A stupid story about a dog (sort of)

Here is the synopsis of a short story:

October 30th 2023, sitting on couch

Scrolling through eBay searches

See 8 movie DVD set featuring Rin-Tin-Tin.  Stupid low price.

Did very quick check on stupid movie blog

Did not find any matches against sets I had in blog (which is only about 30% of collection but did include the big western pack.

It was $3 including shipping and tax

I purchase

Nov 1st - Package mailed from Austin TX and also goes through Dallas TX

Nov 2nd - Package arrives in Cincinnati OH.   Almost home, but Package decides he needs a vacation.  Departs Cincinnati.

Nov 3rd - Packge arrives in Pontiac MI.  Package decides he wants to visit the Motor City.

Nov 4th - Package arrives in Detroit MI.  After a 3 hr stay, Package makes an about face and departs Detroit.

Nov 4th - Package arrives in Cincinnati OH.  Almost home, but Package decides he didn't get a good vacation. 

Nov 5th - Pacakge is seen getting processed in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Package does not make eye contact and continues on his way.

Nov 7th - Word on the street is Package is 'In Transit to Next Facility' but with no details as to where he might be heading.

Nov 8th - Package arrives in Cincinnati and takes a break.  Almost home

Nov 9th - Package leaves Cincinnati and arrives at home.   

I take DVD set downstairs and check against my full list.

It turns out that all of the movies except one (The Return of Rin Tin Tin) are on the Family Fun 50 Movie Pack.  

Oops.  Oh well.  I have one more movie and my Rin Tin Tin movies will be in one place.

Smokey and stupid

Super short update, My wife got me Smoke and the Bandit - The 7-Movie Outlaw Collection to add to my stupid movie collection.   This has the 2 Smokey films most people know about, a Part 3 which barely has Burt Reynolds in it and actually has Sheriff Buford T. Justice racing against the clock, followed by 4 made-for-TV movies from 1994 featuring Brian Bloom as Bandit.

In other news, the hernia surgery went fine.  I was really sore for 5 days but then quickly recovered (in my opinion).  It cost a small fortune per the bill and with my high deductible health plan, I had to pay out the nose.  But it is what it is.  Put it on the plastic and pay that you can pay it off later I suppose.

A quick (stupid) update

Here's the scoop....  

I got all of the movies I ordered, sort of.  The one 'casualty' was that the 10 Movie Mega Pack Vol. 2 showed up missing a disc.  I contacted the seller explaining that my last 3 (technically 4) orders had all arrived missing discs.  They politely and apologetically said they would refund my money for that set and that I could either keep or discard it. So I'm fairly certain that I will not be buying from them again but at least I got to keep the set (or what I had of it).

Later on in the week, I went to Big Lots in West Chester to check for some movies.  The only thing I really found was an 8 movie action set but it was not on clearance and was $10.  I was certain that I would find it a little bit cheaper.   More on that in a second.  

I tried to show some more restraint by placing some sets that I had tripped over recently on my Amazon Wish List.  However, whilst doing that, I realized that there were a couple set which were overpriced on Amazon, even on the used copied.  So somehow that justified me ordering (and receiving) Ultimate Action Collection - 8 Films which contains a bunch of Cannon Group films (half of which feature Chuck Norris!) and Girls, Guns and G-strings - The Andy Sadaris Collection. 

A few days ago, I went to Walmart and purchased an Elvis Presley 4 Film collection while I was there for another reason.  I also showed some restraint here since I had found a few more collections but I put them back since they were nothing that I was overly excited about.

I think the collection thrill is wearing off again which is good for my wallet.   I really need to attempt to carve out some time to start watching all of this stupid stuff.   I haven't worked out in a while.  Maybe I can watch movies / episodes while doing that.   I guess that could work.  I just haven't been motivated to do much of anything other than the movie collecting and even that is wearing off.

In other news, I get to have surgery to fix an umbilical hernia next week.   What fun!   The hernia isn't bothering me what-so-ever, however the reality is that it is just going to keep getting bigger and could cause some issues down the line.  Not exactly sure how I'm paying for that.   My daughter had her wisdom teeth taken out last month and I'm not sure how I'm paying for that either since our dental plan paid a whopping $50 (yes, fifty) on a $2700 bill.  Money is dumb and a pain in the arse.  We have way too much debt and it's starting to weird me out a bit.   Sure, I could pull money from my IRA account and 'solve' all of this.  I kinda did that to a lesser degree last year to pay off a personal loan we had, but since then we've acquired more debt and now have all these medical bills.  I'd like to at least have something other than my Soc Sec when I retire, esp since I foresee me having to support more than just me and the wife.  Life is fun!

I hope all is well with you, whomever is reading this (though I doubt that is anyone except for me.)

Take care!

