(Stupid) End of the year update...

Well, another year has come to close.  I hope everyone has had a decent enough year.  I know that for me it falls into that category.  There were some good times (FINALLY getting to Walt Disney World) and a fair amount of 'not that great' times.  But we all survived so that says something.  Cincinnati is finally starting to feel a little bit like home now.  Still miss everyone.

This was one of my busiest ever when it comes to my stupid movie collection.  I'm not sure what got into me.  Maybe it's because I actually did my homework to an insane level and truly knew EXACTLY what I had and what I didn't have and how that related to all the stupid movie sets I didn't have. 

And with this update, I have to announce that I have 4 more movie sets for my Stupid Movie Collection.  (For the record, I added a total of 26 movie sets this year.  Waaaaayyyyy to many.) I took a tiny little break from the movies until some time in September when I got an eBay notification (I hadn't turned them off yet) which had a nice and low buy it now price.  With that, I got Hollywood Comedy Legends.  This 50 pack had 18 movies that I didn't have yet.  Not quite stellar but at the price it was hard to pass up.

My birthday came up and the Mrs. got me a set that I had been longing for (and that I had added to my Amazon list):  B-Movie Blast.  It had a little overlap with the Excellent Eighties collection, but still had a decent amount of stuff I didn't have.  Based on my notes, it appears that 29 were unique to my collection.  Not bad!

Somewhere shortly thereafter, I got a notification on a set that I knew still had a decent amount of movies on it came up and of course, like a turd, I bought it.  Thanks a lot eBay.  This set is called Tales of Terror.  It had 18 movies that I didn't have.  I have to admit that the cover creeps me out a little.

And finally, for our anniversary, the Mrs got the other pack that was on my Amazon list, Historic Classics.  This one had a fair number of movies that I needed (35 to be exact), though the theme for this one really isn't something I would normally gravitate to.  Regardless, I have it now and can check it off the list.  I can say that my eBay notification for 50 movie packs have been turned off.

I wish everyone the best in the New Year!   Take care!!!

D.

Stupid End of July update

I know I said I was done.... but I think I really really mean it this time.   I couldn't help it.  I still had the eBay search results showing up to my email.  I saw some prices that were really good.  Honest.

So I have three new sets for my Stupid Movie Collection:

Cult Classics (20 movies), Drive-In Cult Classics (32 movies) and Night Screams (50 movies).

Cult Classics 20 movie pack literally contains a bunch of what were considered some of the original cult classics: Reefer Madness, Cocaine Fiends, Test Tube Babies, etc.  Good stuff.

The Drive In Cult Classics 32 movie collection, contains stuff that would be considered to be Grind House type of stuff, I think: The Pink Angels, The Pom Pom Girls, Malibu Beach, They Saved Hitler's Brain, etc.

Night Screams is what I could consider a typical Mill Creek collection.  This is a collection of movies with a horror-like theme: Anatomy of a Psycho, The Devil's Sleep, I Killed That Man, Murder At Midnight, The Tell-Tale Heart, etc.  Most of it is in black and white.  This one surprised me the most because the artwork for this one is reminiscent of the kind of artwork used on the Treeline / early Mill Creek sets which came in the cardboard boxes.  However, when it showed up, I was pleasantly surprised that it was in a sturdy plastic case.

Anyway, that's what I got at the end July.  All of these collections I got used.  Some were a little more beat up that I am used to but I got a good deal on them and the discs seemed relatively unscathed.

I hope all is well with everyone.  I know that I'm really the only one looking at this page, so, um, yeah.  :)   Yay me!

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No really... I think I'm done for the moment!

I know I said I was done getting movies for a little while in the last post.  I meant it.  I really did.

But then I went to Half Price Books in Hamilton and spied a couple more things that were reasonably priced.  And I left them there.

And then Father's Day came along and I went back out and got them. LOL!  I mean you could say that this was my Father's Day gift to myself, but I think I've been getting alot of gifts as of late, so... yeah.  Things.

