Mailing Label

Title: Address Label from Colt West of Fox 18
Date: 1996?
Category: Random Scraps of Paper
Current Status: Recycled

Why the hell did I save this?

This was on a package sent to me by one Colt West of Wichita Falls who worked for the Fox affiliate up there. I'm not really sure what came in the box though, because my memory of actually dealing with Colt West places the exchange of goods in my living room.
Here's the story... back around 1996, I was all into toy collecting. Star Wars figures were coming back and I just got bit by the whole action figure thing. Playmates, who had the license to make Star Trek figures, decided to do something stupid and piss off toy collectors. They released a special edition Jean-Luc Picard figure depicting him from the fan favorite episode "Tapestry." The problem with this was that they only made a total of 1701 figures for this piece. That's a pretty small production run.
Despite not knowing jack squat about this figure, I found one purely by accident at the old Cherry Lane Target. I remember looking at the thing and thinking "That's gotta be a rarity!" Back then, though, eBay was just getting started and the web was a whole lot of lame websites and text discussion boards. So, I found a board devoted to toys and started asking around. The responses I received made it sound like I had the Holy Grail. There was really no way to gauge it's worth, though. So, I was kinda looking for a trade.
Colt West, a Star Trek collector started emailing back and forth and he had the two hardest to find Tick figures: Die Fledermaus and Man-Eating Cow. I actually collected Tick toys and these two were hard as hell to get, sometimes going for $75 apiece. So, we decided to trade. He'd give me the Tick figures for the Picard. And one Saturday, he came to my house and we made the trade.
Now, I think the reason behind the package that the above label was affixed, was that he threw in a couple of Batman: The Animated Series figures as well. He didn't have them with him when he came to Arlington so he shipped them to me instead. Of course, none of this explains why I kept this label.

At one point, I think the Picard figure peaked at about $1000. There are usually some on eBay going for $200-700, but it doesn't seem like they actually sell very often. This one was pretty much a disaster for Playmates and it's not a real popular figure. It kinda helped kill the line since so many collectors couldn't get one that they just gave up collecting since they'd never be able to complete their collections.

One other related story about this... Ray and I, who tended to hang out on discussion boards largely to just act like fools (I guess we'd be considered "trolls" now), decided to have some fun and we posted a goofy tale about going to Dunkin' Donuts and finding the ultra rare Tapestry strawberry frosted donut with sprinkles, mint in its original wax paper. Everybody seemed to like that and got the joke. I wish I could find a copy of the original post, but I don't seem to have one saved. Yeah, I didn't save a good piece of humor but I did save an utterly worthless mailing label. Go figure.