 

I could stop, but (stupidly) it seems I cannot

 Here is the latest in my serious stupid sickness

A quick update on the last post.... a seller had offered me Disorderly Conduct for $3.50 including shipping.   That deal fell through.  The arrival date came and went and all the user had done up to that point was print the label.  I reached out but did not hear anything from them, so I opened up a 'My item didn't arrive' ticket with eBay.  The seller finally replied and said that they couldn't find it but that they would ship it.  But of course the eBay wheels were already in motion, so after a couple of days, they saw that the seller had still not shipped the item and offered me a refund.

Even though I knew I needed to stop buying movies (especially after that crazy Aug 26th run), I had felt the itch to go check the local Big Lots and Goodwill stores for some good deals on movie pack multi-packs. I resisted for a week, but the itch got the best of me the other day.  I was coming back from lunch with my co-worker and decided that 'since it was on the way home', I would stop at the Fairfield Big Lots and Fairfield Goodwill since they were right next to each other.

I first went to Big Lots first.   Not much there interested me, but I did find a collection called '8-Movie All Action Collection' which was from the Shout Factory which was only $4.00.   Coming from Shout! I knew that the quality was going to be good so that was the easy pick.  I then poked around the rest of the shelves but wasn't finding anything of interest.  I was about to leave when I decided to take a peak on the one side which had CDs one it and noticed that at the bottom there were a few other DVDs.   And there is was, with a $1.50 clearance sticker... Canine Capers, a four movie pack with a dog theme.  I.... could not.... resist.

I then went next door to Goodwill and their DVD (and CD) selection was pretty sad.  I think gone are the days of the massive DVD collections at the Goodwill.  Not sure if they are selling them off to somewhere else or what, but there isn't as much as there used to be.  CDs I can understand, but DVDs are still a strong seller out there.   I did manage to find one collection, Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 1 which was one I had been looking to get since I got the Midnight Horror Collection Vol. 2 at Half Price the other day.

A few days later, I was doing what I should not have been (looking through eBay) and in my 'Of interest to you' section was the Benji 4 Movie collection.  I had seen this before and Benji was dog of the minute back in 1978 so it holds a place in my heart.  And wouldn't you know it, it came from a seller who was doing a 'buy 2 get one free' promotion.  You see where this is going.   So I looked around their site and found a couple others to add to the collection, 'Law & Disorder' which is a collection from Maverick which is a company I have been buying from recently, as well as a Classic War 4 movie collection from Universal.   Those arrived with no issue.

But the itch persisted....

There was another set from Maverick called 'Secrets & Lies' which was the latest item on my list.  So the other day I found someone who was selling it and I picked it up for $6.50.  Not a great deal, but not terrible.  And it arrived as expected (actually a few days earlier than expected).

But still.... the itch... 

Since the Disorderly Conduct offer fell through, I was looking around.  There was one place which had a cheap copy ... but it was from the place that I had had issues with before, SecondSale.  They had shorted me a disc on my Western Trios set and then totally botched half of the sets when I did the double buy 2 get 1 order.

So when I saw that they had Disorderly Conduct at price cheaper than anyone else... and it was part of the dreaded buy 2 get one sale, I knew i was in trouble.  I looked around and found another Maverick set which was on my radar called 'Disturbing the Peace' which was also part of the same sale.

I had put those two things in my cart a few times but was having a hard time finding another item that was part of the B2G1 promo.  

I was trying to be good.  I really was... until this morning.   I reached my goal on my passive income app, so I will be getting $20 in the next couple of days.  Money to burn I guess.   I be lying if I said I had not been doing a little more homework the night before.  I had found some sets that might work to be the third, however I knew I needed to spend time doing extra homework because of the issues I had had before with that seller.  I needed to make sure that the collections I picked each came in one case.   That was the issue last time.  I had three sets that were all multi-case sets and I got shorted on all of them.   They sent only one of the two cases for each of those sets.  They just do too much volume to actually look to see if all the movies are there.  So I got up this morning and did my extra homework.  I was looking at few different action movie sets (something I have been buying alot of recently) but eventually landed on a set called '10 Movie Mega Pack Vol. 2' since it looked like it had some non-action stuff that probably leaned more towards comedies from the 2010s.  So that order cost me $11 I think.

So I still had $9 right, and there were still a few more Maverick set which I had been wanting, Feel the Heat and Misbehavior.   So I poked around an found a few copies.   Thankfully (?) I found a couple which had a 'Best Offer' option, so I submitted some offers, both which were pretty low to be honest, but it doesn't hurt to ask and the seller can still give a counter offer if they think that price is too low.   As I was writing this, I got a counter offer on feel the heat and I accepted, so I'll be getting that one for $6.75 (I was aiming for $6).  I guess we'll see what happens with the other offer.  I offered $7.50 on a $11 copy of Misbehavior.  Hoping to pick this up for less than $10 if I can.It would be fantastic if they just accepted, 'cause who else is going to want that set other than some collector guy with impulse buying and completist and 'quantity over quality' issues.  (Edit: They declined the $7.50 offer, so I submitted a $9 offer which they accepted.  It was free shipping so all in with tax it was $9.75.)

