Mainline Metal/Metal

A mainline Hot Wheels with a metal body and a metal base is always a good buy. My wife and I don’t usually buy race cars, but the yellow green ’71 Mustang Funny Car and the Morris Mini shown above are really beautiful. The fact that they have removable bodies makes them more attractive.

A History of Jacke in 100 Objects #10 – The Spitwad

This is a perfect example of good writing. Here’s the summary from the author: “A science teacher with zero personality confronts a bully, with a little help from the heavens.”

Jacke Wilson

Here’s something I’ve learned: teachers are human.

They’re not superheroes or gods. Not saints or demons. They’re human beings, with flaws and weaknesses like all the rest of us.

Don Ward was a fine man who taught high school biology to undeserving students in the same crumbling, run-down building for forty-three years.

How bad was our school? When I was there, ceiling tiles used to fall crashing to the floor. I’d never actually seen one drop, but at least once a month we’d see one in the hallway by the lockers, broken on the ground with a cloud of white smoke that was probably 100% asbestos. In the ceiling, there’d be a gap that stayed there forever, never to be filled. No money in the budget. Or maybe nobody cared enough to bother.

Not such a great workplace for Don Ward. How did he do it? Why did he stay? It…

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Because this is physics

Here’s a funny comment on this answer at Mathematics Stack Exchange.

On being presented an equation where the left-hand side’s terms have a factor of 1/2 and the right-hand side is constant, a user asks “why not multiply through by 2?” Another user replies “Because this is physics.”

Dino-mites #1

I’m selling a copy of Dino-mites! #1, although I don’t know if anyone would buy it. It has 28 pages and its size is 6 inches by 9 inches. The cover is glossy and the inner pages are newsprint. I bought it at a small-time school supply shop in Parañaque City during the late 1980s or the early 1990s. I had never heard of it before, and I’ve never heard of it since. The inner front page is an advertisement for a company in Las Piñas so perhaps writer/artist Robert Velhagen is from there.

Philippine souvenir sheets

I’m selling these Philippine souvenir sheets from 1991 and 1992. They’re all imperforate; the “perforations” are just printed designs.

Marvel Super Special #16

I’m selling a comic book reprint whose cover is very similar to that of Marvel Special Edition #2 (with the cover price removed) but whose contents are from Marvel Super Special #16 (according to the indicia on page 1). It is a complete comic book adaptation of Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, reprinting Marvel Star Wars #39 to #44.

Philippine first day covers

I’m selling these Philippine first day covers (official cachets) from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Leave a comment if you’re interested.

Overstreet (4th edition)

I’m selling a softcover copy of the 4th edition Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide published in 1974. (Note the $6.50 cover price; the hardcover version has a cover price of $8.50.) I bought it from a BOOKSALE outlet two decades ago. (The sticker states a 48.00 peso price for April 28, 1993.)

The guide has 6 white pages of introductory material, 452 white pages of the actual guide, and 36 yellow pages of advertisements. I was amazed at the low prices stated for key comic book issues: $2,800 for a mint Action Comics #1, $1,600 for a mint Detective Comics #27, $40 for a mint Amazing Fantasy #15. (The latest prices are much higher: a CGC 9.0 copy of Action Comics #1 sold for $2,161,000 in December 2011, a CGC 8.0 copy of Detective Comics #27 sold for $1,075,500 in February 2010, and a CGC 9.6 copy of Amazing Fantasy #15 sold for $1,100,000 in March 2011.)

Star notes

From Wikipedia:

A replacement banknote is a banknote that is printed to replace a faulty one and is used as a control mechanism for governments or monetary authorities to know the exact number of banknotes being printed. Also, since no two serial numbers can be the same, the bill is simply reprinted with a symbol in the serial number, identifying it as a replacement for an error note. Replacement bills have different symbols to mark the error around the world, although the most popular examples are “star notes”.

ALEMAR’S reprint FG 101 (Flash Gordon)

I’m selling a reprint created by the ALEMAR’s Mass Market Books Division possibly in 1979. The cover identifies the comic book as “FG 101.” The reprint has 20 pages and reproduces the first two stories of Flash Gordon #1 published by King Comics in September 1966. Note that the cover of the actual Flash Gordon #1 describes a scene from its second Flash Gordon story. It seems that because this story is not included in the reprint, ALEMAR’S has chosen a cover that reproduces a panel from the first story (the first panel on page 11).