One of the sets I got was John Wayne - The Tribute Collection from Mill Creek.  25 films with The Duke!  I got this one for 8 movies that I didn't have yet.  There was a 50 movie collection featuring John Wayne and various western trios.  I pretty much had 40 of the movies in that pack with the exception of a handful of John Wayne movies.  This movie set picked up all but 3 of them.  (Still need to find a collection which contains 'Range Feud', 'Texas Cyclone' and 'Two-Fisted Law')

The next collection is a mundanely named collection called '15 Martial Arts Movies' from the newly discovered TG Direct.  They were the same company that did the Samurai Warriors collection.  I did my homework on this one and determined that 9 of the 15 would be new to my collection. Now here is where it gets amusing.  When I opened up the set, all of the discs were marked 'Samurai Warrior' but still had all the new titles on them. It's like this company pretty much brands any of their martial arts box sets 'Samurai Warrior'.   Weird.

Both of those were 5 bucks each so I didn't feel too bad.  The next set I got only cost 3 dollars from the bargain bin: The Best of Chaplin.  This set contains 28 features!  Most of them are short movies, but still, pretty cool find.

So, for realz this time.  I think I'm done for the moment.

Have a Happy 4th everyone!

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Record shows are cool (or Justice has been served)

Yesterday I went back to my old stomping grounds of Columbus Ohio and went to the Colleen's Collectables Record show which has been going on for decades.  The went to my first one with Todd and Ian in 1992 I think and it was at the Veteran's Memorial building in the main section.  It was crazy huge and crazy packed and it was awesome.  Fast forward to June 10th 2017 (hey, it's my 25th anniversary of going to record shows!) and the record shows are a little smaller and held at the Haimerl Center on Morse Road but they are still awesome.  With the resurgence of vinyl, they probably could get a bigger place but they've been holding them at the Haimerl for probably 10 years so why change something which works. 

I met Todd at the show we chatted briefly before going on our individual hunts.  Todd was looking for Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting on vinyl while I was on the hunt for Bobby Sherman's self-titled first album and the 6-sided die-cut soundtrack for the movie 'The Andromeda Strain'.  I was about 3/4 the way through the show and fully in the zone, blinders on, not seeing anyone in my path really, just records. I walked up to one of the tables and starting perusing the CDs that a seller had out (along with some LPs) when the seller said 'I wouldn't look too closely, so of those might be yours'.  I looked up and wouldn't you know it, there was Ian.  He was peddling his goods (as he has on several occasions in the past) at today's show.  So all three of us were back at the show again!  I ended up buying the Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe CD from him.  Good stuff from some people who were members of Yes at one time or another.

My haul consisted of the following:
LP - Bobby Sherman - Bobby Sherman (I got it in MINT condition.  Awesome!)
LP - Styx - The Grand Illusion
LP - The Alan Parson's Project - I Robot
LP - Jonathan Edwards - Honky-tonk Stardust Cowboy
LP - Elvis - Moody Blue (on clear blue vinyl!)
LP - Elvis - Elvis' Christmas Album (on the budget Pickwick label. I grew up with this one!)
LP - Ted Neely - 1974 A.D. (portrayed Jesus in the movie Jesus Christ Superstar)
LP - Jesus Christ Superstar movie soundtrack (See what I did there?  Came from the same seller.  $2!)
CD - Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe - Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (from Ian!)
CD - Queen - Greatest Hits I & II

After the Show, Todd and I went to B.C. Roosters and got some chicken and talked for a couple of hours.  After that we went to the Ohio Thrift Store and wandered around for a hour, Todd of course taking several photos of items that were too bizarre to believe.  Good times and conversation!

I then went and had dinner with my friend Kevin at Potbelly.  we talked for about 3 hours, closing the place down.  More good times and conversation!

Then I drove my butt back to Cincinatti to my wife who was waiting up for me so she could see my haul from the record store. 

What a great day!

