4 Geeky Books for a Buck at Marden's Overstock and Salvage

So during another browse at Mardens, a chain of overstock and salvage stores here in Maine, I stumbled across a deal on books. There was a massive clearance going on, and they were selling books for four for a dollar. In the past they've done thinks like selling books by weight, selling books 10 for 10, buy one get one free, etc. But this was pretty much the best deal I've seen there in a while. 

Of course that meant the majority of the books for sale were nothing I was interested in. But I could smell a blog post here people, and with that in mind, I set out to find those four magic books for that one magic dollar that I could write about here. 

Here is the pile of four books I paid four quarters for:

First up, this one is sort of a cheat... I guess? But I posit that this thing counts as a book. It is in fact, a shrink-wrapped folder full of character sheets to be used in the Star Wars Role-playing game. For the record... I do not own the Star Wars Role-playing game. Nor were there any other books or supplemental materials on sale at Mardens to support my purchase of these character sheets. But when it comes down to desperation in wanting to put together a quartet of cheap books that seem even mildly "geeky" and the fact that I was basically paying yard sale prices for these things... it went a long way towards motivating me to take them home. Besides, this was my last-ditch pick and it was down to this or a book about desk lamps. I'm not kidding. There was a book featuring desk lamps as objets d'art.

And I just can't.

Here's a look at the back of the package. I like the art styles employed here. 

And here's an example sheet filled out on the inside cover. "Sia-Len Wezz" a Jedi guardian. I wish I had more to say about these things honestly... other than I LOVE role-playing paraphernalia, and that I used to have a bunch of source books for the old 80's-90's version of the Star Wars Role-playing gamefrom West End (especially the Galaxy Guide to Bounty Hunters...) that I wish I hadn't given away. 

I am much more excited about the next purchase. Toy Confidential: The Secret Life of Snarky Toys by Aled Lewis is a fun book, but definitely not one I would have ever paid full cover price for. Odds are good I would have passed this up at Goodwill for a dollar as well. 25 cents is well within my comfort zone for almost anything apparently.

A lot of the humor kind of leaves a bit to be desired. The majority of the images and gags are presented like the interior of a birthday card. The ones I have collected and pictured here genuinely made me laugh however. Like the meeting of two Wolverines, and this guy feeling his little horse.

An American Werewolf in Levis isn't maybe the funniest thing ever, but it got me. And this pony coming out to his parents is adorable.

Star Trek phaser humor never disappoints, and my probably-second-favorite joke in the entire book is the Jurassic park "Clever girl" reference.

But this one takes the number one spot. Just absolutely my favorite. It is both sad and hilarious and colorful but drab at the same time. It sums up life perfectly for me (some days).

I'm not saving the best for last for some reason. I'm going ahead and revealing my absolute favorite pick second-to-last. And that is this: Nerd Haiku by Robb Pearlman. Finding this and the Toy book above was what bolstered me into thinking I could complete my mission of finding four appropriately geeky books for a dollar. I gave this just a cursory glance at first, as I am not a huge fan of novelty haiku... but this thing is awesome. Let's look at some nerd haiku excerpts.

This one made me think of you, Jason Roberts.

Now, I look at this haiku and I wonder if it is meant, as it might at first seem, as an insult to the Go-Bots, as a "knock-off" brand of Transformers. But with a little research you will find that both Hydrox cookies and Go-Bots suffer from the same affliction: They came out FIRST (at least in the U.S.) and were surpassed in popularity by other brands... and then assumed to be knock-offs of those brands. Hydrox came out before Oreos and Go-Bots came out before Transformers (by a good 5 months).

Please. Post comments below.

This is a common confession among the geeks in the circles I travel. No shame guys... but let's work to correct this, mmm-kay?

Swap out "roommate" for "lover" and you've just painted a picture of my entire life story in three short lines.

This page obviously had a theme that I really got behind.

As did this one. I can't recommend this great little book enough! This is the one book I felt was really a steal, and that I would probably have paid more for outside of this situation. Check it out!

I'm not going to talk this one to death, as there's not a ton to say about it... but this book is pretty great. This was my scond-to-last find when selecting my geeky quartet. It is As Seen On TV by Lou Harry and Sam Stail. It's basically a museum-in-a-book of all those great infomercials both classic and recent.

