Note To Myself February 24, 2017

Seems like in the past few months the world has been tilted on its axis. Even here in Northern Illinois, right on the Wisconsin border, where nothing ever seem to change very fast, the change is coming so fast and furious none of us can keep up. It was 70 degrees all week here in February. 

In light of all this tumult I wanted to take a small break from the chaos and document that this is my daily reality: I walk down the stairs to find treasure like this waiting for me. I will have dinner with cherished friends later tonight. Although the conversation will no doubt at some point turn to how crazy things are it won't be all that crazy where we are. Not yet at least. 

Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set 11th Printing

Pin It

My Next Two Hot Wheels

My Hot wheels collection is coming along slowly. After seven years of collecting I have 35 Hot Wheels. The next two I want are tricky ones, but fun. 

The Beach Bomb was a second year (1969) addition to the Hot Wheels line. Originally they had a rear loading surf board, but this made the Hot Wheel too narrow to go through the power station on the tracks, so they widened it and put the surf boards on the side. It's one of the coolest and most collected Hot Wheels. I'm seeking one in copper, but I wouldn't pass up one in brown like this. Every year we go to The Pec Thing and this one collector has the same Beach Bomb for sale, and it's nice, and I almost buy it, but since I'm taking my collection so slow I'll just hold out for exactly the one I want. I'd actually prefer one with some of the Hippie or Champion spark plugs or Hot Wheels decals that came along with these when they were released. I'll know it when I see it, and overpay. 

l

The Spectraflame paint of the first five years of Hot Wheels was awesome. Nothing compares. But some of the enamel Hot Wheels, like this lemon yellow Alive 55 were almost equally striking. We beat the heck out of these station wagons when we got them as kids because we saw them in the demolition derby, so naturally we considered them beaters. This particular one will now run you about $250 in near mint condition. I probably had for or five of these that I destroyed. In fact, this is an actual Alive 55 I'd like to buy, but the asking price is about double what I think it's worth. This is the color I want, but I would also like an orange one. This car from 1973 is just magnificent, and I'll be happy when I get mine. Might not be any time soon, but this is what mine will look like.

Pin It

This Dude Abideth

August 10, 2026 update:

This Dude Still Abideth

Looking at this picture now, I realize it probably says more about me than I intended it to when I posted it. I have spent a considerable portion of my life sitting in rooms like this, watching old television shows and terrible horror movies, listening to records everyone else forgot, reading books about subjects I had no practical reason to know anything about, and following whatever rabbit hole presented itself until another one came along.

I used to think a person was supposed to turn all those interests into something. Become an expert. Build a career. Find a niche. Become the Dungeons and Dragons guy, the horror movie guy, the poetry guy, the record collector, the publisher, the local history guy, the guy who knows why the original Holmes D&D set didn't have a ten-sided die. During the great blogging era especially, everybody seemed to be searching for the subject that would become their thing. I tried that occasionally. It never lasted. I always moved on.

But looking through this archive years later, maybe moving on was the thing. I wasn't trying to become a cryptozoologist when I wrote about the Dover Demon. I wasn't trying to become a film historian when I wondered what happened to Peter Carpenter. I didn't need to become an authority on Japanese progressive rock because Shingetsu occupied one afternoon. Sometimes curiosity only needs an afternoon. Sometimes it lasts forty years.

The things that did last are obvious now. Poetry. Dungeons and Dragons. Horror movies. Music. Old television. Publishing books. Rockford. Objects that somehow carry their previous lives around with them: vinyl records, eight-track players, polyhedral dice, old photographs, obsolete word processors. I've spent an unreasonable amount of time wondering why certain things disappear and why others refuse to.

Maybe that's why this photograph still appeals to me. Nothing is happening. I'm not accomplishing anything. I'm apparently sitting there changing channels. But somewhere between Dark Shadows, Mannix, The Incredible Hulk, an obscure horror movie, an old record and whatever I happened to be reading that night, something would eventually catch. Then I'd write about it.

Most of it didn't lead anywhere.

It didn't have to.

The Dude abideth.

