening began with John McEuen, one of the founding members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Whether he was on the banjo, guitar or fiddle, McEuen played the role of master storyteller, warming the audience up with jokes and winning their hearts with stories of country music legends.

After McEuen finished his set and a crew had a chance to ready the stage with a couple of posters and hook up the cameras as the main event of the evening was apparently being recorded for a TV special. As Martin hit the stage I realized that he hasn't aged much since I first became a fan as he hung with the Muppets. But then I had a second realization and that was that he probably aged young and is only now looking his age.

As you'd expect, Martin cracked a couple of jokes and set up some more before breaking into the first part of his set. When I was going to pick up my tickets this afternoon, a group was coming out of the auditorium and one person mentioned the concert to their friend. The friend had a hard time accepting the idea of Martin as a musician and immediately began recalling choice movie clips that are now 25 years old. I was greeted with similar hesitations from people when I told them how excited I was to see Steve Martin in concert. While I would've been disappointed if he didn't include some gags in his show, I wasn't concerned. Funny people are funny in any situation.Martin is a performer. Laughs were a guarantee.

He's also a damn fine picker on the banjo as well. I'm not going to pretend to understand the mechanics of playing, but he sounded great as he played songs that were original to him all the way until the encore where he brought out leagend Earl Scruggs.

While Martin is a standout banjo player, he still let the Steep Canyon Rangers shine. More often than not, Martin was happy to step aside and let the youthful group of five take the spotlight. Winners of the "Emerging Artist of the Year Award" at the 2006 International Bluegrass Music Association Awards, the band brings a happy sound that felt both traditional and modern to me. They're multi-talented too. Before the show began I went to check out the souvenirs where Rangers fiddle player Nicky Sanders was covering. He seemed a little flustered seeing as how his chance to psyche himself up was being spent selling T-shirts and explaining that the autographed Steve Martin posters were on their way.

All-in-all, seeing Steve Martin live was a big highlight of my trip. He's been a legend on the screen that I've looked up to my entire life. To see him live, even if not in the environment that I'm used to seeing him, is something I'll never forget.

And, yes there is a card tie-in here. Martin had an autograph card in Inkworks' Looney Tunes: Back in Action set from 1993. It's a pretty horrible picture of him, but nonetheless it's a reasonably priced autograph of one of a generation's most popular actors. The card used to sell consistently in the $50-60 range but since the release of Razor's Ink Vault and Ink Archives sets, the card can now be found for about half that if you look hard enough.

Box Break: Razor Ink Vault (Part 2) or Box Break: The Seeker: The Dark is Rising

To succeed in business you need to look ahead and take risks. With the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it led to a bunch of classic fantasy series getting adapted for the screen. Inkworks followed suit, licensing sets for several of these properties. My guess is it was a matter of throwing against the wall and seeing which ones stuck. Unfortunately it was too late once Twilight hit. With the likes of the under-performing The Golden Compass and The Seeker: The Dark is Rising causing Inkworks to take big hits, the non-sport manufacturer eventually went under. And while I'm sure they did the best they could given their own limitations, The Seeker is but a one-card chase for me.

I'm a big fan of the HBO series Deadwood. And on Deadwood Ian McShane is my favorite aspect. So when I saw that he was signing for The Seeker, I knew there was one card I really wanted to have. Unfortunately for Inkworks, one card doesn't make many sets popular.

The set is based on the theatrical adaptation of Susan Cooper's novel. Despite a solid cast of cable stars like McShane, Six Feet Under's matriarch Frances Conroy and Doctor Who's Christopher Eccleston, the movie was a muddled mess to watch and a bomb at the box office. Predictably, the set was a dud as well.

The base set consists of 72 cards broken down into several confusing subsets. Outside of your standard profile and storyline subsets, there's a bunch at the front of the set that lay out the film's mythology. The checklist choice makes it all somewhat confusing as the story part normally lays out the plot so that the various subsets that go a little more in depth at least have some context.

