The moral of today's story is: these days people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I've just come back from the Collector's Mart, a free sci-fi collectors show which I found a leaflet for a few weeks ago. Held in the conference rooms of a hotel, the leaflet promised all sorts of sci-fi-y goodness, including the inevitable Who. It was also a nice excuse to get out of bed leisurely and do something with my day. I took three busses - in London, buses only go IN or OUT - never side to side, so I had to go down, along a bit, then down again to get to Russel Square. The dealers were spread across three rooms - most, boxes upon boxes of comics all competitively prices; the odd one or two were selling public domain/rare movies or sci-fi toys, and the rest trading cards.
I hated it.
No, let's qualify. I'd dressed up this morning, Tom Baker scarf and all, in the hope of finding some interesting geeky people. There wasn't a single fan in that room. Because, of course, they were all collectors - from the business suits wearing tie pins, to the anoraks with milk bottle glasses. All of them were going around with little slips of paper, printed spreadsheets or well-fingered notebooks, packed with hundreds of little numbers on them, all coldly inked in order and marked with lines or colours in some sterile, arcane system.
It was economics in motion - it was a room filled with coloured paper, but the maliciousness of companies combined with sheer human susceptibility had conspired that a piece of paper labelled "Super Rose Ultra Rare" was worth more than one labelled "Dalek Common". I got chatting to the same man three times - we bumped into each other at every Doctor Who Battles in Time stand. I wanted to ask him, did he even watch the show? When he asked me what in particular I was looking for (he, obviously, had a little shopping list of exactly the holes in his collection), and I named a particular card to cover up for the fact I was just browsing (shock horror!) for fun, his first question was "What number is it?". I think it says a lot that when I saw the Fifth Doctor card, he saw card number 826. Did it matter that it was Doctor Who? It could have been stamps, or train ticket stubs, or butterflies pinned to card for the emotional investment he showed.
The same thing happened at every card table. One thing that was immediately obvious was all the cards were arranged in coolly logical number order, by the randomly assigned number in the top left hand corner. It was telling, I think, that again the numbers were the focus of the system - surely it's most obvious to order them in episode order, or by Doctor?
It was worse for the comics. Trading cards, I will admit, there is something intrinsically pathetic about - you know the rare/common system is being manipulated by suits, and at the end of the day all you have is a box of little pieces of paper. But comics are stories, and one of the key reasons I've always found them hard to get into is their meaningless status as "collectors items". Again, what happened to the children who couldn't wait to see how Superman defeated Negative Superman in next week's issue and dreamed of going into space? They grew up. And these purchases, carefully wrapped in plastic paper and backed by card, are all destined for museum-pristine collections, airtight boxes and underground vaults. I absent mindedly looked for a copy of the World's Finest infamously, accidentally slashy "Batman and Superman spend the night together" comic, but I was never going to pay upwards of £5 for one - and others in the same box were going for some £20 or more. Which in turn made me angrier at those people with money to burn, supporting this cheap industry, and ensuring it's value as a collectors piece will always make it too expensive for those of us who value it as fiction.
And it didn't get any better - in the foyer as I left, one small group of kids were valiantly attempting to actually PLAY with their newly acquired Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Everyone else had crouched in the corners and were marking off their purchases as they carefully wrapped their comics up, and sorted their new cards into numerical order in their clean little boxes. The whole thing had an nasty atmosphere of despair - it was the male equivalent of going into Primark
I hated the collectors for not caring beyond the material and completist value of their collections, and I hated the sellers just the same for encouraging their shallowness and attempting to profit off my love.
I did meet some fun people - another man (they were ALL men, naturally enough) at a card stall explained to me how to work out which packs had lenticular cards in them, and painted for me a beautiful picture of him descending on an innocent sweet shop and testing one pack after another by weighing it in his hand and testing for a fuzzy sensation with the back of his thumb. Apparently, this behaviour turned up six packs with six Ultra Rare cards in them. Which was good for him, but I imagine the girl behind the desk at the time wanted to give him a slap. I thanked him for his advice, though, which was kindly meant, even though I'd never dare be so cheeky. He said he would cut me a good deal at the next fair if I gave him a list of what I wanted - someone else who didn't comprehend that I was just looking for the odd one or two, and don't even have a printable record of the cards I am missing. And I had a chat with a guy promoting his self-inked, self-drawn, self-written comic, who was doing some exciting sketches at his table. One thing that struck me was they were all crazies - the types of people who, were you to encounter them on a tube, you'd consider getting off at the next stop and moving down a carriage. It was something in the detached way all three of them were speaking. Mr Self-Published is convinced there's a movie deal coming for him soon. If this turns out to be correct, by the Seal of Rassilon I'm going to go see it and buy his comic too, just to make up for my inhuman lack of faith.