Pin It

New Items That Match Your Interest In The Mont Blanc Meisterstuck Pen, Burgundy

Every afternoon I get an email from Ebay alerting me to new items that match my interest to previous items I have been interested in, including, but not limited to: Hot Wheels, Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks, transportation tokens, aspirin tins, poetry books, Spiderman comics, The Monster Club, Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, Zombiethon, Shock Waves, silver, copper, and nickel bullion, and Mont Blanc pens. 

It's good to have interests in life. Hobbies. Collections.

I used to do Sears delivery, and was inside several peoples' homes every day for a few years, and I was astounded by how little people had that distinguished them from the next person. Now you could say I didn't really see where they kept their most private possessions and items they didn't want anyone else to see, but I saw enough to get the sense there wasn't much else going on besides what I saw out in the open. I was behind and underneath and in enough unusual places to know I'd seen enough to get an idea who lived here and what they considered important. 

I never saw journals or collections or studies brimming with books and personal mementos gathered during a lifetime of travel, experience, and contemplation. 

Mostly I just saw a VHS copy of the movie Independence Day. I'd have to say that movie was the most common item in all those years. Every house seemed to have it, and someone appeared to have watched it recently.

I like that Ebay shows a daily concern about the collections I curate and wants me to complete some of my ridiculous collections sometime in the coming
century.

Perhaps the thing I lost that was most painful to me was my burgundy Mont Blanc meisterstuck pen. I had bought it in the late 90's at Office Max for $119 and adored it's balance and the smooth, equal amount of ink the ballpoint cartridge exuded. Perfect. And beautiful. I had to Ebay mine when I moved into this apartment because I had lost everything. I needed money for food and to get the utilities turned on. The saddest thing about my life was I had nothing left of value. Except plasma. I got a very fair amount for the pen. More than I had paid for it, in fact, as the meisterstuck now costs almost three times as much to buy new. I suppose my circumstances are that I could buy one right now online, but this one was bought to reward myself for publishing my second book of poetry, and even though they all look the same, that one was mine. 

I'll buy another one, eventually. And perhaps I'll live long enough for that one to replace the memory of the other. These things happen. Lessons that things are just things. Or perhaps the opposite lesson: that things are damn important and should be cherished. 

September 12, 2026 update: I indeed did find myself buying another Meisterstuck pen, then subsequently selling that, too, along with most of my collectibles in what has become a sort of lesson in the impermanence of things, including myself. But at least this may be the last time I have to ever look up the spelling of the word "Meisterstuck".

Pin It

Is the Treasury About To Take Pennies and Nickels Out of Circulation?

I always liked that Johnny Cash song "One Piece At a Time" by Johhny Cash. of course it's a song about a career thief who assembles a primo Cadillac from parts he stole while working at the factory over many years, but the idea always stuck with me: assembling something valuable slowly, surely. An article I read at Dirty tricks squad today about the value of a nickel really intrigued me. According to the website Coinflation, which tracks the bullion value of coins, the American nickel was worth 5.35 cents today. Not the coin itself, but the metal in the coin, which is composed of 75% copper and 25% nickel. In short, you could walk into Chase bank, give them a twenty dollar bill and walk out with something like twenty-two dollars worth of bullion. Which means exactly nothing unless the Treasury lifts the melt ban on pennies and nickels the way they did with silver coins in 1964, but it also means if you give them a twenty dollar bill they give you twenty dollars in return.

And while pennies and nickels will likely never attain the value silver coins did, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has indicated pennies and nickels might start to be withdrawn from circulation as early as January 2013. 

It cost much more to mint the penny and the nickel than they are worth. I'm not convinced they will be removed from circulation anytime soon, but an announcement would cause a hoarding of these coins. That would lead possibly to a lowering of prices because everyone would have them, but as more and more was melted down the price would start to rise again, and if you could sit on a nice stash of pennies and nickels and ride it out while everyone else cashed there's in, you'd probably see a nice windfall eventually.

And you can get them one piece at a time. 

February 21, 2013 update: Nickel prices soared a couple of weeks ago, and appeared to be headed towards ten dollar a pound, which would have been a 25% increase, before collapsing this week and losing more that the original gains. But that huge move is likely to happen again, so keep collecting.

Also, President Obama said he would retire the penny if possible. The run hasn't begun yet, so let others laugh as you stockpile the very thing they'll be overpaying to accumulate shortly. 

Pin It