One thing the subsets do achieve is showcase many different sorts of card designs, some of which are gorgeous and others are plain ugly. My favorite cards in the set are those of the Agents of the Light profiles. They mix striking images with a light-colored background and a simple yet affective text bar at the bottom. These are in contrast to the horrible looking story cards that waste a ton of space on two sets of borders. This leaves little room for the picture itself. With these cards all my eyes see are the wasted space.

The chase aspect of the set is highlighted by one autograph and one Pieceworks costume card per box. Although this wasn't formally announced, I haven't seen any breaks that didn't follow this pattern. The autograph design is typical Inkworks: horizontal layout with plenty of room for the signature. My autograph was of Gary Entin as Paul Stanton. I haven't heard of him. His filmography thus far isn't exactly spectacular either. Among his film credits are Rest Stop, Color Me Olsen, Whore and Rest Stop: Don't Look Back.

My favorite cards in the set are the Pieceworks. Although I don't chase after too many costume cards, the ethereal design of these cards standout amongst an otherwise bland set. I pulled a swatch of a jacket worn by Frances Conroy as Miss Graythorne. 

The Seeker follows the Inkworks insert formula to a tee. Signs of Light is your nine-card foil puzzle. Eternal Enemies is the slightly tougher to pull six-card set and Hidden Symbols is the one-per-box set. While I don't mind consistency, Inkworks followed the same pattern for a decade with almost every release. Occasional exceptions existed but they're not the norm. I can't tell you how many times I've busted a box of Inkworks products and gotten a puzzle piece of someone's arm, or in this box, half of someone's hair. The puzzles look good completed but I'm rarely motivated to do so with the underwhelming assortment I generally start out with. I received the predictable amount of predictable inserts. In fact, I beat the odds slightly and got two Eternal Enemies cards instead of the expected one. 

The Seeker is one of those sets hobby history can use to illustrate the company's demise. It's a set that required a risk to even be made. But in the end it followed the same predictable pattern as many of Inkworks' other releases. While there is little Inkworks could have done to make the set a hit based on the poor performance of the film, perhaps a little shakeup in the construction of the set might have brought a few more collectors into the mix. This is a boring set that, for me, was all about chasing a single card.

Inserts

• Autographs:1 (A-GE. Gary Entin as Paul Stanton)
• Pieceworks Costume Cards: 1 (PW5. Jacket worn by Frances Conroy as Miss Greythorne)
• Eternal Enemies (1:17): 2 (E3, E4)
• Hidden Symbols (1:23): 1 (H1)
• Signs of Light (1:11): 2 (S7, S8)

 To see further breakdown stats and more images, click here.

The Fallout of Inkworks' Vault Being Pillaged

If you're a non-sport collector, particularly autographs, you've probably noticed the chaos in the prices for almost every Inkworks card. When the company went under in the spring, Razor and a couple of other groups bought out their leftover stock and have been releasing it to the masses en mass.

Razor's approach has been to pack out the cards in two different releases: Ink Archives, which gave collectors one autograph per pack and Ink Vault, which offered three autographs and a sealed box (almost always from Inkworks). Ink Archives put almost 20,000 autographs into the marketplace while Ink Vault's 499 cases has resulted in another 29,940 Inkworks autographs (plus whatever's in the boxes) hitting a somewhat small corner of the hobby. That's almost 50,000 autographs that have already been released going into circulation in a matter of months. The result has been a flooded market, which is both good and bad.

From a collecting perspective, it's been great. In just the past two weeks I've received three cards that were always priced higher than I could afford until now. The first was a Robert "Freddy Kreuger" Englund card from a Charmed series. A few months ago it sold consistently for about $50-60. I was able to trigger a 'Buy It Now' for $30.

Next up was an autograph from an underappreciated movie, Hellboy. Lead actor Ron Perlman isn't a huge Hollywood star but the guy has had some memorable roles over the years, most recently in the awesome FX series Sons of Anarchy. In Hellboy he plays the main character. Before Inkworks went under: $50. I got it for half.