The 4 Movie Marathon sets seem to be pretty decent, so I had also been doing some additional research on those.  The only ones which really caught my eye were the westerns.  I have a few of the movie marathons sets;  one western, the newly purchased classic war, and (quite by accident) a holiday collection which I got for the wife several years back to get 'Christmas in Connecticut'.   I put some of the western collections on my Amazon list since my birthday is coming up. 

A crazy (stupid) day... and some other stuff

 

Here is a couch.   More on that later.

One would think that after my last post, that I would be done collecting stupid movies.   But, no.  Here I am with another post probably only a few days after the last.

It was August 26th, 2023 and I was kinda waking up on a Saturday morning.  There was a 10 movie pack that was on my mind ... High Octane.  It had some action movies and a decent cover with some cars on it so it intrigued me.  I had seen it before and I knew it didn't cost that much, so I went on eBay to take a look.  Whilst looking for a good price on High Octane, I tripped over another 10 action movie pack from the same maker (Maverick) called Full Throttle, which also had cars (and girls) on the cover.  I was still feeling guilty about all the other movies I had just purchased, but I said what the heck and purchased them both for about $6.50 each.  

Later on it was about lunch time and the Mrs was looking to go out to lunch.   I had mentioned going to Half Price Books the other day and I had also wanted to go the other day but we hadn't gone even though we we right next door.   So when she came into the living room I said 'Let's go.  I want to go and you want to go, so let's just go.  We can get lunch at Firehouse Subs next doors.   So that's what we did.   After eating lunch at Firehouse (iirc I had a brisket and cheddar sub with jalapenos and it was good), we walked next door.   I immediately took a right and went straight to where the clearance DVDs were.  Immediately I spied a 4 movie pack with some older Universal westerns for two dollars.  Mine.   I crept my way through the rest of the rack and had four different movie sets, all at two dollars each.  I then went back to the beginning to see if had missing any and sure enough there were three multi-packs right around the area where that first westerns pack was.  All of them at two bucks and all of them looking interesting.  I then went over to the LP clearance section (which is also on the floor) and worked my way through those.  I found a pretty nice copy of a K-tel record that we had when I was growing up called 'Dynamic Sound' which was also two dollars, so I picked that up as well.

So that was 9 multi-packs I had purchased in one day.  And you would think that would have been enough, but then it was in the evening and we were watching YouTube videos as usually and I had finished playing all the games on my mobile phone and started perusing eBay again.   I was curious what other sets Maverick had out there and found out that there were quite a few.  I took a mental note of several, but the tripped across another one with cars and babes on the cover called Pure Adrenaline... and I purchased that as well.   So that was 10 movie packs purchased in one day which is ridiculous.

The next day I put together and eBay search for the Maverick sets which looked interesting to me.  Obviously, I had to look at many listings to see what the cover looked like, what movies were on them, etc.   And of course eBay tracks this stuff and certain eBay sellers pay to see who looks at their listing.  With this information, sometimes seller will reach message people and offer them a better price on an item they were looking at.   And of course, 4 days later one of the sellers sent me an offer on a set called Disorderly Conduct with a price of $3.50 with shipping included.  I didn't think very long before I clicked the Accept Offer button.

That brings us up to date with my most recent movie purchase.   

In other news, we bought a new couch yesterday.   It should be getting delivered today.   We bought our current couch not long after we moved to Hamilton.  It was a fairly inexpensive couch (and love seat).   Over time the springs in it started getting a bit weak.  About a month ago, I was sitting down and there was a terrible sound of metal breaking.  My big butt had broken one of the springs.  So for the past month I've been sitting even lower and kinda to one side and it would make a horrible creaking sound when I would sit down and I was worried that one day they were all just gonna break.   Money is quite tight at the moment and on top of that we are trying to save (poorly) for a 7 day sprint break to Florida in 2024, so I was trying to make it work.  But I had been keeping my eye on a couple of sofas that were on the Big Lots site.  After dinner on Friday at the Twin Dragon Chinese Buffet, we went to Big Lots right next door.   They had a fairly large furniture section right as you walked in and of course the Mrs and I started talking about the couch.  I looked and eventually found the one which was 'in our budget'.  It is from Ashley's budget label.  It looked good so we sat down and it was nice.  We didn't nearly go straight to the floor like our current one does.  And we pondered and talked for quite a while.   Eventually I decided that it would be worth it to get just the sofa with the plans that if Maryann's craft shows do well that we would purchase the matching love seat.  The next morning I signed up as a 'new' Big Lots member to get a 15% off discount.   'Same Day' Delivery was $99 (which is funny because even though I ordered it at 7am on Saturday morning, it pretty much was telling me that it would be delivered on Sunday.  So much for same day.)  All in it was $465.   I figure if it lasts us six to seven years like the last one, then it will be worth it.  Maryann pointed out a little bit later that it was Labor Day weekend which is a common time for stores to run furniture and mattress sales.  Funnily enough, Big Lots was having a sale on Broyhill furniture and ALL reclining loveseats and sofas.  Sadly, even with the sale, all of those options were (I my opinion) out of our budget.  I was trying to keep the sofa under $400.  With the 15% off it came out to $339.  It's gray like our old couch so the current loveseat (whose springs are still functioning like they should) should look okay next to it.