Thighmaster and "Hair In a Can" make appearances (also if you look closely at the cover shot above you can see the Flowbee! Vacuum haircuts for everyone!).

Also in attendance are Girls Gone Wild and The Clapper. I didn't take a picture of it, but Susan Powter and a bunch of the other usual suspects make appearances as well. This book is a reads like a who's-who of the Illuminati for sure.

Chia Pets! Life Alerts! They're all here folks!

Like I said before, I'm not talking this one to death because frankly, I don't feel like I have to. This thing reads like a highschool yearbook for TV advertisements. It's a study in trash history and I looove it.

So THAT is the quartet of geeky books that my dollar bought me at Mardens! That's all I have for tonight folks, but I'll be back soon with some Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until that time, Happy Hunting!

Another Trip to the Dreamcatcher Antique Mall

So, I made yet another trip to the Dreamcatcher Antiques Mall recently, and I came out with a handful of fun items:

Here's a look at the entire haul, but let's break it down piece by piece, shall we? 

First up I have this 1989 Bumblebee Transformer. He was either a part of the Pretenders line of the Legends line of that ear, according to the Transformers Wiki. Bumblebee was actually one of my favorite characters on the show as a kid. The odd characters were always my favorites on any show... it was the soldier and warriors and tough guys that didn't really appeal to me at that age. 

Here he is in car mode. Apparently all I'm missing now is the gigantic gun turret that you usually find innocuously installed on the roof of most Volkswagen Beetles. (Man, does he NEED a good cleaning)

Meet Becky. Becky is a Fisher Price Adventure Person... and a total hottie. She is a scuba diver. I get really distracted when Becky's around. Becky is also the name of my Aunt. So... that got weird fast. I absolutely LOVE the Fisher Price Adventure People line. I only owned one as a kid because they were a little bit before my time (I had the X-Ray Man figure) but I really appreciate the design and simplicity of these little folk as an adult collector. 

Next up is what I thought at first was a Hotwheels Batmobile from the Tim Burton movie... but I was mistaken. This baby is solid rubber! It was released in 1992 to support the Batman Returns movie, and was produced by Applause... you know... the guys who made all those PVC figures with the thick, rubbery paint? They did everything from the California Raisins to Sesame Street to Disney's Chip n' Dale's Rescue Rangers (can you tell I'm looking around my cave trying to think of figurines Applause produced?) To me, this just makes this thing that much cooler! The wheels are on pins and do actually roll, so this isn't just a solid hunk of rubber. Bumblebee, Becky, and the Batmobile up there all cost me just one American Dollar as a GROUP!!! They were all in a .50 cent bin but the guy at the register just grunted and charged me buy 2 get 1 free. Boy what a momentous occasion in my life! 

The star of this shot is the TSR PVC Bugbear figure standing front and center. I just wanted to include Warduke and Strongheart because they are the only other TSR toys from the 80's I own. Strongheart I bought in a grab-bag at Goodwill a long while back... and Warduke was a very recent gift from my wife's cousin's husband, who actually won him from the Garage Sale of awesome. Anyway... the Bugbear's supposed to be the star of the show here, so let's focus on him. I'm still not totally clear if the action figures and the PVC monsters were all meant to be part of the same toy line... but now that I know of their existence... I may be tracking more of these down. He was three dollars on his own. 

And finally, I brought home this Vampire the Masquerade players guide... which I already own. But it was only five dollars, and I have an idea of where this might be headed, so I snapped it up. All of the items you see here cost me just a hair under 9 dollars. There were two other items that I'm not revealing because I bought them as a surprise gift for a friend, and those brought my total up to 15 dollars. 

That's all I have for today kids! I'll be back soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting. 

Payday Friday!

So here are the spoils of a payday Friday past... the payday Friday of August 30th to be precise... I went in expecting very little... And actually came out with some pretty great finds!

Not sure what I'm going to do with this. It's a Fisher-Price Grand Piano from 1986. It doesn't really fit my collection... but I couldn't leave it there! It only has a bit of mild damage on the top right corner of the front decal. The rest looks great! Still works perfectly with these little colored tiles popping up after each key is struck, with notes like "do" "re" "mi" and little animal faces printed on them. I actually have a pretty good idea of where this will probably end up already... hmmm.