My final find was a bit of luck. It was a 'Buy It Now' that was just posted when I came across it. This one comes from the Hellboy set once again. It's of director Guillermo Del Toro who has since rocketed to fame with Pan's Labyrinth and is pegged to tackle The Hobbit if it ever gets going. Not long ago, this card sold for $100-200. This one was just $40. I did luck into an all-time low for the card I think though, as ensuing copies have crept back up into the $80-100 range. A once tough card, Ink Vault seems to be bringing a steady stream of them now.

The fact that the market being flooded with Inkworks autographs isn't the only reason prices are so soft. It also has to do with who's selling the cards. Razor's clients are mostly sports card dealers. In my experiences with both sides of the hobby, non-sport dealers are much more patient as a whole when it comes to holding onto their inventory. It's been more stable than the performance-driven sports side. As a result sports dealers look at moving their inventory as quickly as possible, which often results in undercutting the competition. Plus, if you're bread and butter normally revolves around names like Albert Pujols, Michael Jordan and Lebron James, you might not recognize the value in the director of a moderately successful film.

A lot of the cards I've been picking up have been coming from dealers who carry a lot of sports cards, which makes me believe that's their primary area of focus. Even at the deflated prices, Ink Vault is offering everyone tremendous value and a pretty easy way to make a few dollars. That is for everyone except those non-sport dealers who have been with the hobby for the long haul and have seen the value of their inventory shrink with each ensuing week.

It's in situations like these where I'm glad I'm not a dealer. I know I'd have a tough time marking a once $200 card that I pulled from a $60 box of cards down to $50 just so I can move it. Even moving $10 cards down to $5 is tough when margins weren't great even when the hobby was rolling at full steam. If sports collectors are worried about the number of dealers in their neck of the woods, non-sport collectors should be petrified. When times were good there were only a handful of dealers to pick from. I suspect the fallout from Inkworks' closing is going to make that handful even smaller when you consider the double-whammy of fewer products being released and the severely lowered value coming from almost 50,000 autographs coming into the hobby all at once.

Box Break: Razor Ink Vault (Part 1)

The demise of Inkworks has meant deals (or softer prices, depending on how you look at it) for collectors as their excess stock hits the market. A couple of dealers on eBay have a lot of the stock as well as Razor, who bought up a bunch of autographs and, guessing from their Ink Vault release, a lot of unopened material as well.

Ink Vault marks Razor's second release heavily featuring Inkworks autographs. The first, Ink Archives, offered collectors one random autograph per pack in an encapsulated holder. As tempting as it was, I stayed away largely because of the $15-20 price tag per pack and some uncertainty over the level of autographs found inside, especially after it was discovered a partner of Razor's was selling singles of some of the best cards Inkworks made over the years.

Ink Archives went over well and Razor upped the ante with Ink Vault, which offers a box-within-a-box gimmick. First off, each sealed box contains three random Inkworks autographs placed in a top loader with a Razor seal. The box also contains an unopened non-sport box, most likely of which will contain further "hits." At first I figured this would be a way to get rid of a lot of junk and even at $50 per box, it would be something of a letdown.

But then I started looking at the breaks. The boxes, which I figured would be mostly old Inkworks retail boxes like Tomb Raider and Godzilla turned out to be fairly solid. Razor also emphasized that not all of the boxes were from Inkworks. I've seen others such as Batman Archives from Rittenhouse and Star Wars and Indiana Jones boxes from Topps.

As for the autographs, the breaks seemed to be yielding better results than Ink Archives. Of the three autographs, there appeared to be at least one that I wouldn't lump in as a "common." Combine the good liklihood of a solid box and at least one autograph worth getting excited about and I decided to give a box a try.

