Photo-A-Day #1691

Allison gave me this Autobot Belt Buckle for our anniversary. She knows that I am passionate about the Transformers. I can talk at length about pretty much every character who ever came out. When I was a kid I created a database of each of my toys and even documented all of the tech specs, alliance and subgroup. When I got new ones I would stay up all night long and transform them over and over until I could do them nearly blindfolded.

I’ve been reading a few books on finding your passion and being able to turn that into something lucrative. One book is of course Gary Vaynerchuk’s Crush It. The other one is Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields. Both books really encourage you to see what is possible when you look at your passion in different ways. I’m having a heck of a time trying to figure out what could make Transformers lucrative for me since I already know of some amazing blogs, podcasts and even a hilarious review site about the cartoon episodes. Even Allison thought the reviews were hilarious. The guy reviewing goes by aalgar and he’s done a ton of episodes. Here is the first one.

In recent years blogging and photography has become my passion. While I can still tell you everything about the origins of most of the Transformers and what is happening in the toy space. I don’t buy as many of the toys anymore but still keep up with the comics. speaking of comics, the other day I received a comment on an old, old, old post of mine (4 years or so) from someone who was looking for WildStorm CCG cards.

Wildstorm is a comic book studio that came out of Image comics that formed back in the early 90’s this was a huge thing because comic book creators like Todd McFarlane, and Jim Lee set out on their own away from the big two (Marvel and DC) and started Image, a label where the creators retained the rights to the characters that they created. I liked Jim Lee’s studio the best, WildStorm because the characters and stories were great. Some of my favorites were StormWatch, WildC.A.T.S., Backlash and Gen13. There was even a collectible card game that came out in the mid to later 90’s called WildStorms The Collectible Card Game. I bought cases of the cards and collected all but 13 of the cards. I had a website in college about the cards and used to trade them with other people on alt.collectible card games or some such group where we would post up the cards we had and the ones we were looking for and we would trade them. This was pre-eBay. It worked on the honor system and I did pretty well and got nearly all the trades I set up but interest in the game waned and then it was cancelled. So I could never find anyone who actually wanted to play.

The other day when that comment came in I decided to see what I could find what was still online about WildStorms. Virtually nothing. I did however find someone who was selling off their collection a couple of cards at a time and even found three that I was missing. I found this on eBay. So, I’m hoping that the interest in the cards holds off long enough for me to get these ones on the cheap. I wonder if there are any other people who still have those cards and who ever play anymore? Not exactly something I could make lucrative since there is no interest but it is something I’d probably have a little fun creating, a little repository of information to keep that game alive for anyone who might still be interested in playing.