Tough Pigs Journal
November 1, 2002
Insider Trading
They can't be serious.
Somebody please tell me that I'm not understanding this right. Because, from
here, it sounds like Rittenhouse
Archives is selling a "limited edition" set of 25 Muppet Show
trading cards for $19.99.
I keep waiting for somebody to explain to me that no, that's the wholesale price for like a gross of them or something. Is that actually the case? If that's the case, I'm perfectly willing to step aside on this. But so far, the people I've asked have said, yeah, it's $19.99 for 25 cards, like that's a perfectly normal situation and they don't understand why it upsets me.
But, trading cards, right? Little bits of cardboard? Do I have this right? Did I go to sleep and wake up in a universe where "trading cards" means something totally different? Again, feel free to correct me if that's the case. I'm here to learn. But in my universe, trading cards come in little packs, and you get like nine of them for thirty-five cents. They are a plaything for children on my world.
Cause, I mean, that photo up there is one of the trading cards. I already own
that picture. I probably own that picture six times over. In fact, probably
every copy of that picture that I currently own is bigger than the trading card.
(See Figure B, left.) I can't imagine why anybody would even bother to print
that picture trading-card size in the first place.
And I'm supposed to spend twenty dollars of my own personal money -- money I earn every day as a shoeshine boy on Wall Street, polishing rich men's shoes for a nickel a shine -- I'm supposed to part with twenty hard-earned American dollars so I can buy 25 trading cards? Twenty dollars that could put food in the mouths of my starving children, twenty dollars that could pay for my grandmother's chemotherapy? You gotta be kidding me.
These Rittenhouse Archives people must just never look their children in the eyes, I guess. They just look the other way. They're bandits, that's all there is to it. Shame.
The Muppet Fan Halloween Parade