The best person I met all morning was not someone I actually spoke to - he was standing next to me when his Star Trek ring tone went off. Which made me smile, as it obviously revealed someone with some proper love in the room. I mean, the whole time, I did not see a single person smile - it was obvious this collectors lark brought them no joy, just a sense of satisfied completeness. I know that if I'd been searching for a Batman #4 for years and suddenly discovered one, I'd be grinning like an idiot for the rest of the day.
Which brings us back to today's moral - people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I've been collecting Battles in Time for a few months now, mostly for the emotional boost and the thrill of the chase. Because yes, I'll admit that there is something wonderful and addictive about collections, and if you look at my Google Documents you'll see I've got all my Doctor Who possessions typed up in a catalogue too. I can't define the buzz of getting at last a card you've craved for ages. You always feel like you really deserved it. Nor am I denying the immense satisfaction of completing a collection, such as the moment I purchased my final Micro-Universe figure.
Yet the men at the Comic Mart would presume, obviously, that my favourite card would be my TARDIS ultra-rare lenticular card, which is worth about £20-25. After all, it's certainly highly priced, and it is very rare indeed. Wrong, as it turns out - my favourites are my Drathro, my Sharaz Jek and my newly acquired Borad - the cards are very nicely designed, and the fact I loved the episodes no doubt helps too. And yes, my super-rare Sutekh - but the fact it says super-rare, and the fact it shines, has very little bearing on this fact. I still feel a little rush of glee when I come across them. More than anything else, I want a Xeraphin and a Melkur, and I'd value them far higher than a Slitheen Skinsuit, no matter how "rare" one and "common" the other. The collectors would tell me, "Omega 1 is common wheras Omega 2 is super-rare - this makes one more valuable than the other". Not true! It's OMEGA for goodness sakes, he's awesome and to my mind both cards are equally valuable.
I can't define to you how overjoyed I was to get my Axonite card - I think all I said for the next few hours was "look, I've got some Axonite!". Because it was Axonite! Axonite is awesome! I was certainly overjoyed with my TARDIS ultra-rare, to be sure, but not in the same way recieving a common-old lump of Axonite made me smile. I'm not sure my friend with the notebook would have appreciated this.
I did consider getting the Master - three times actually, £1 for the Master with Toclafane, £2 for the Master as Harry Saxon - £5 for an old-skool Ainley Master card or £20 for the Master's Regeneration. But this stemmed, again, from enthusiasm for the character, and no way was I going to participate in their horrid system.
Instead, I picked up some commons I'd long desired - the Celery, Fob Watch, Cricket Ball and Fifth Doctor, which were the only four cards from the Invader and Devastator series I was actually interested in. I don't actually feel the slightest desire to ever pick up an Invader or Devastator pack ever again. To complete a deal, I also picked up Sally Sparrow and the young Master - mostly because I felt cheated that the proper Masters were out of my price bracket. The Ultimate Monsters set is my real love - maybe, just maybe, I'll try and complete that one. Or get to the point where the only cards I don't have are dull. For that series, I found the Hand of Eldrad, The Great One, Eldrad in female form, a Vervoid, Omega (OMEGA!) and joy of all joys, that Borad card. I considered buying more Davroses - you need a deck of 13 to make up a Battle Pack, and there are just enough cards to complete one soley with Davros, but decided I'd pandered to them enough for one day. The sum total for all this was about £2, but not bad considering a random pack which might have contained repeats usually costs £1.50.
I hung around, trying to find some other amusement besides the gross materialism (there wasn't any), and under a table found a Doctor Who novel in the 50p book box, as well as an interesting text about comic-movie adaptations. Now this did make me smile, because the value of a second hand sci-fi book is about 50p - yet the price, as Ebay and Amazon will confirm, is at least £7, if you're lucky, at least £20 if you're not, and at least £50 if you're Lungbarrow. This was only because it was a comic book store - I anticipate the Easter Invasion convention will, among Doctor Who fans, have them "correctly" priced. So I got to leave with a bargain, and satisfied at having beat the system, I came home for lunch.
Will I be going again next month? Definitely!
