The Art Gallery- 2015 Upper Deck Marvel Fleer Retro Rocket Racoon

This month’s Art Gallery is from J.D. Hill, also known as James Hill, and is Rocket Raccoon, one of my mini PCs. Hill has done quite a bit of work for Upper Deck and Breygent and his style is very reminiscent of the typical comic book art and that is what I love about this card. This card came from the 2015 Upper Deck Marvel Fleer Retro release.

I very rarely read comic books growing up and when I did they were usually Star Wars books so when it comes to Rocket Raccoon I was a late bloomer and my interest is based on the movie character. I love the character in the Guardian of the Galaxy movies, voiced by Bradley Cooper, because he is a little bad ass bastard who only cares about himself and his partner in crime Groot.

A Positive Purchase From A Foreign Seller

I had talked about recently about how I decided to start a Rocket Raccoon collection, which is only 8 cards so far but growing. Being a comic book and recent movie character there have been some action figures released for Rocket and I while I have not been on the hunt for any figures recently I have kept an eye out for any that I thought are pretty cool. One that has caught my eye is a figure from Nintendo’s Infinity line, I liked the pose.

 

The Infinity system is for Nintendo’s WiiU and 3DS, which I have neither, but I just wanted the figure as long as it was reasonably priced. I came across a company out of China that was selling the figure, minus the Infinity web code, with a starting price of ¢99 and free shipping.

Here is the headline:

DS infinity: Super Heroes (2.0 Edition) Guardians figure Rocket Raccoon

I had seen similar offers for Legos and Hotwheels. I don’t know if they are the same company but there seems to be a lot of these auctions for collectibles out of China. I had tried to pick up some Lego sets for my son but they always jump in price before the end and I miss out. So I figured I would toss in a cheap bid of $1.01 and forgot about it.

When the auction ended, I had won with the ¢99 bid and made my payment figuring it would take forever to get here. Boy was I wrong, it took 8 days to get to me and it was not only Rocket Raccoon but the entire set of Guardians of the Galaxy (Starlord, Gamora, Drax, Groot & Rocket Raccoon) . Talk about surprise, I even went back to check the auction and all the content says is “You will receive the item in the title”, which clearly states “Rocket Raccoon”.

 

I love it when dealers do things like this. The Drax figure had pulled away from the base and his body was separated in half but it appears that the glue didn’t adhere properly and just fell apart and was not broken. Some superglue and Drax was back to his badass self. This seller is definitely getting positive feedback. 

Well Now I am Standing. Happy?

Sometimes I feel like I am so late to the party. I finally sat down and watched Guardians of the Galaxy and I loved the movie. I felt that it is one of Marvel’s better comic book movies and I thought Rocket Raccoon was hilarious.

What I found interesting is that Rocket was never intended to be a major character when he appeared in Marvel Preview #7 in 1976. The Marvel Preview books were essentially filler stories that allowed them to bypass the Comic Code and to see how certain characters would be accepted by readers. His first "Fleshed out" appearance was in Hulk #271 in 1982.

I decided to start a mini RR personal collection and these are my first 3 cards, I don’t think I will chase anything major but I have picked up a couple of cards and have my eyes on some more. I love the art on some of the TCG cards, they are usually pretty unique and varied from what you find in the normal card releases.