Edit: The couch arrived with no issue.  It is a well built couch, though it is certainly a bit firmer than our previous couch  which would practically swallow you due to beaten down cushions and weakened springs.  It is going to take a little getting used to.

I've babbled on long enough.   Here's a some pics of the purchased goods.

I lost my stupid mind...

I'll try to keep this short, but you know me, it probably won't be... but I'll do my best.

It all started when I was going back through my stupid movie posts and trying to figure out when I purchased certain sets.   At some point I got to me purchasing the John Wayne Tribute collection.   In that post I mentioned that this set made up something like 85% of the John Wayne and the Western Trios 50 pack and that this set had three movies that the Tribute set did not.   ... And that bugged me and my little completeist brain.   So, I went a seaching and found that I could probably get this set for $6 bucks.  Now if I was sticking to my 'no more than $1 per movie', this would have failed, but I was all 'But I really want those three'... so I bought it.

It arrived from the place that I bought it from... and it was missing one of the discs, but like I said I had everything in this set with the exception of three movies and I had that disc so I sent an email and it went unanswered but I figured that I didn't want to deal with the return process so I said 'Whatever.'

And as I do when I get a new set, I create a checklist for the movie pack and do all my research.  One of the movies was 'The Hurricane Express', however it was then I realized that this was actually a movie version of a serial of the same name.  And of course I wondered 'is that out there to purchase'.  And sure enough, it was (with another serial I had and another I didn't) and interestingly from the same company I had just bought from.  And this is where I went a bit sideways and mental.

I noticed that on the listing for 'John Wayne - The Early Years' that the seller had a 'Buy 2, Get 1 Free' promotion.  So my dumb brain was all 'I could make this technically cost less if I bought two more things'.   The Early Years was going to be $5.   So I started looking through all their listings.  I found a couple of things, but they were both $3.50 (10 Adventure Movies and 8 Alaska Adventures).   So somehow in my head I decided that I wanted those two other sets, but that I didn't want to pay $5 for one, $3.50 for another only to get a $3.50 item for free.   So then I found another item which was a little over $4 (Fantasy 6 Movie collection).  So now I had three that were around the same price, but I still wanted the John Wayne set which was $5.   So I found a couple more sets more in the $5.50 range (15 Action Movies and 20 Movie Western Pack), and with that I could get the John Wayne Early Years set for free.  So now I was out $8 for the $3.50 trio and $12 for the $5 trio.   I watched carefully over the next day and saw that they were shipped.

Somehow my brain started wondering what other serials were out there and since I do homework well, I found quite a few.   I also realized that I had some in other sets that I had (like the 150 Sci Fi TV Episodes page).   After combing eBay for what was out there, I finally tripped over a TreeLine pack called Classic Serials that I had no idea existed.  It contained quite a few of the ones that I knew were in circulation with the exception of Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe.   It also contained the three John Wayne serials I had just put in an order for, which was a bit infuriating.  But whatever, I purchased it for $7.25.