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In other news: In the previous post I mentioned how I was planning on getting a 50 movie pack called Frontier Justice but that the seller sent the wrong item and I couldn't get an answer from them about if or when then were going to be sending me my set.  So, after 2 1/2 weeks of crickets from the seller I put in a refund request with eBay and it was granted.  This was on Wednesday.  So on Friday, I get this email from eBay: 'Your package has been delivered' and this was confusing because I hadn't purchased anything else.  So I clicked on the link in the email and it referenced the order which I had been refunded for.  It was a new tracking number and everything.  Sure enough, when I got home, there was my Frontier Justice box set.  So now I have the box set but really haven't paid for it (well, other than the $2.63 cents that I paid to ship back the wrong item.)  After much deliberation, I decided that I would pay  the seller the remaining money due for the purchase.  It just seemed like the right thing to do.  I don't need the bad karma. While their communication could use a great deal of work, the seller, at the very least, did provide me the product which I paid for.  And for that, they deserved to get paid.  Justice has been served and I have 50 more movies to add to my stupid movie collection.

Thanks for reading.  Hope all is well with everyone.

Later!

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This stupidity is a crime

Well, I had no more than created my last post when I was already out purchasing more movies for my stupid movie collection.

One of the first things I did was to get the Iron Fist Frenzy 50 movie pack.  In the last post, I mentioned the 'Kickin' It Shaolin Style'.  This was basically 1/4 of the Iron Fist Frenzy.  I started figuring out that the cost of picking up the other 3 sets was probably going to be more than just getting the Iron Fist Frenzy set and getting two extra movies to boot.  So I got a good deal on Iron Fist Frenzy eBay using the Best Offer option.

 The next set I got because the wife was at half Price Books in Hamilton and saw a couple of sets while she was perusing the DVD section.  One of them was a Mill Creek collection which was 20 movies from the Warriors 50 pack I already had.  The other was a 12 movie pack called the 'Samurai Warriors Collection'.  At first I figured that it was probably going to just have movies either from the Martial Arts 50 movie pack or from Iron Fist Frenzy.  But when I started researching, I figured out that 1) it was wasn't a collection from Mill Creek, and 2) there was very little overlap with my other martial arts collections.  'Woo hoo!  Pick it up!' I told my wife. And she did 'cause she's awesome like that! The transfers in this collection seem to be pretty decent, but the packaging is just awful.  It's basically a piece of folded cardboard with slits that the DVDs sit in.  At least Mill Creek makes individual cardboard cases for each disc. I've relocated the DVDs in this collection to some old Microsoft sleeves to better protect them.

About that time, there was another 50 movie pack that had no overlap in my collection called Frontier Justice that I purchased on eBay.  More on that later.

Then I started looking farther down on my lists of sets.  The next candidate was a set called Crime Classics.   I picked that up on, you guessed it, eBay.  This set had only 10 movies that overlapped with my collection.  I got an ok price on this one if I remember correctly.  It's kind of the sister set to the Dark Crimes 50 movie pack I already have.  Not sure which one came out first, though just based on it's simple name, I'd guess that Crime Classics came first.  As far as I can tell, this Mill Creek collection never got a plastic case release; only a cardboard case like the original Tree Line and early Mill Creek sets.

Then things went a little sideways.  In my research, there are some 50 movie packs which I already own 85% of (ie, I already have 35 of the movies).  For some reason, I got it in my head that there were some older 20 movie packs which might be able to fill in the gaps instead of having to purchase a 50 movie pack (at a 50 movie pack price).  I didn't get very far in researching this, but did stumble upon one collection called 'Billy the Kid' which was a 20 movie collection of Billy the Kid movies.  I picked this up on eBay for a cool $4 and it contains 14 movies which are new to my collection.  Yee haw!