I've just come back from the Collector's Mart, a free sci-fi collectors show which I found a leaflet for a few weeks ago. Held in the conference rooms of a hotel, the leaflet promised all sorts of sci-fi-y goodness, including the inevitable Who. It was also a nice excuse to get out of bed leisurely and do something with my day. I took three busses - in London, buses only go IN or OUT - never side to side, so I had to go down, along a bit, then down again to get to Russel Square. The dealers were spread across three rooms - most, boxes upon boxes of comics all competitively prices; the odd one or two were selling public domain/rare movies or sci-fi toys, and the rest trading cards.
I hated it.
No, let's qualify. I'd dressed up this morning, Tom Baker scarf and all, in the hope of finding some interesting geeky people. There wasn't a single fan in that room. Because, of course, they were all collectors - from the business suits wearing tie pins, to the anoraks with milk bottle glasses. All of them were going around with little slips of paper, printed spreadsheets or well-fingered notebooks, packed with hundreds of little numbers on them, all coldly inked in order and marked with lines or colours in some sterile, arcane system.
It was economics in motion - it was a room filled with coloured paper, but the maliciousness of companies combined with sheer human susceptibility had conspired that a piece of paper labelled "Super Rose Ultra Rare" was worth more than one labelled "Dalek Common". I got chatting to the same man three times - we bumped into each other at every Doctor Who Battles in Time stand. I wanted to ask him, did he even watch the show? When he asked me what in particular I was looking for (he, obviously, had a little shopping list of exactly the holes in his collection), and I named a particular card to cover up for the fact I was just browsing (shock horror!) for fun, his first question was "What number is it?". I think it says a lot that when I saw the Fifth Doctor card, he saw card number 826. Did it matter that it was Doctor Who? It could have been stamps, or train ticket stubs, or butterflies pinned to card for the emotional investment he showed.
The same thing happened at every card table. One thing that was immediately obvious was all the cards were arranged in coolly logical number order, by the randomly assigned number in the top left hand corner. It was telling, I think, that again the numbers were the focus of the system - surely it's most obvious to order them in episode order, or by Doctor?
It was worse for the comics. Trading cards, I will admit, there is something intrinsically pathetic about - you know the rare/common system is being manipulated by suits, and at the end of the day all you have is a box of little pieces of paper. But comics are stories, and one of the key reasons I've always found them hard to get into is their meaningless status as "collectors items". Again, what happened to the children who couldn't wait to see how Superman defeated Negative Superman in next week's issue and dreamed of going into space? They grew up. And these purchases, carefully wrapped in plastic paper and backed by card, are all destined for museum-pristine collections, airtight boxes and underground vaults. I absent mindedly looked for a copy of the World's Finest infamously, accidentally slashy "Batman and Superman spend the night together" comic, but I was never going to pay upwards of £5 for one - and others in the same box were going for some £20 or more. Which in turn made me angrier at those people with money to burn, supporting this cheap industry, and ensuring it's value as a collectors piece will always make it too expensive for those of us who value it as fiction.
And it didn't get any better - in the foyer as I left, one small group of kids were valiantly attempting to actually PLAY with their newly acquired Yu-Gi-Oh cards. Everyone else had crouched in the corners and were marking off their purchases as they carefully wrapped their comics up, and sorted their new cards into numerical order in their clean little boxes. The whole thing had an nasty atmosphere of despair - it was the male equivalent of going into Primark
I hated the collectors for not caring beyond the material and completist value of their collections, and I hated the sellers just the same for encouraging their shallowness and attempting to profit off my love.
I did meet some fun people - another man (they were ALL men, naturally enough) at a card stall explained to me how to work out which packs had lenticular cards in them, and painted for me a beautiful picture of him descending on an innocent sweet shop and testing one pack after another by weighing it in his hand and testing for a fuzzy sensation with the back of his thumb. Apparently, this behaviour turned up six packs with six Ultra Rare cards in them. Which was good for him, but I imagine the girl behind the desk at the time wanted to give him a slap. I thanked him for his advice, though, which was kindly meant, even though I'd never dare be so cheeky. He said he would cut me a good deal at the next fair if I gave him a list of what I wanted - someone else who didn't comprehend that I was just looking for the odd one or two, and don't even have a printable record of the cards I am missing. And I had a chat with a guy promoting his self-inked, self-drawn, self-written comic, who was doing some exciting sketches at his table. One thing that struck me was they were all crazies - the types of people who, were you to encounter them on a tube, you'd consider getting off at the next stop and moving down a carriage. It was something in the detached way all three of them were speaking. Mr Self-Published is convinced there's a movie deal coming for him soon. If this turns out to be correct, by the Seal of Rassilon I'm going to go see it and buy his comic too, just to make up for my inhuman lack of faith.
