I could not get the pics to laod fron page 95 of Marks Haul.
Might be my browser, but I do not know.
Anyone esle having trouble seeing those pics?

Strange but it did load the pics this time.

One word.

thanks a true haul, irrespective of any rarity, only an amount of items I'd dream of! Congrats Mark

RaisedFromTheDead wrote:I noticed Vial right away. Blows Pharaoh away in rarity, I think.

to the degree that most of us are familiar with The Black Vial, it's because of it having been listed in heroic worlds. I want one too, for that very reason. I was going to Gencon when that item was released, and never saw it. I was shopping at many great game stores around the country and never saw it. I doubt it is very good (though i could be wrong, and will be happy to hear a review from mark). having said that because my want list is at around 150 items that are getting increasingly hard to find, if one came up on ebay i'd pay up for it. but nowhere near what i was willing to pay to get my pharaoh. having been written by hickman, AND given that there aren't many left,  it is understandable why it commands a high price. black vial in that sense to me is closer to a home brewed item: possibly poorly done, limited distribution, no fanfare other than it's heroic worlds listing. we occasionally pay too much attention to mediocre work that some guy produced 50 copies of in his basement in 1979 and sold at 3 London (or L.A.) game stores. while it's fun to ferret out these (mostly) stale nuggets, they really don't constitute a meal. all of this having been said, yes, i'd love to convince mark to sell it to me...

Excellent haul, Mars.  Much envy.

Mars wrote:
The two main cities in Saskatchewan (Regina and Saskatoon) had a couple really good game stores back then.  One was called The Wizard's Corner
The Wizard's Corner was also advertised in Dragon Magazine a number of times too.

Oh wow.  I lived in Saskatoon '80-'83, and that was where I discovered D&D.  I went to school about 5 blocks east of Wizard's Corner, and I loved the place to bits.  Was the owner called Kelly? I remember him as a scary old dude (probably a venerable 30 years old) with a straggly moustache, reading Cults of Terror behind the counter where they displayed the painted minis.  For a while there he got practically every nickel I made by way of allowance and lawn mowing.

stratochamp wrote:we occasionally pay too much attention to mediocre work that some guy produced 50 copies of in his basement in 1979 and sold at 3 London (or L.A.) game stores. while it's fun to ferret out these (mostly) stale nuggets, they really don't constitute a meal.

Ca'n't say I've noticed "too much attention" being paid very often around here, Bill, given there's perhaps a dozen people who actually seem to care about the enthusiasm that went into gaming back in the day and those non-mainstream individuals who rolled up their sleeves and took the effort to actually publish material, whether seriously and/or for fun.
Would you rather no-one was interested?

There's more than enough "mediocre" work in the mainstream, too, IMHO, and even for the good stuff how many times do you really wish to read stories about Tomb of Horrors, etc., as though the essence of the hobby could be condensed into so few (mostly) "shared experiences"?

stratochamp wrote:all of this having been said, yes, i'd love to convince mark to sell it to me...

Blackmoor wrote:Did you say there was 2 Pharohs in there?

Only one in this lot but SimperingToad picked one off of Ebay a few weeks back.  Both came out of Saskatoon though.

You know, going back over the photos of Mars' big haul....

While it is eye-popping    it is also just a bit sad....

All of those boxes, books, modules, game aids, etc....

They all look brand new.    No one gamed with them.  

See - There ya go!  

Now we can picture a gamer who just kept some of his stuff nice.  I can go with that!