The League of Extraordinary Bloggers: The FIND

It's League of Extraordinary Bloggers time once again kids!!! And this time around, the topic is one that's extremely near and dear to this second-hand-aholic:

"The find. What was your best/favorite yard sale or flea market find?"

By my very nature I am always on the hunt for toys and books and other geeky items as old and as (more importantly) CHEAP as possible. As the title of the blog would suggest, I do most of my "hunting" at Goodwill. But I don't limit my searches to this. I frequent antique stores, flea markets, rummage sales, thrift shops, and almost most importantly... the yard and/or garage sale. 

What's BIZARRE about this topic coming up this week is that just this past weekend I went to one of the only yard-sales I actually made it out to this season. It was only a few houses down from my own, so I could walk there. Now, I've been under the weather with some pretty serious crud lately, so even a quick jaunt was kind of risk... but I was going stir-crazy in the house and... and... YARD SALE you guys! 

Yard-sale Flier by Andrew Liang
More Rock n' Roll than any yard-sale I've EVER been to.

As I left my lawn to head down the road, my daughter warned me that she had already been down and it was "just some old lady" and that I shouldn't even bother. I almost didn't go. I almost stayed home. Honestly, I probably should have stayed home. But I went down anyway, the lure of such a close yard-sale beckoning me down the street like a siren's song. 

Come check my s**t out y'all.

And THIS my dear readers... is what I found when I got down there:

This glorious tub of action figures from the 80's and 90's. Literally jumped into my arms like an old cat at a shelter and purred its way into my heart... and my wallet. The guy wanted 60 bucks for the whole tote. I countered with 30. We settled on 40 in the end... and I'm still not sure it was the deal I was looking for... but damn if I didn't get a whole lot of plastic goodness in there that I am SOOO excited about. 

In fact, there was SO much stuff in that bin that I decided to break it up into a series of posts even before I saw what this week's topic was going to be. If I paid that much for this stuff... I was sure as hell going to get my blogging value out of it. 

Today's post is going to be dedicated to some of the cooler, random things I found in that tub. Stuff I like a lot, or stuff I never knew I wanted until I got it in this tub. There's a few morts in the mix for sure... but I'll get to those another time. I won't link all of the posts about what I found in this bin on the League page... but I will link to them here on this page, so if you're discovering this page through Cool and Collected, you can see what else I found later when I post about it. 

This is literally how I felt when I got that bin home. I hadn't even looked at all the toys in there yet! I gave it a general paw-around and saw so much stuff that made my jaw drop that I just wanted to get it home! So like Scrooge up there... let's dive in! 

Do you remember The Pirates of Dark-Water? Well I do. I remember it fondly. I honestly think it was a bit before it's time, style-wise, which is why it didn't flourish. I think if they'd tried to revive this series around the time the first Pirates of the Caribbean was coming out, it would have had more of a fighting chance. Finding this threesome (well, foursome if you count extra-Ren) was extremely exciting for me. 

Here we have Ioz on the left and Ren on the right. These are two of the heroes from the show. Their goal was to track down 13 magical treasures that needed to be brought together to stop a dark force that was creating "dark water" that was slowly destroying their world. 

This is Bloth. He's from the "People of Wal-Mart" tumblr. Just kidding! But I've seen people in similar outfits on there. Bloth is an evil pirate captain who wants to collect the 13 treasures for his own greedy purposes. He's a real jerk. But man is his top sexy. And it takes a confident man to pull off those calf-high flip-flops he's rocking. 

Then we have this trio of weirdos. I think the Battle Troll on the far left was one of the more enticing toys in that bin. There was just so much STUFF in there that he really stood out in angry red and gold. Of course you can see there were other cool toys in there as well. 

On the left here you'll see Sir Trollohad of the second series of Battle Trolls that came out. I HATED trolls back when they were a "thing" but I think I NEED to track down some of the other Battle Trolls in the series. The King Koopa figure is actually from a Nintendo Trophy, released in 1988 titled "Bowser Guards Princess Toadstool". He would normally be sitting on a red-brick base and holding a pink-dressed princess on his left hand. But y'know? I like him just the way he is. 

And then we have this guy. He looks like Rocksteady on steroids if the steroids were first treated with mutagen. This guys actual name is "Hoof" and he's from the Todd McFarlane toys "Total Chaos" series. I'm not a Todd McFarlane fan at all... but I love some of his toys. This one is just amazing.

So now my little green Halloween Troll has a big red buddy to hang out with. Aaaaand! The turtles have a new enemy to be wary of. I think they look GREAT together. 

Next up we have a random trio of warriors who are ready to FIGHT! At first I got REALLY excited because I thought the guy on the far left was a Hamato Yoshi figure... and he is in fact from the TMNT line... but not a pre-mutation Splinter (or his owner... or whatever)...

He is in fact a Kenshin figure from the time traveling third TMNT live-action film. Plus... Yay! Captain Planet!!! He's our hero. Gonna take pollution down to zero! I was never a huge Captain Planet fan... but I watched it. I liked the concept of the five different heroes with power rings based on elements coming together to summon the ultimate hero of Cap-P. Even if the show did sometimes have some creepy... kind of invasive "morals" from time to time. 

The guy on the far right is Vortex from the Double Dragon line. I'm not a huge Double Dragon fan, to be honest, but I love the figures. I just bought a pair of the main heroes a few months back, and now I have their spinning ally to add to my shelf. Plus, his spin-attack action still works!!!

And in the last batch of figures I'm showcasing in this first post, I have these three oddballs. A video game villain, a movie pulp-hero's alter-ego, and a... Creepy Crawler?

Again, as a pretty much non-gamer geek, I was not familiar with the Mega Man villain Guts-Man. He's a super strong robot, but more importantly, he's colorful, he's huge, and he's just a TON of fun. Next to him here we have a "Commantis" figure from a Creepy Crawlers action figure line. I didn't even know that Creepy Crawlers HAD action figures. Guess what! There was a cartoon show as well. No idea. I like this guy's look. His color scheme and that grin! He looks like he's a Captain Planet villain or something.

And who's this shy little guy? Why that's Lamont Cranston, ater-ego of the pulp-noir action hero The Shadow! Why does his head retract into his torso like George Costanza's junk in the ocean? His head slides down so you can fit a different head over it to "transform" him into the Shadow. Why they had to make the process so elaborate and convoluted (leaving us with a ridiculously introverted tuxedo-clad guy) when they could have just slid an accessory over his head and torso? Only the Shadow knows!

So begins the epic telling of the Yardsale Bin of 2013!!! Keep your eyes peeled here on Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks in the future to see more of its MAAAAAAAAGICAL contents!!!

In the meantime, let's see what some of my fellow league members are counting among their epic finds:

- Erik Johnson (Illustrator) shows off yard sale art. Some for his walls... some for his boooooody...

- That LUCKY BASTARD Eric Stettmeier over at Toyriffic shows of a whole LOT of vintage MotU that he got for a WAY better deal than my find. Sad face. 

- The Sexy Geek over at his House of Swag tries to melt your heart with a story of Spider-Men lost... and Spider-Men found. 

- Brian, our fearless leader, shows off the Ghosts of Yard-sales Past over at Cool & Collected!

That's it for me tonight guys! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill (and yard-sale) Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!