At the same time, I knew that the Half Price Books Warehouse sale was going to be that weekend.  So I took off work on Friday (Aug 11th 2023) and I dragged Maryann with me.  My main goal was to find more movie packs which I figured wouldn't be a problem and I was hoping to find the Flash Gordon serial though there was no guarantee at all for that.  So we got there and I went straight to where the DVDs were.  They were all priced at $2 or less.  And I started my scouring of all the DVDs.   And amazingly enough, within the first two rows (out of like 30ish), I actually found a good copy of Flash Gordon.  I should have just stopped there but of course I wanted to see what else there was, so I kept combing the thousands of DVD that were there.   I'll make this part short and say I also picked up the following: 8 Movie Action Pack, 14 movies based on the books of Mary Higgins Clark (still sealed), 16 movie Western Value Collection (which looked like it had a fair number of movies as the 20 movie collection I had purchased earlier on eBay, but I took a gamble, Denzel Washington Vol. 2 5 Movie Collection, and The Great Commandments 20 Features (still sealed).  Other non-movie pack DVDs I got were: G3 Live in Concert (Joe Satriani, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai), the original Star Wars trilogy on Blu-Ray, Thor Ragnarock on Blu-Ray, Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, and Volume 1 of Animaniacs (which I though I had... and maybe I did, but I probably got rid of it, but not I have it again).  I also perused the LPs which were 50 cents each and got the following: A batter copy of the Woodstock 3-LP soundtrack to replace the one which got destroyed when my sister's basement flooded, Weather Report - Sweetnighter (Ben Folds had mentioned them in a song once), the original Blood, Sweat & Tears album, a Christmas album called 'The Little Drummer Boy' on Diplomat label which Maryann had pointed out that her family had way back when, Elvis - Pure Gold, K-tel's Music Magic, and three albums from Stan Kenton (a big band leader... and two were still sealed).  I spent a total of $30 bucks there.

On the way home I got a delivery noticed that all of my eBay purchases had arrived.   I got home and immediately took my bounty downstairs.   I opened up the small bag which was the Serials box set.   It was in decent condition except that some yahoo had torn the side of the box because they didn't realize that you opened the top which was velcro'd on.   I checked and all discs were there.   I then opened up the big bag which contained the other two orders (ie, they realized the two orders were going to the same place and consolidated.   I noticed that I had cases for all six items.  It was also then I realized that something seemed off.  I looked at the 8 Alaska and realize that yes, I had a DVD for Alaska but it only contained 4 movies.  Obviously there was another disc that should have been there, but it wasn't.  The same thing happened to my 20 Westerns and 15 Action movies.   Long story short, I ended up having to return those three sets since they didn't ship everything...

...Which was just as well.  I was already felt extremely ashamed, regretful, annoyed, other bad feelings with my recent purchases.  I really had no need for all this crap, some of which I only remotely wanted in the first place.  Plus we have been trying to save for a big spring break vacation next year and this certainly wasn't helping.

So... anyhoo.   I stupidly bought more stupid movies.   And that is all I have to say about that.   They will eventually show up in the Stupid Movie Collection post as well as on the Darrin's Movie Collection blog.

Will I stop purchasing things?  Probably not.  That's not what collectors do.  However, I will try to be a little more choosy.  For reals this time, I have set all movie pack search results from ebay to NOT email me (I only have a couple music searches that I still have sent to me).  So, if I happen to be a Half Price maybe I'll look in the clearance section, and maybe I'll look at the Dollar Tree since occasionally the ones around us have DVDs though they are usually never the movie multi-packs.

And one more for the stupid road....

Well, I've gone and added one more thing to the collection, even after I said (for the third of fourth time) that I was done.   Anyhoo, I've added America: Stories Of War.   It's an older set which comes in a tin 'collector' box which looks like an ammunition case.   As of late, all of the movie box sets have really gone up in price.  For example all currently copies of the the Mystery 250 Movie pack on eBay (the one that I picked up for something like 30 bucks earlier this year) now have an asking price of 80 to 100 dollars.   Total madness.   So when I saw several copies of the Stories Of War set still going for 3 bucks (though I was also seeing listings for 10 to 20 dollars), I figured it was now or never.  So I found a new copy which was for 3 bucks plus 5 bucks shipping.   It had had a Best Offer option so, being the cheap skate I am, I offered them $1.45.   The countered with $1.99 and I took that as a win and got it for a total of $7.50 after shipping was added.  When it arrived, it came with a couple of extra nicks and bumps in the tin case, but since there are already fake nicks and bumps on the case, they don't really look that bad and just blend right in.  And yes, the set was new as described.  The 36 discs and the booklet were still shrink-wrapped.

While putting together the checkoff list for the Stories Of War set, I realized that it contained the Victory At Sea documentary series which I already owned.  I picked up Victory At Sea at the 2017 Half Price Book Warehouse sale along with a few other movies sets.  However, for whatever reason, I didn't include Victory At Sea or the 5-disc NASA - 50 Years Of Space Exploration sets on the stupid movie list.  Since the Stories Of War contains Victory At Sea and since I have to mark those episodes such that it notes that I have them already, I decided to (and kinda had to) include the Victory At Sea and the NASA sets as part of the Stupid Movie Collection.

Also of note, there is also a 24 disc version which has the same name but has the the 12 discs of war themed movies removed.

A quest of stupidity

I'm going to keep this one short.   Later on in the day when I wrote my last blog entry (April 17th, 2023), I purchased yet another movie pack for the Stupid Movie Collection called Space Quest.  As you can guess, it contains science fiction movies.  I picked it up for around $8.50.  There were 5 movies  out of the 20 in the collection that I didn't have yet.  My (general) goal is to not spend more than one dollar per movie that I don't have.  I technically spent $3.50 on this collection, so it falls into that guideline, but then I had to add shipping.  Since it was originally $7 before I put in my best offer, I'm going to count it as a win.   