Here's what I landed:

First the autographs:

Alien vs. Predator

A6. Ian Whyte as Scar (the Predator)

This is a set I've been planning on tackling. I love the Alien series (although I do not acknowledge the existance of Alien Resurrection) and there's not a lot of pricey cards in the set. I'm very pleased with this one.

Small Soldiers

S4. Stan Winston

Outside of Ray Harryhausen, Winston was probably one of the best known special effects artists in history. He sadly passed away in June, 2008. I already had a Winston autograph from Terminator 3 but I like this one much better. Plus I already have the Kirsten Dunst from the set so I might have to track down the couple of others that I'm missing one day.

 

 Smallville: Season Three

A17. Camille Mitchell as Sheriff Nancy Adams

I made it through half a season of Smallville and couldn't take any more. Of the three autographs in the box, this one definitely goes onto the trade list if anybody is interested. 

With those three autographs, I'd be fairly happy. But there's still the box inside the box. So no matter what it is, I consider it a bonus in this case. And it's a good thing too because here's my box:

 The Seeker: The Dark is Rising

There is one card in this set that I want but the rest I would love to avoid as much as possible. The box does promise an additional autograph (no redemptions here) and a Pieceworks costume card.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my Razor Ink Vault box break. 

Build Your Own Autograph Card Set: Jennifer's Body

So the opening weekend box office numbers are in and Jennifer's Body is about to be dubbed a flop. The horror/comedy stars Megan Fox, who until Friday morning was considered Hollywood's "It girl" du jour. I have actually read a couple of articles over the weekend that are now questioning its validity. I've been wondering it for a while now too. Sure, she's beautiful but sorry folks, it was the robots that sold Transformers, not Megan Fox's short shorts.

I haven't seen Jennifer's Body and probably won't until it lands on Blu-ray, but I do have to say it looks a little cheeky - definitely not like your average horror. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you checked out the movie over the weekend and want to build an autograph card set (sorry, nobody's going to be making a set for Jennifer's Body), here's a starting point.

Megan Fox - Jennifer Check
Transformers (Topps, 2007)

This is one of the biggies of the modern hobby. Honestly, I don't know why. The last two have sold on eBay for $404 and $550.

Amanda Seyfried - Needy Lesnicky
Veronica Mars: Season One (Inkworks, 2006)

After holding her own opposite Meryl Streep in last summer's ABBA musical Mama Mia!, Seyfried seems poised to be on the verge of mainstream stardom. Right now you can expect to spend about $20 for her only certified autograph card, however I suspect once the remnants of the Inkworks sell-off start to dry up you'll likely see this card creep up in value.

Kyle Gallner - Colin Gray

Smallville: Season Four (Inkworks, 2005)

Smallville: Season Six "Alliance for Justice" dual autograph with Justin Hartley (Inkworks, 2008)

Veronica Mars: Season Two (Inkworks, 2007)

Veronica Mars: Season Two Autographed Pieceworks (Inkworks, 2007)

 

 

Being a big Veronica Mars fan, I'll likely always remember Gallner as the central character of "Beaver" from the second season of the short-lived show. Gallner seems to be making the rounds as a supporting actor. If any of these cards hold any significant value, it's more because of their rarity than Gallner's star power.

J.K. Simmons - Mr. Wroblewski
Spider-man 3 (Rittenhouse Archives, 2007)
Spider-man 3 Autographed Costume Card (Rittenhouse Archives, 2007)

Simmons is another one of those actors that you seem to see almost everywhere. While I remember him from HBO's Oz, he's probably best recognized as newspaper mogul J. Jonah Jamieson in the Spider-man films, whom he is perfect as. If you're patient you can find the regular autograph for under $20. The autographed costume card was an incentive for dealers ordering two cases. If you shop around, you shouldn't expect to pay more than $50 for it.

Overall, there's not a lot of different signers for a Jennifer's Body set but the two headliners are there. Granted it's going to take about $500 to get one autograph from each of the four and I know I wouldn't spend that. But that's largely because I have a hard time spending several hundred dollars on an autograph of someone who's simply "hot."