Post an Image of a Favourite Monster or Sci-Fi Collectible!

[horrorhunter]

Creature Collectibles!

[CerebusLives]

You guys have some amazing collections.  Scouring the pictures and the boards for stuff to keep an eye out for.   The wallets made the list for sure

The two items I've been partial so far in my limited knowledge of collecting monsters. I've always wanted the Jim Beam bourbon holders both Frankenstein and Dracula I think those would look like the cats pajamas atop a bookcase with a couple of orange tea lights...spooky

[Hepcat]

The wallets made the list for sure

Here's my own personal SPP monster wallet story:

It was a Saturday morning in April or May of 1964. My mission: to go door to door in downtown London and sell fifteen Globe & Mail newspapers for fifteen cents each. The reward, five cents per paper sold plus an SPP monster wallet of my choice!





These wallets were perhaps the coolest things that I'd ever seen and I absolutely, positively had to reach the target.

But the Globe & Mail was a pig of a paper and very tough to sell in London. First of all, the Globe & Mail was Toronto based. The London Free Press was the paper of choice for most Londoners. Secondly, the Saturday Free Press cost only a dime. Thirdly, coming all the way from Toronto, the Globe & Mail had to be printed much earlier and so didn't contain that many sports scores from the previous day. Fourthly, the Saturday Free Press was loaded with features including a coloured comic section. The Globe & Mail was comparatively drab and had no comparable comic section. Finally, on Saturdays a whopping three editions of the Free Press were published, the regular Free Press published early in the morning, the London Evening Free Press published in mid-afternoon and the Night Final which included various afternoon race results for punters and sundry other horse degenerates.

What did the Globe & Mail have to offer in return? Just the best business section of any newspaper in Canada. So I could only hope to sell the thing to stuffy old businessmen or the odd deluded Torontophile. The maximum I'd ever sold before was six or seven papers. I really had my job cut out for me.

But I could not fail! I flung myself into the task with avid, wild-eyed enthusiasm! And my efforts bore fruit. Nearing the end of the afternoon I'd sold eleven papers; then one more. So close, so close, but yet so far.... Time was up.

But then, an idea! I bought the remaining three copies of the stupid rag myself! And there they were, a whole box of wallets from which I, one of the successful newspaper boys, could choose! "I want the Mummy, I want the Mummy" was the popular refrain I was hearing from other boys. I, however, had a mind of my own and I chose shrewdly - the Creature-Wolfman wallet!

And the three papers I had bought myself? No problem. I sold one to my father and two to neighbours on my own street! Easy sales indeed
.
And I was now the proud owner of a wallet like no other in the school yard! Shortly thereafter I caught on as a morning paperboy for the London Free Press (a real newspaper) with my own thirty paper delivery route which actually took me less than ten minutes since the houses were all on the same block. And there I was, proud as a peacock brandishing my super cool monster wallet as I went collecting from my customers every week, a wallet that I had incidentally earned stuffing the crappy Globe & Mail down customers' throats just a few months previously!

Unfortunately, my wallet's change purse started coming apart in less than a year (cheap bloody plastic) so I very sensibly threw it out. I mean what do you need a wallet for anymore if it's all falling apart? Right? Right?!

Now I've since managed to acquire the Mummy-Dracula and Frankenstein-Phantom wallets:





But another Creature-Wolfman wallet continues to elude me to this very day.

[CerebusLives]

Very cool Hep indeed! I'm sure the stars will align soon and that wallet will no longer be allusive.  The fact that something like that got thrown isn't lost can't even begin to think all the comics my mom threw out because I'd leave them out to long 

[Hepcat]

1962 Marx "The Great Garloo". I had one as a kid. Thought it was the coolest thing ever!

My mother used to haunt the Kresge, Woolworths, Zellers and Metropolitan stores in downtown London looking for bargains I suppose. As a youngster I was invariably in tow. I didn't mind of course as there was always the chance I could score a dish of ice cream at the restaurant counter these stores typically featured. And of course there was never a shortage of other items to capture a young boy's interest, little turtles, goldfish, budgies, the bulk candy counter and all those toys! It was on one of those trips to Kresge that I came face to face with a Great Garloo, which I immediately brought to my mother's attention. With a sticker price in the fifteen dollar area, there was just no chance I'd be given one though.

How many of you UMA members remember this commercial?

! No longer available

[Hepcat]

Here are some pictures of the Universal Monsters lunch box from my collection:

[horrorhunter]

Creepy Crawlers (Mattel, 1964):

[horrorhunter]

Fright Factory (Mattel, 1966):

[Hepcat]

Mattel Thingmakers are way up high on my list of  the greatest toys of all time.

[Rockshasa]

Hepcat,
That Universal Monster lunchbox is in amazing condition. Where did you find it? What a great score!!!

Love the Creepy Crawler stuff as well. I have the old 1960's set, but I don't have the box. Very cool!

[Hepcat]

That Universal Monster lunchbox is in amazing condition. Where did you find it? What a great score!!!

I bought the Universal Monsters lunch box on Ebay in 2007-09 from a dealer who specialized in lunch boxes. It's never used new old stock.

This Tom Corbett lunch box is one of the other ones I bought at the time:

[Rockshasa]

This Tom Corbett lunch box is one of the other ones I bought at the time:

They have this one at an antique store not too far from me. It's a bit weathered, with some rusting. They want $50 for it.

[Hepcat]

That would be a reasonable though not a great price for one in that condition.

[Hepcat]

Most of the HI stuff didn't hold up well because the bigger bugs and vehicles were made of hard plastic with pull-string motors, and the cave is corrugated cardboard. No wonder the stuff sells for so much now considering the attrition which resulted in a true scarcity of undamaged (or slightly damaged) HI pieces. Most of it that shows up on eBay is somewhat-to-badly damaged, but once in awhile a really nice HI piece or playset becomes available and those are the ones which are so expensive.

Here are a couple of shots of my own Hamilton's Invaders items:

[horrorhunter]

Dinosaur Monsters No. 873 Carded Set (MPC, 1964):