I have stopped having eBay search results from emailing me on quite a few of the searches I had in place. We'll count that as a partial win since I didn't get rid of all of them.  I secretly keep hoping that someone will put up the 200 Drive-In Cult Cinema Collection for a stupid price.  There are (I think) 10 movies out of the 200 that I don't have yet.  Make the madness stop!!!

And so it continues...

I mentioned either in my last post (or in the main Stupid Movies Collection blog post) that I was going to start creating blog entries for each of the movie sets I have.  Well, I've gone and created a whole new blog specifically for this.   

I present "Darrin's Movie Collection".   

As explained previously, each movie pack will get a blog entry and the blog entry will consist of the checklist that I typically make for each movie pack.  This checklist contains the name of the movie, the year it was made, it's IMDB rating, three or four of the main actors in the movie, the running time for the movie and if it's in B&W or Color.  I've added some additional information such as what the packaging is like (including photos), how many of them were unique to my movie collection when I purchased it, the total movie count and run time for the entire movie pack, total movie count and run time for only the movies that are unique, when and where I purchased it and how much I paid for the movie pack.   All the good things that an obsessive collector does.

I started with my newest acquisitions since those were the first to be in the latest checklist format, however I am now starting back at the beginning and redoing the checkoff lists for the older ones.  I even managed to track down old emails and receipts for when I purchased each collection.  Starting at the beginning also gives me a chance to correctly reassess which movies were unique to the collection when I bought them.  This in turn allows me get a better estimate on the number of unique movies I have and the total running time and how long it would take me to watch them all if I watched non-stop or if I watched one a day.  Silly things that I like to keep track of.   The last pass will be to mark the online versions of the check lists with the movies I have actually watched.  

The Movie Collection blog currently has the five most recent and the first two movie collections (well, technically the third and fourth but I don't want to get into that).

Now, if you don't mind, I have some madness to get back to.  Only 66 more movie packs to go!

Apologies for my stupidity... and more stupid movies... Early 2023 Update

First off... I need to apologize to my friends who have commented over the years (past decade?) and not heard diddly from me.  It wasn't until this evening that I noticed that anyone had even commented.  I thought that when someone commented on your blog that you would get some kind of notification.  That is incorrect and I'm sorry for being dumb.  I have turned on comment moderation so this will not be a problem going forward. Thank you to my friends Tom, Todd and Ian for the comments. It is nice to know that y'all are checking in. 

One major update is that the sister-in-law ended up having to sell her house and moved back in with us last year.  It is what it is I guess.  We are getting paid rent this time so that does help things.

On a sad note, we had to say goodbye to one of our cats on Saturday March 4th.  Abby was around 12 or 13 years old.  We adopted her in 2014.  A that time, the place we adopted her from thought she was probably born in 2010 or 2011.  She had been having some issues lately, so we had to make the tough decision before things got really bad and she was in a state of constant suffering.  We'll miss her and so will the other 3 cats, especially Taylor.

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In the stupid movie department, I have another six collections.   Here is the long drawn out story on those.  Another apology for the verboseness, but it's a story and I haven't talked to you all in a while so get over it.  😜🤣

It all started on a sleepless night on February 20th 2023.  It was 1:30am.  I had run out of games to play on my phone, so I went through my email where there were some eBay search results from the previous day.  One of the searches was for a the 250 movie packs that were becoming more rare to come by.   It was also a form factor from Mill Creek that I didn't have yet and even though I probably had a good number of the movies, I still wanted to have one like that.  A bucket-list item if you will.  I didn't even care what the category was.  There was a Mystery one, a Horror one, a Western one and a Family one.  If I had my choice of them, I would have wanted to have the horror one.  However, that one was both the hardest one to find and also the most expensive.  Horror movie fans are crazy like that.  They love their weird and hard to find movies.

There was one that I had my eye on for a while, a Mystery 250 movie pack.  It wasn't the greatest price ($34.95 including shipping), but was still ok if I had to buy it.   However on this night, when I checked the search results.... it was gone.   Checking the Completed eBay listings showed that it had been purchased 4 days ago.   At that moment I went into 'fear of missing out' mode.  Most of the other similar 250 packs were going for $40 or more which I thought was too expensive.  But there was one which looked to be in decent condition with a price of $39.99 with free shipping.  Of note, however, was that it was the only one with the Make An Offer button.  I figured I might as well go for broken and send a low-ball offer of $29.  If they accepted, yay me!  If not, I could still try to make another offer of $35.  

