Two years ago I was in the middle of paying for a squeegee at a garage sale, when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.
"Oh," I said. "Is that...?" It dawned on me, suddenly, that I had always wanted one just like it.
"Yes," said the woman whose sale it was. "You can have it with the squeegee for two dollars."
And that's how I got my squeegee and my sealed box of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trading cards, from 1994.
The squeegee ended up being kind of a raw deal. I used it once; it left streaks. The cards, though, I never even opened. I've always had a nerdy respect for things that are in "mint condition." Using and enjoying objects is great and all, but what if it kills the value? Ebay or something like it will almost definitely be around when I retire. Pensions? Social assistance for the elderly? Maybe not. Everything around us is potentially a collector's item in the making, and therefore might be salable at some point in the future.
So I might regret having finally unsealed the box of HGttG trading cards last night. But I doubt it.
What unbelievably ugly illustrations. I love that this product was premised on the assumption that at least two kids would buy the cards, that they'd know each other, and that they'd be interested enough in the subject matter to actually trade amongst themselves―you know, so they each could complete the set.
Maybe there actually were insular pockets of HGttG trading card enthusiasm in certain places in the mid-nineties, though. Who knows? My elementary school went through a brief vogue for Marvel Comics trading cards at around that time.
Whether or not they ever had any kind of following, they certainly don't have many fans now. Ebay shows no recently completed auctions involving the cards, which is a sure sign that demand for them was met long ago.
Nothing could be more futile than owning a bunch of sealed packs from a failed, forgotten run of trading cards. The very idea of them relies on notions of value and rarity that are completely irrelevant when nobody else has the cards, or cares.
There are some things that are overpriced, even when they cost next to nothing. I suspect this is a lesson all junk aficionados must one day come to terms with.
Incidentally, if anyone wants an unopened pack of HGttG trading cards, I can arrange that.
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