A few weeks ago I spent quite a bit of time bothering the folks at the Sad Littles table at Chicago Comic Con. Nate and I spoke at length about all things Sad Littles, and lots about the industry in general. Nate is refreshingly straightforward, and while speaking with him you become infected with enthusiasm for Sad Littles. You get the feeling they are building this company one brick at a time, perhaps they are struggling, but everyone loves to root for an underdog.
I walked away from Nate’s table with a bunch of Sad Littles product. I’d seen Legends and Lore before, and had picked up some Damesels and Dinosaurs as well as Essence of Fairyland sketches on eBay, it was my first time seeing a Fairyland set, or cracking open a pack of Damsels, and really — my first experience really cracking open some Sad Littles product.
My first observation was that everything is quality, the sets are nice, the packaging is nice, although I quickly realized that the sets aren’t sealed, and the packs probably could be manipulated to see what the sketch inside was, so only buy unopened product from dealers you trust or Sad Littles directly. ***Update I was just informed that these typically do come sealed, they didn’t have time to seal the sets they had at the convention.***
The art on the base cards was all really well done, even if some of it wasn’t necessarily my taste, it was all nice — and it was all original art — very cool! The card backs were designed well, and had a little blurb or quote about the art by the artist. I wasn’t really in to the blurbs on the back — most of them were almost like flavor text from a CCG, or perhaps like a very brief description of a character you see in a video game. I would have much rather seen information about the artist, or the artist’s inspiration or technique. Overall though, I thought the sets are excellent. Unfortunately the sets have sort of kept me from collecting a lot of Sad Littles products — let me explain. I’m a collector of sketch and autograph cards. I don’t want 1 sketch from Essence of Fairyland — I want as many as I can find that I like! I want loads of them, but I don’t really want dozens of sets sitting around. I’d like 1 set perhaps, but at the end of the day I personally am far more likely to buy a cheaper sketch only product like Damsels and Dinosaurs than I am a set/sketch product like Legends and Lore or Fairyland.
Sadly, I’m sure the set itself is a significant cost to the product, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really add value to the collector. If they could have a few commons with each sketch and only have a total of 50 sets possible or something that might be cool, and the sets might have some value at that point, but I’m not sure how economically that works out.
So. . . let’s talk sketches.
Like the base set, the sketches are very nice. Not every sketch is necessarily the style I would normally collect, but they are all quality — you aren’t going to find repeat-a-sketch orcs in here. I remember when I initially opened these I was really impressed, and I was blown away by the Lynne Anderson card posted at the top of this post — a scan can’t even come close to capturing the detail in this card — it’s mesmerizing. That impressed feeling was reiterated tonight when I went to pull a few cards for this post. . . I couldn’t narrow my choices down to 1 Damsel, 1 Legend and 1 Fairy. . . I found 7 cards to post, so I’m just going to show you some of my favorites:
Legends and Lore:
Essence of Fairyland:
Damsels and Dinosaurs:
And let me tell ya — the scans aren’t doing anything to help these sketches out.
If I had to criticize something about the sketches — and I do since I’m playing the role of a critic right now . . . and perhaps it has more to do with my expectations or desires than anything with the set or sketches, but when the set is called Damsels and Dinosaurs I know that I’m looking for the headliner on the set — in this case Damsels, and for the most part Damsels and Dinosaurs delivered nicely on the damsels. There were a few cards — some with kids and dinosaurs, which I have to be honest I wasn’t really in to. Fairyland is a little harder. . . they are mythical after all, but personally I want my fairies to be like the ones above. . . give ‘em some sex appeal — after all men must to be the key demographic for this product. A number of my Fairyland sketches were random creatures, or . . . well not hot fairies.
Don’t get me wrong. . . I’m exceptionally happy with my Sad Littles products — but I got a bunch, but if I ordered a single pack and got a sketch of random ugly dude fairy, or kid playing with dinosaur I wouldn’t be too thrilled about it. Luckily for collectors there are a bunch of Sad Littles sketches on eBay lately, and many of them are selling for almost criminally low prices — I probably shouldn’t be posting that here since I’ve been having a field day picking up sketches. Ohh well. Happy Collecting Everyone.
Jon
I have picked up a ton of Damsels & Dinosaurs cards, and a handful of
Essence of Fairyland cards as well. I am much more inclined to pay for
the sketch-per-pack sets than pony up the extra money repeatedly for
sets like Legends & Lore only to be left with the extra base sets.
That’s a personal preference, so I tend to buy one set directly from
Nate and pick up the other sketches on the secondary market.
My only big complaint may not be an issue at all, but perhaps a
misconception. With the Damsels cards, it seemed certain artists
popped up late in the game. For example, I don’t recall seeing many
Duron or Molinelli sketches when the set was first released. They
seemed to come up later. And Eisu sketches seemed to be in earlier
packs. Same with Essence of Fairyland. Several Treece cards showed up
in the last couple of weeks. I imagine that the packs were filled up
depending on when the artists returned the cards.
I also won a card on eBay yesterday that was same last name as Nate
and in St Louis, but not his usual account. So it seems he is selling
the leftovers directly? Doesn’t matter at the end of the day if I win
my card, I suppose.
And a neat touch, in my opinion, is that the artists were apparently
asked to “title” their cards on the back. Not all did (Martinez just
signed his on the back, for example), but some like Jeff Chandler did
well with the names.
Comment by Joe R — September 8, 2010 @ 2:40 pm
I can certainly see how artists returning cards late, or artists added later in the process to make up for unforeseen problems could result in parts of the production run being loaded with certain artists. While not ideal, as long as there are quality artists through the run that doesn’t bother me — what would the alternative be in those cases? Hold up the release of the set?
Nate’s sister has been on at least 1 Sad Littles set, so you may have bought a card from her — either a return, or a pack she picked up. I’m not sure, but that’s a possibility.
I agree — the titles on the backs of the cards are a nice touch.
Thanks for your comments.
Jon
Comment by webjon — September 8, 2010 @ 4:50 pm
Sorry, late response to your post.
“I would have much rather seen information about the artist, or the artist’s inspiration or technique.” The backs of my Fairyland cards sort of had that. I agree, to read the inspiration from every artist would have been cool, that’s what I thought was going down when Nate asked me for something to write on the back.
Comment by Ted Dastick, Jr. — October 13, 2010 @ 3:30 pm