Indholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2025 i Non-Sport Updates

With the increasing popularity of television in the early 1950s, the film industry faced a challenge in captivating audiences back into movie theaters. 3-D experiments were attempted, but they soon lost favor as a mere gimmick. A more ambitious endeavor was the introduction of Cinerama, a technique designed to incorporate peripheral vision into the moviegoing experience. Three synchronized projectors were used to show movies across a 146° curved screen. While impressive, Cinerama proved too costly for filmmakers and theater owners due to the need for equipment retrofitting and labor-intensive procedures. Following Cinerama, several other techniques emerged to widen the screen without the curved aspect. These include CinemaScope, Panavision, Vistavision, Technirama, Techniscope, Todd-AO, and Super Panavision 70. OMNIMAX, a rarity introduced in 1991, offered a domed theater experience similar to Cinerama.…

Seventy-five years ago a young cartoonist debuted a comic strip about the misadventures of a shy little boy who lacked self-confidence. The cartoonist was Charles M. Schulz, the little boy was Charlie Brown and the comic strip was Peanuts, which would run 17,897 strips in almost 50 years. It would become one of the most popular and influential comic strips of all time, eventually appearing in 2,600 newspapers. Peanuts started out in October, 1950 in seven newspapers. The last strip would run February 11, 2000, the day after Schulz passed away, but the timeless comic strip lives on today in syndication. Readers can identify with Charlie Brown, a kid who never gives up. He may lose every kite to the kite-eating tree but he always keeps trying. The other unforgettable…

The name of these non-sport cards is an example of phonetic, if not poetic, license. They’re oversized, like narrow postcards, and difficult to store. Some even come with written instructions on how to destroy or at least damage them for short time benefit. And some aren’t even made of cardboard, which would seem to be a basic requirement in the trading card business. But most are so innovative with subjects so popular that they’re highly sought-after. These non-sport cards are called Plaks which, at first, seems like a gross misspelling. Don’t bother to try to find that word in an English-language dictionary. What you will find are vague references to plak’s etymology and suggestions that it might be linked to planks. The best clues hint that it has something to…

Star Trek, like space itself, seems destined to endure forever. First airing in 1966 with the retronym The Original Series, this pioneering show only lasted for three primetime seasons. In fact, the third season was only made possible by overwhelming fan support and a successful write-in campaign. Several years later, with renewed popularity due to syndication, Star Trek continued to thrive. The success of Star Trek led to the production of fast-selling collectibles and well-attended conventions, convincing parent company Paramount the franchise needed to continue. This resulted in the creation of eleven spinoff shows and thirteen theatrical releases. Naturally, the enduring popularity of Star Trek also led to the inevitable production of trading cards. FEDERATION AFFIRMATION The first Trek cards were released in 1967, featuring the iconic, and hard-to-find, Original…

TWIN PEAKS: THE LOG LADY CHRONICLES There’s a new set commemorating the ground-breaking television series created by the late David Lynch.The Log Lady Chronicles Trading Cards is a valentine to Twin Peaks, and is loaded with amazing collectible features. President of Rittenhouse Archives Steve Charendoff, explains, “We’re excited about this set for several reasons. There are a lot of great dual autographs, in particular, that took us quite a while to accumulate. We’ve had some of them, including the Peggy Lipton-Everett McGill, in inventory for several years. As you may be aware, Peggy Lipton passed away in 2019.” First time signers include Joan Chen (Jocelyn Packard), Heather Graham (Annie Blackburn), Alicia Witt (Gersten Hayward), Tim Roth (Gary Hutchins), Michael Cera (Wally Brando), Patrick Fischler (Duncan Todd), Jan D’Arcy (Sylvia Horne),…

Growing up outside New York City, Gareb Shamus was an outside-the-box thinker who challenged norms from the very beginning. “My dad, my brothers, and my mom were all Yankees fans, but I liked the Mets,” he shared recently with NSU. Much to the chagrin of Yankees and Red Sox fans alike, that turned out to be a wise decision for a Rockland County teen in the mid-1980s, one of many to come for this hobby prognosticator. Shamus and his brothers gravitated to comics as well as baseball and basketball cards, balancing a love of collecting with an appreciation for condition and value. “We collected sports cards and comic books, but there was this really fun thing called non-sport cards that weren’t so much a collectible when they came out, but…