So, what about the Frontier Justice set.  Well, things got a little complicated.  The seller sent me a DVD set but not the one that I wanted.  I'd like to have 4 Laurel and Hardy movies, but I really wanted to have the 50 movie set that I ordered.  So I opened up a ticket with eBay and promptly sent back the erroneous collection with word that another person got my order and was shipping it back to the seller the next day.  So, I waited.  After a week I sent an email letting them know that per USPS they received the DVDs I sent back and wanted a status on if the other person shipped back my DVD set. Another week went by with no reply from the seller.  I sent another email asking for status.  And more crickets.  So I had to escalate to the eBay Police who within 10 hours (while I slept) got my money refunded.  So, I should have had the set, but things didn't work out.  I truly believe the seller had the collection and simply sent it to the wrong person.  And maybe the other person who got my order just held on to it, or hasn't shipped it yet ('cause they wanted to rip the movies first) or it got damaged or lost in the mail.  I dunno.  But I hold no ill will to the seller.  Stuff happens. And after more than 100 eBay transactions over the years, this was the first one which went wrong, so, I'm okay with that since I got my money back (sans the return shipping price since I did that outside of eBay's return system).

So, yeah, another (50 + 50 + 20 + 12 =) 132 movies for my stupid movie collection.  I'm sure there will be more in my future, but I think I've got enough for the moment.  Plus, I need to leave some collections for other people to buy me for various holidays which might involve presents for me!

Take care everyone!  Hope you all are doing well!

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Getting stupid at wholesale and warehouse prices

So as sometimes happens, when you awaken the collecting beast there is going to be carnage.   I had innocently enough went to the Ollie's in Sidney and picked up a couple of sets.  I told you about that.

What I have to tell you about is what has occurred in the past month.  I had no more than written my last blog post about picking up those two sets when I had a little bit of spare time at work and innocently enough went on eBay.  The next thing I knew, I had 4 more sets (Combat Classics, Timeless Family Classics, Cowboy Legends and the Legend of Rin Tin Tin) coming too my house.  The sad thing was, I had just done my homework.  But I didn't have my homework with me at work, so I was trying to go off of my memory.  Well, that worked out about half was well as it should have.


The Combat Classics had about 50% overlap (ie, I got 25 new movies).  The Timeless Family Classics didn't fair so well.  Out of the 50 in that set, only 11 were going to be new.  Luckily I got that set for a sweet $3.09 with shipping.  The Cowboy Legends had very little overlap (somehow, I've lost my original list which contained which ones I had and which ones I didn't).  And the Rin Tin Tin set which contains 4 movie serials which each contained 12 little fifteen minute episode I picked up since I could save 20% my ordering it with the Cowboy Legends.

And it should have ended there.  But of course, it didn't.  Since I did a bad job on the Timeless Family Classics, I started wondering about what other sets were out there and what their overlap would be.  Some I knew about sets I hadn't done my homework on and also discovered some other sets I hadn't know about at all.  But the wheels kept turning and I kept doing homework.  I finally found out that there were about 3 or 4 sets that I could get which have very little (< 10 movies) overlap.  And eBay was on the mind, so I started looking around again.  I ended up finding Gunslinger Classics for a decent price.  I was set to click on the Buy It Now when I noticed there was a 'or Best Offer' button.  Figuring I had nothing to lose, I offered the seller $2.50 + $3.00 shipping... and 2 hours later they had accepted it.  Woo hoo!

And it should have ended there... but NOOOOO.   I found out that Half Price Books was going to be having their warehouse clearance sale.  Nothing over $2.  So today I took off work and me and the Mrs went there.  And I found a few more things.   I picked up three 12 movie packs (Gorehouse Greats, Under Fire (action/war movies), and Kickin' It Shaolin Style) and a couple other things (Victory At Sea which is a WWII documentary and NASA - 50 Years of Space Exploration).  I also picked up a book on Hollywood Musicals.

So, I've updated my Stupid Movie list.... again.

I'll admit, there are still a couple of sets that are on my radar.  I may or may not have searches on eBay that I am currently following.  But it really is ridiculous.  The latest calculations show that I would have to watch one movie and one TV show EVERY DAY for FIVE YEARS in order to watch everything that I have.  Now, there is a little bit of overlap in there, but I've done quite well so far in avoiding overlap, so maybe it'll only take FOUR AND A HALF years. RIDICULOUS!

I am a very silly, stupid man.  And I love my stupid movie collection (but not as much as my wife who puts up with my silliness).

