llustrator Robert Jimenez was inspired to create the new "Garbage Pail Kids Kitchen" one day eating lunch. Robert is a longtime illustrator of Garbage Pail Kids (GPK) cards and was peeling a banana when he had a flashback to Banana Anna, a classic GPK card depicting an anthropomorphic banana with a bite taken out of its head. So, he took a photo of it and used it to mock up a card, trying his best to re-create the original composition. He then pitched it to Topps. "Just thinking it was a goofy thing," he wrote BB in an email.

They were very interested and asked if I could produce more. I submitted about 25 ideas. The project evolved a bit over a few months and it was decided to just stick to foods and call it GPK Kitchen. I arranged all the food, (made guts using Monster Clay) photographed them, then went to work on them in Photoshop.

Love it!

Packs of these sticker cards are available to buy now ($20), but only for a few days — get'em while they're hot!

P.S. If you're a fan of GPK, go watch this documentary STAT: 30 Years of Garbage: The Garbage Pail Kids Story.

images via Robert Jimenez Read the rest

Who's the VC you most admire? Is it "super angel" investor Marc Andreessen, the 47-year-old billionaire behind over 40 successful startups? Or maybe it's Mary Meeker, the legendary VC who Forbes listed as the 77th most powerful woman in the world in 2014.

Whoever it is, TouchBase has got your investor worship covered with their new line of VC trading cards. They look like baseball cards -- stats and all -- but are much, much better.

VCtradingcards.com is the leading online seller of TouchBase investor trading cards.

We carry vintage and rare cards from the 1994 Sand Hill Road Series, the 2010 Gig Economy Series, the 1992 Private Equity Series, the 2015 Unicorn Series, and more.

Some of our rarest VC cards include Don Valentine (Sequoia, investor in Atari), Mike Markkula (Angel, investor in Apple), and Jenny Lee (GGV, investor in AliBaba). You never know which cards you'll get in your packs.

Many of the VCs featured have had multiple exits, but are on their way to more. This makes their cards highly collectible.

And, if your favorite investor, or founder, isn't yet on a card, you can ask the company to print them on a future one.

These are real. A VC Trading Cards five-pack is available for $59.99. Steep for ordinary folks, yes, but not Silicon Valley wheelers and dealers. Get'em while you can!

Thanks, You! Read the rest

Three adults dug out their childhood Yu-Gi-Oh! card collection for an expert appraisal, and all were surprised, albeit one unpleasantly so. Read the rest

The fine folks at MTG Manager have one of the favorite apps for fans of the game. Now they are toying around with an AR option that could display information about each card and possibly animate the images. This concept video of what it might look like live is pretty neat! Read the rest

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, the city of San Francisco has created a trippy 13-poster series of "trading card" posters.

Conceived by Kate Haug and produced by Ivan Uranga, both Bay Area artists, the groovy posters feature the "all-stars of 1967s counterculture and political scene," including the likes of Joan Baez, Timothy Leary, Jerry Garcia, Sly Stone, Sonny Barger, Bobby Seale, Lenore Kandel, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, Reverend Cecil Williams, Janice Mirikitani, Joan Didion, and even Ronald Reagan.

According to a press release from the San Francisco Arts Commission:

Haug collaborated with Ivan Uranga to produce the poster’s bold graphic style. Drawing from the vernacular of trading card, black and white photographs of each personage is set against a vibrant background, reminiscent of the era’s psychedelic rock posters. Each figure is given a title that reflects his/her role in the Summer of Love. For example, Leary appears under the title “Psychedelic Evangelist” along with his famous call from the Human Be-In, the prelude to the Summer of Love, to “Turn on, tune in, and drop out.” The use of the trading card format suggests that these diverse legacies have been commodified, gaining and losing value through the passage of time.

The series includes other details that are the artist’s own invention. For example, a price is included on the bottom of each card, which was not standard trading card practice. She also uses the figures’ birthdates for their serial number. For instance, Allen Ginsberg is number 26, because he was born in 1926.

Way back in 1902, a French manufacturer released a set of trading cards designed by artist Albert Bergeret that imagined the "women of the future." The cards envisioned women stepping into roles that would have seemed fantastical to most ladies at the time: doctor, lawyer, politician, firefighter, even members of the military.

Although there's a pin-up quality to many of the images—they're showing an awful lot of arm, after all—there's something charming about this retrofuturistic attempt to expand the role of women in society, even if it was nothing but fantasy at the time. Indeed, fantasy and science fiction can often help us open our minds behind the limitations of the world we live in and imagine a better one instead. In the small and fashionable world of these cards, at least, women were given a more equal role in society, not to mention some spectacular hats.

Here are some of my favorites:

(Lawyer)

(Journalist)

(Master of Arms)

(General)

(Mayor)

(Firefighter)

Check out the full series of cards here. Read the rest

YouTube user OpenBooster uses his aptly-named account to open booster packs of Magic: The Gathering cards.

Witness his palpable delight when he pulls one of the Power Nine cards from an unopened  20-year-old Alpha set, a mint-condition Black Lotus. Last year a similar card sold for over $27,000.

The excitement starts at about 8 minutes in.

Magic: The Gathering card worth $27,000

  Read the rest