I then moved my thoughts to some 200 movie collections that I also been running a search on.   I had cross referenced these sets (Tales Of Terror, Cult Movie Collection, The Trail West) a while ago but hadn't done it recently so I had no real idea what the overlap was going to be.  .  Of the ones that were available, there was one for the Western pack which was an old-fashioned auction with the starting $23.40 w $3.65 shipping.  There were no bids.  The auction was going to be over at 1pm the next day.   Not wanting to possibly have the seller bump up the price, I decided to not make a bid then but instead to try to snipe it the next day.  I finally fell asleep after doing some more eBay searches but not really finding much else that interested me.

I woke up the next morning and checked my email.... and at 2:15am the seller had accepted my offer.   I guess someone else was having a sleepless night and thought the offer was good enough.  So yay for me.   Knowing I had purchased the Mystery Collection 250 movie, I felt good with the buyer's high.

I then went about my work day.  At lunch time I met up with a co-worker.  Towards the end of the meal, I told him about the 250 pack I had just purchased.   I then remembered about the Western 200 movie pack auction.  It was already like 1:45pm and I thought it had ended at 1pm but I checked anyways.  To my surprise there was 15 minutes left.  So I waited and waited until there was about 2 minutes left and put in my bid.  I anxiously watched the time count down to zero and, Hooray!, I was the winning bidder.  Later on that day, I redid my cross-reference homework on this set and found that there were only 10 that I did not have.  While I could have gotten those movies on two other smaller packs (Ten Thousand Ways To Die 12 movie pack and Ten Thousand More Ways To Die 12 movie pack), getting those two sets would have set me back about $10 each and I wouldn't have gotten the cool 200 movie box, so I am not too disappointed.  The front cover it pretty cool in that it is like a layer shadowbox kinda thing where they are different layers put together to make it seem 3Dish.

A couple of days later, I was checking in on my purchases to see if they had tracking numbers yet and if they had shipped.  While doing that, eBay recommended an item that looked interesting.   It was called Fists Of Vengeance and contained 16 movies.  I did some cross referencing with the movies I already had and found that there were 5 movies that I didn't have yet.  Seeing how it was $3.75 including shipping, I clicked Buy It Now.  Mine!

The next day, the wife and I were watching TV.  The set I had purchased recently were all from Mill Creek.   My brain then started wondering if the company that made my Fists Of Fire and Legends Of Kung Fu had any more sets.  I searched for a little while but was really only finding those two... until I tripped across the King-Fu Crusade 10 movie pack.  I went downstairs and cross referenced everything (including the new Fists Of Vengeance that I bought the previous day) and to my surprise I had none of these movies.  The price tag was $13 w free shipping, and while it was above my dollar per movie 'limit', I decided that since everything in that set was new that I would buy it.  I then went back upstairs to watch some more TV and continue surfing eBay.

I found a couple more sets from Brentwood, Tough Guys Of Kung Fu 10 movie pack and Return Of The Warriors 20 movie pack.  They were both around $11.  It was late and I didn't feel like running back downstairs so I decided I would do my cross referencing the next day.  However it wasn't the next day.  I was still on a buzz, so I couldn't sleep, so as I lied there sleepless I did a little bit of research and found that all of the movies from Tough Guys was on Return Of The Warriors.  I also found a couple more older Mill Creek 20 kung fu movies sets (Martial Arts and Kung Fu) and got the movie lists for those as well.   Then I finally fell asleep.

The next morning I got up and did my cross referencing.  As expected, I already had the movies in the Mill Creek 20 movie packs on other Mill Creek martial arts movie packs I already had, so I didn't need to worry about those anymore.   When I checked the Warriors 20 movie pack, I found that I didn't have half of the movies.   Since it was only a little more than my one dollar a movie threshold, I decided to buy it.  I was a little surprise when it came in.  Instead of it being hard clamshell like my other 10 kung fu movie packs, it was in a paper one about the same size with a fold out where you could read about the movies in the collection.  Inside was a smaller 10 DVD 'wallet'-sized clamshell.

All of my purchases quickly had tracking numbers and they all started showing as being received for shipment by USPS.... except for the Mystery 250 movie pack.  It just sat there in 'shipping label printed, USPS waiting to receive the item'.  After about 5 days, I started getting nervous.  As has happened to me before, I was growing concerned that the seller was not going to be able to find the item and have to issue a refund.   But I tried by best to keep my cool and not start emailing the seller 'cause I could 'spook' them and they would immediately refund when they simply just hadn't found it yet.  I started to panic a little bit and started looking for a replacement, but of course, it was the same 250 movie packs that had been there for the past week with the cheapest one being for $39.99 with shipping and none of them with a Make An Offer button.