The best person I met all morning was not someone I actually spoke to - he was standing next to me when his Star Trek ring tone went off. Which made me smile, as it obviously revealed someone with some proper love in the room. I mean, the whole time, I did not see a single person smile - it was obvious this collectors lark brought them no joy, just a sense of satisfied completeness. I know that if I'd been searching for a Batman #4 for years and suddenly discovered one, I'd be grinning like an idiot for the rest of the day.
Which brings us back to today's moral - people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
I've been collecting Battles in Time for a few months now, mostly for the emotional boost and the thrill of the chase. Because yes, I'll admit that there is something wonderful and addictive about collections, and if you look at my Google Documents you'll see I've got all my Doctor Who possessions typed up in a catalogue too. I can't define the buzz of getting at last a card you've craved for ages. You always feel like you really deserved it. Nor am I denying the immense satisfaction of completing a collection, such as the moment I purchased my final Micro-Universe figure.
Yet the men at the Comic Mart would presume, obviously, that my favourite card would be my TARDIS ultra-rare lenticular card, which is worth about £20-25. After all, it's certainly highly priced, and it is very rare indeed. Wrong, as it turns out - my favourites are my Drathro, my Sharaz Jek and my newly acquired Borad - the cards are very nicely designed, and the fact I loved the episodes no doubt helps too. And yes, my super-rare Sutekh - but the fact it says super-rare, and the fact it shines, has very little bearing on this fact. I still feel a little rush of glee when I come across them. More than anything else, I want a Xeraphin and a Melkur, and I'd value them far higher than a Slitheen Skinsuit, no matter how "rare" one and "common" the other. The collectors would tell me, "Omega 1 is common wheras Omega 2 is super-rare - this makes one more valuable than the other". Not true! It's OMEGA for goodness sakes, he's awesome and to my mind both cards are equally valuable.
I can't define to you how overjoyed I was to get my Axonite card - I think all I said for the next few hours was "look, I've got some Axonite!". Because it was Axonite! Axonite is awesome! I was certainly overjoyed with my TARDIS ultra-rare, to be sure, but not in the same way recieving a common-old lump of Axonite made me smile. I'm not sure my friend with the notebook would have appreciated this.
I did consider getting the Master - three times actually, £1 for the Master with Toclafane, £2 for the Master as Harry Saxon - £5 for an old-skool Ainley Master card or £20 for the Master's Regeneration. But this stemmed, again, from enthusiasm for the character, and no way was I going to participate in their horrid system.
Instead, I picked up some commons I'd long desired - the Celery, Fob Watch, Cricket Ball and Fifth Doctor, which were the only four cards from the Invader and Devastator series I was actually interested in. I don't actually feel the slightest desire to ever pick up an Invader or Devastator pack ever again. To complete a deal, I also picked up Sally Sparrow and the young Master - mostly because I felt cheated that the proper Masters were out of my price bracket. The Ultimate Monsters set is my real love - maybe, just maybe, I'll try and complete that one. Or get to the point where the only cards I don't have are dull. For that series, I found the Hand of Eldrad, The Great One, Eldrad in female form, a Vervoid, Omega (OMEGA!) and joy of all joys, that Borad card. I considered buying more Davroses - you need a deck of 13 to make up a Battle Pack, and there are just enough cards to complete one soley with Davros, but decided I'd pandered to them enough for one day. The sum total for all this was about £2, but not bad considering a random pack which might have contained repeats usually costs £1.50.
I hung around, trying to find some other amusement besides the gross materialism (there wasn't any), and under a table found a Doctor Who novel in the 50p book box, as well as an interesting text about comic-movie adaptations. Now this did make me smile, because the value of a second hand sci-fi book is about 50p - yet the price, as Ebay and Amazon will confirm, is at least £7, if you're lucky, at least £20 if you're not, and at least £50 if you're Lungbarrow. This was only because it was a comic book store - I anticipate the Easter Invasion convention will, among Doctor Who fans, have them "correctly" priced. So I got to leave with a bargain, and satisfied at having beat the system, I came home for lunch.
Will I be going again next month? Definitely!
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