Snake America Twenty Three
Snake, a bi-weekly email covering joints on eBay, Craigslist, etc. In today's: Madballs' "Head Poppers" mini line and a spuriously-priced and -countenanced Nike sweater. Subscribe here.
eBay: Madballs head popper toy: My friend AJ asked me the other day how much Madballs were going for. I figured a little bit. I asked two frien My friend AJ asked me the other day how much Madballs were going for. I figured a little bit. I asked two friends who are authorities on Madballs pricing and they told me that they go for a lot now due to a higher profile. He wanted a couple for the house. Some run about $80, some, more. So, it's an investment. Madballs are these anthropomorphic rubber ball toys from the 1980s and 90s that combined the aesthetic sensibilities of marbles, Garbage Pail Kids, Cracked Magazine after getting Don Martin and stress relievers. And probably some horror stuff. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like they weren't pretty good. In fact, I'll amend a statement I made in an earlier email, where I said, "the '90s were only good for video games and vintage Tyson shirts," to include them*. The band Madball was named after the ball--or, the ball was the singer, Freddie's, nickname. As a preteen, he acted like one. Just as the "Ball of Destruction" 7" is the best concept album in music history, the origin story above is the best piece of toy-ball-related nomenclature lore since the Super Bowl and Lamar Hunt's kid**.Madballs are expensive now, according to my friend Matt, because of tattoo people buying them up. Old Madballs, like this, used to go for like a few bucks; run-of-the-mill Madballs now hover around $80***. I don't think that's crazy, because $20 isn't money, and we all throw away $80 once a month on nothing whatsoever. But these Head Poppers are cheaper and their heads pop and their eyes stick out. Usually you have to pay for that. No one talks about them but they're cheaper and have more, like chirashi. Which among us is truly mad? Probably the person who thinks spending $80 on a Madball is a bad idea.
eBay: Bootleg (?) sweater for $600: There's a case to be made for bootleg Nike gear as cooler than true Nike in 2014. Pointing to the photo above and throwing a rock and hitting a pair of recent Jordans is one way to explain my point. This is a garbage sweater, but it has charm. It, and pre-NAFTA bootleg clothing like it, elicit an acid-tongue, sick-to-your-stomach rotten feeling that arises when one sees something that shouldn't be. That's a real feeling that gets much harder to find and repeat when so many facts about things are available so quickly. David Grann, in a story he wrote about a French-Canadian art bootlegger (who probably wore purple corduroys) mentioned about how a curator spotted a fake statue in a split second when she got sick to her stomach after seeing it. I think he wrote that. Whatever. The telltale signs it's off here are:
Trademark symbol is below the N instead of slightly above the E
No size, or country of production on the tag, just the material. No other Nike tag does that.
The black-red Nike-Swoosh color scheme is 1990s, I guess, but it also should have grey if it's those colors.
There's no comma after Oregon on the front of the sweater. AP style says there should be.
Also:
So ... it's fake. It doesn't even look real for a second. But it's not worse than the real stuff in a couple of ways. Compahe macro-logo-gear that looks a little off with a new, real Air Jordan. Plus, click any of these pages and tell me if they look more or less real than the sweater. Nothing is allowed, sure. Everything might be permissible.
Thanks for reading. Tell your friends.
Snake
* And M.U.S.C.L.E. Men and probably a couple of other things I can't remember. Like Crystal Pepsi and those ribbed Starter sweatshirts.
** Slightly a better read than anything Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote for the magazine, but not as good as James Fallows' leafblower obsession, which I've been hoping he'd write about in depth in the magazine, but he probably never will. If I was editor or publisher I'd send him that email by 10:30 AM my first workday.
** The appended link here is somewhere between $81 and $15,000. Pretty good.