As Monday rolled back around, 7 days after purchasing the 250 movie set, I was starting to lose hope.   I had told USPS to text me when there was a change in the status (and had also been frequently checking the eBay site) but there was no change: SHIPPING LBL CREATED USPS AWAITS ITEM.  The wife and I sat down that evening to watch our daily YouTube videos and TV shows and whatnot.  Around 8:30pm, my phone buzzed.  I checked... and it was USPS... 'USPS picked up item, San Diego, CA'.   It was on its way!  Thank you Jesus!  The next day it made it to the Los Angeles Distribution Center.  The next 5 days involved me constantly checking for the updates.  After that, I knew I probably wouldn't get any updates until it got into Cincinnati, and I was right.  It got scanned at the Cincinnati Distribution Center around 2am on March 3rd, and was delivered to me on Saturday March 4th.  The box was bigger than I though it would be.  The shipping box was a bit roughed up with a whole punched into one side, but thankfully it was in the empty area of the box and my precious 250 Movie Mystery Collection was in my possession.

I had off and on looked throughout the week for other movie packs but only one other one struck my fancy and from eyeballing the list of movies, I knew I had most, if not all of them.  The buzz was wearing off and I was feeling a bit... stupid.  Just like my movie collection.  At this point, I'm not sure what else I would get.  Most of the other movie packs that I know about I already have all but like 4 or 5 out of 50 of the movies, so unless I can get them for a steal, it's just silly.

I still need to cross reference the Mystery set and do the checklists for the Mystery and Trail West collection which involves looking things up on IMDB.  I'll update the main Stupid Movie Collection blog entry then and ......    

Oh... before I forget...  As I was showing my Stupid Movie Collection blog entry to my co-worker, I thought I noticed that one was missing.   I eventually checked and, yes, I forgot (and almost forgot again as I was typing this up) about a collection I had bought back in the flurry of activity in 2017.  The set I forgot to mention was Mill Creek's 'Song & Dance Classics Film Collection' 20 Movie pack.  I had purchased it at the Half Price Books in Montgomery for 3 bucks, which was good since it only had three movies which I didn't have yet.  Most of them were in the original Musical Classics 50 Movie Pack.

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If you're curious (or if you're not... too bad!), here is what a typical checkoff list looks like.  This is the most recent template I have been using.  The first movie on the disc start with the disc number.  This is followed by the IMDB rating, the movie name (and any common aliases), the year it was made, the top three actors in the movie, the running time and if it is in B&W or COLOR.  Many time the set will contain mostly movies of one type, so I usually put at the top of the checkoff list that a movie is in COLOR unless otherwise noted.  Sometimes when I am checking IMDB will list different running times, so occasionally I have to plunk the DVD in and check to see what the running time on the version I have.  Most times it is shorter but every now and then it is longer.  I print these checklists out and put them in with the DVDs for the set and check them off as I watch them from that set.  I still don't have a good system for getting the dupes checked off in the other set.  I think a few years back I went through all the sets I had then and did the dupe work then.  I haven't done that in a while.  I also haven't watched any of these movies in a while which is also why this whole thing is a bit ridiculous no matter how you look at it.

Anyhooooooo.....  This example is how the checklist for Return Of The Warriors starts out: 

Return Of The Warriors 20 movie collection - All movies in COLOR - Total Time: 1746 minutes

Movies (10) marked with a comma(,) were unique to my whole collection at time of writing (2/26/2023)

1___ (5.4) The Screaming Tiger (aka Wang Yu, King Of Boxers) (1972) Jimmy Wang Yu, Ching-Ching Chang, Fei Lung - 85m

___, (6.4) Sister Street Fighter (1974) Etsuko Shihomi, Shin'ichi (Sonny) Chiba, Asao Uchida - 85m

2___ (7.1) Street Fighter (1974) Shin'ichi (Sonny) Chiba, Etsuko Shiomi, Goichi Yamada - 90m

____ (6.4) Return Of The Street Fighter (1974) Shin'ichi (Sonny) Chiba, Masafumi Suzuki, Yôko Ichiji - 88m

etc etc etc

I have been toying around lately with the idea of creating a dedicated blog entry for each of the movie packs that I have.  In that blog entry I would repeat the story about getting and then include my checklists in the blog entry.   Then, if I was out shopping somewhere and found a movie set, I could do a search on my blog to see if a collection that I currently owned contained a certain movie.   Just a thought for future me I guess.  How else would I know if one my sets contained the sci-fi movie 'Laser Mission' starting Brandon Lee?  (The answer I would find out is that it is contained in both the Sci Fi Classics 50 Movie Pack and the Excellent Eighties 50 Movie Pack.)

If you made it this far.   Good for you.  I hope all is well with you.  Again, I apologize for not responding to your comments in the blog.   I honestly didn't see them.  :(   As always, Take care!

-----------------:darrin