Got this grab-bag for .99 cents! I'm not even a little bit excited about Jane from Tarzan, honestly (sorry Jane, you don't even have your parasol with a monkey on it. Maybe if you did... but you don't) I bought this bag for the other 3 items. This will mark my (if memory serves) first ever Bugs Life toy. Little Princess Dot is a cereal premium from 1998. Her paint apps are not great, but she's cute, and she is now enjoying a spot on the shelf next to my other Pixar characters. I also found one of those pretty-new Despicable Me 2 Minion Happy Meal toys! One I didn't have already! And he's a slide whistle! Since I refuse to put my mouth on a second-hand kids toy I will simply have to trust he still works. And I finally came up with a new robot to add to my robot collection! Look at that cute little "Galaxy" guy! 

The reason I always scan the glass wares aisle! Collectible fast food glasses! Ronald there on the right I have been hoping to spot for a while! Used to be a few years back that you couldn't throw a rock around here at a thrift store or antique shop without shattering just a whole collection of these McDonald's character glasses. Now they've become collectible and I see them NOWHERE. These and the two Muppets glasses I found there awhile back just make me feel justified in sweeping down this section every time I visit. Now... the Jack in the Box Hamburgers glass... is a creature of a different nature. I had no knowledge of this glass and it's collectibility when I bought it. We don't have any Jack in the Box restaurants around here, so I've never seen these around. There's a big Coca-Cola logo on the opposite side. Still can't any kind of idea from the internet how old it might be... but I don't really care. I like it. I bought these 2 glasses for .99 cents apiece.  

Yet another Simpsons comics collection! I've really accumulated a stack of these at this point. This makes the seventh tpb collection I've picked up at Goodwill! Maybe someday I'll actually sit down and... like... read them. .99 cents for this book! 

I am a sucker for interesting-looking travel books. so Ron Butler's "Dancing Alone in Mexico: From the Border to Baja and Beyond" looked like a quirk and interesting read. I've really tried to slow down on buying stacks and stacks of random books, but this one called out to me. I paid 1.99 for it

Next up are probably the two most exciting finds of the whole Payday Friday for a geek like me! These are a pair of old Invicible Overlord role-playing supplements from the late eighties (1988-1989). I bought them when I was at the height of my role-playing FEVER in the early 90's at the Ellsworth All-For-A-Dollar. There were three of them that I found back then, and there were actually three of them that I saw at Goodwill the day I picked these up. The third supplement was called "The Haunt" and it is the only one of the three that I still own to this day. I don't have the box anymore, however. I thought about buying the other copy of the Haunt from Goodwill, but with a 2.99 price tag on each one, I just couldn't afford it. So I brought home the two I was missing. Here's a picture of what the Briarwood Castle looks like on the inside:

Raiders of Ironrock looks pretty much the same, hence no picture included. Pretty standard fare for a role-playing game supplement. These are seamlessly adaptable to the AD&D 2nd edition system, so no core rule book required as long as you have the official AD&D stuff on hand. I couldn't begin to tell you if they are fun to play, but I know I was pleased as punch to find some old roleplaying game sets from when I was younger. 

Aaaaaand finally, this guy. I'm cheating a little bit here, as I actually picked this up on Saturday. I picked it up and looked at it on Friday and then for some incomprehensible reason I PUT IT BACK. It's a Sesame Street train with Big Bird driving! How could I not snap that up for .99 cents? I think I tried reasoning that it was a little too big for me to sensibly display (and it is... I still don't have a "spot" for it...) and so I set it down and bought my stuff... and went home. Then I went to Laura Huey's Boo Booby Blog, THAT NIGHT and saw that she had the EXACT SAME Big Bird Train on display at her house! And I WANTED IT SO BADLY. I even bemoaned this fact on her blog, that I had held this item in my hands and then put it back without buying it! She of course did the sensible thing and scolded me for not having picked it up. SOOOOO... I went back Saturday morning and bought it. I'm nothing if not obsessive. Turns out there's two other cars to the train, one with Cookie Monster, and one with Bert! Neither were in attendance at Goodwill, but I will be keeping my eyes peeled from now on. 

And that's all he wrote! That's it for me tonight kids! I'll be back real soon with more Geeky Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Hunting!