Talk to you later!
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WWWW Sailing in a sea of stupidity WWWW

Hello nobody! It's been a while. Things have changed a bunch. About a year ago I moved to Cincinnati (more correctly Hamilton) Ohio. I have a new job, obviously. The world is as crazy as ever, which means my madness with stupid movies has not slowed down at all. I mean, why would it. It's the collector in me that just keeps going.

I actually posted a silent update a year and a half ago (Dec 2015). I added The Swingin' Seventies 50 pack and the Cowboys and Bandits pack to my collection.

The most recent batch came in April 2017. I subscribe to the Mill Creek YouTube channel and saw that they had started releasing some new 50 packs with cool titles like 'Mad Scientist Theater' and 'Killer Creature Features'. About that time as well, Coke was ending their My Coke Rewards points system which we had a few hundred points entered in already and needed to spend. With the points I knew I could get a $10 gift card and, at the same time, knew that Walmart sold many of the Mill Creek sets at a good price. So, I did my homework. Unfortunately, I own so many sets now that there was too much overlap (meaning only about 10 movies per 50 pack could have been new) so I didn't end up getting either of those (or any of the other 3 new 50 packs). But of course, they were also recommending some of the 20 movie packs. I took notice of a Musicals set among those. I did my homework and there was NO overlap with any of the sets I already had. Plus, it looked like it actually had some decent movies in it. I ordered for the swell price of $12.18. After it arrived, I did a little more homework. All of the movies were from Columbia Pictures and several of them were even nominated for Oscars. One of them even had 6 nominations including Best Actor in a Lead Role! Looking at the IMDB scores, most of them were in the mid 6's (out of 10) which is actually pretty good. I think the worst films in the collection had a 5.1, 5.7 AND 5.8 rating. Not bad.

Of course, whilst looking for a suitable boxset to purchase from Walmart, I did some much needed homework on the new and existing sets I didn't have from Mill Creek. The new collections on my radar are Iron Fist Frenzy, B-Movie Blast, and John Wayne and the Western Trios collection (in that order). The Iron Fist Frenzy collections contains all new stuff. The other two have a little over 30 new movies. Combat Classics, Cowboy Legends and Hollywood Comedy Legends are on the list after those three since they would have around 25 new titles each (so about 40% new stuff).

Once I started doing homework, the collector was awakened again. About a week after getting the musicals collection, I had to got back to Anna for some family stuff. In Sidney there is an Ollie's. I was a bit early to get into town (and I knew that they frequently have Mill Creek sets), so I stopped in. So glad I did. I picked up two more sets. The first is called Classic Sci-Fi TV which has 150 episodes of some sci-fi TV shows that cames out in the 50s and 60s. Good stuff. Very little overlap with the other TV pack and other Sci Fi packs I already had. I had seen it a few times at various Half Price Books stores but they always had it for 19.99. Too much for my blood. I picked it up at Ollie's for $5.99. Nice!

The other one is an odd ball. It was in the typical 50 movie pack, but once I picked it up I could tell it was different. It was simply called 'The Best Of Spaghetti Westerns' and was from a company called Timeless Media Group (I think they may be in cahoots with the Shout! Factory group). I already have the Mill Creek 44 Spaghetti Westerns collection, so I didn't hold out much hope for it. I turned it over and saw the price... $2.16. I didn't need to think any more. Even if it only had 3 new movies, it was still worth the price to me. Upon further inspection when I got it home, I determined it was a 10 disc / 20 movie set, there was only 1 or 2 movies I already had and the ones in the collection were usually ranked in the 6's which is pretty good. I put one of the discs in while writing up this post, and the quality on the two movies on that disc were impressive. Very bright colors, and widescreen with no cropping from what I could tell. I'm excited about this one!

So, another 40 movies and 150 TV episodes are getting added to the collection. Insane. I am really insane. But I'm sure the madness will continue on.   To see a full list of the stupid movies I have, go to my Stupid Movies post that I continue to update.

Hope all is well with everyone. Feel free to drop me a note or leave a comment.


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