Hey gang- thanks everybody for the warm welcome. I have that photo somewhere of myself and my brothers with the dresser that was in the newspaper in 1973 but at the moment my house looks like I have an audition to be on Hoarders coming up, so I can't find it- HOWEVER, I do have the dresser and I will take some photos of it and post them along with some closeups of the stickers.
So there is a funny story about the collection I posted I think you will like. There a swap meet about a mile from my house every Thursday. I go once in awhile to look for weird old magazines, vintage monster toys and junk in general. About a month ago there was a guy with a big gross old van and a table full of absolute crap, incomplete golf club sets, gigantic rusted tools from the 40s, a huge plastic bin full of orphaned AC adapters, worn out rollerblades- you know the stuff, but he was also selling a ton of baseball cards AND buried way under was this whole binder full of Wackys, and I was thinking wow, I loved these as a kid, I know they are collectible I just can't recall if they are worth anything. It was too much hassle to try to research them on my phone in the sun, plus I had to urinate really bad, so I just bought Capn Crud, and took a few photos of them to research later. I asked how much and the guy said $2 each. Hmmm OK. A few days later I got into some Heineken fueled late night research and found out there is a living, vibrant Wacky collecting community including this forum and the absolutely bizarre world of Ebay Wacky commerce, where I saw a Capt Crud that sold for $30 something, and few of the ones I photographed at the swap meet selling in completed auctions for really amazing prices, especially PSA graded ones, including a Bloodwieser selling for $455 on May 17.
OK I'm in, I thought- I am going to go get those wackys for $2 each if they are still there. I love all of it, the collecting, weird old vintage stuff we liked as kids, the buying, the gambling, meeting other people who "get it" on internet forums, etc. So the next week I went back with $300 cash I was willing to pay the guy for the Wackys if they were still there. I got there and was wearing a hat hoping the guy did not recognize me as having shown interest the last week and possibly determined some value. There was an old guy standing there just flipping through the Wackys for about 5 minutes I was afraid I was gong to lose them.. but he left and without seeming too eager I went and looked at them again...tan backs...great condition, 1973, 75- the real thing ok lets do it. So I ask the skinny, nervous, chatty guy "how much?" $2 bucks each. I said, "Ok well, lets count em up." There were 198. So, how much for all of them? ALL OF EM??? how about a buck each? he says. Well I did not want to seem too excited, well under what I was prepared to pay so I said how about $150? The guy was so excited he said OK what about $175? Sure I'll do that I said, I almost felt bad- these could be worth thousands. So I pull out 9 $20 bills and said do you have $5 change? The guy pulls a $5 off his roll and he was shaking, and he held out his hand to shake on it and says almost stuttering "so...its a deal??" Yeah, sure, I said and shook his hand. He handed me the five and took the wad of $20s and just held them up over his head and started screaming, YEAH!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!! Hey Marco!!! I just hit the jackpot!!!!!! YEAH WOOOO WEEEE!!!! His buddy looks back with a big thumbs up and everyone is staring at me to see who the sucker who just got taken is.
At this point I was sort of grinning, a little embarrassed and waving to all my new fans, as the biggest idiot to ever visit a junk sale, but I was still glad I scored the Wackys. So I said "hey you know, I think its always important in these deals that both guys feel good about it, so can I put you down as being ok with it?" To which he said "Sorry man I didn't mean to make you feel bad, it's just such a great feeling to get rid of that sh*t after hauling it around for so long!" (...which was my favorite part of the entire episode by far.) I asked him if he had a bag, and he said "Have I got a bag for you??? Brother-Man, I got the best bag ever for you!" and he gave me actually a pretty nice tyvek carry bag with a storage company logo on it. As I walked away, he was dancing and yelling, still waving the money. He was as excited as I would be over maybe $50,000, and I guess I made his day.
So, I got the Wackys for $175, we will see what they are worth. It doesn't matter because for the $175 I also got the story which I will tell about a hundred times at dinner parties/family reunions whatever, is actually pretty priceless. Plus I can do a perfect imitation of the guy celebrating at me being such a moron to buy all those Wacky Packages for $175, which is the funniest part.
Anyway that's the story of my new Wacky collection.
