Click Here to View Cart 10: Enterplay Baltimare 2015 Flash Sale Win

It's been pretty frustrating trying to get connected to the network here long enough to write up a blog post, so this will be another quick one-card write-up. I am not quite a Brony-level My Little Pony fan, but I do enjoy the show, the trading cards, and the toys. I follow Enterplay, the maker of My Little Pony trading cards, on Facebook and try to pay attention when they are having flash sales for various convention-exclusives or other special products. I've been able to beat the rush a handful of times, usually trying to focus on the trading card products, although I did get a t-shirt once as well. In this case I was able to get a specially-marked Baltimare 2015 foil card of My Little Pony character Starlight Glimmer.

I am not 100% sure if a non-marked version of the card exists, and with my current internet situation I can't just go out and research it. It was available at BronyCon this year to all attendees, so it's limited but not extremely limited. I like getting these cards, but I think what I like most is the rush of trying to be one of the first 25 people to check out when the flash sale hits. I flipped the Applejack foil card I got from the first flash sale I participated in, but I've kept the next few I've won for my own collection.

Tim Proctor IDW My Little Pony Sketch Commission: Fluttershy

One of the artists on the Blowout Cards forums, Tim Proctor, sometimes puts up sales threads or flash sales for sketches and other art. Fairly recently he put up a Studio Cleanout thread with all kinds of stuff on sale for a discount, and the one thing that really caught my eye was an Artist Proof from an IDW My Little Pony card set. From what I can tell, these cards were only available in a rather expensive collectible book package with different levels of rarity, although the Artist Proofs look to be differentiated from the packaged sketch cards by the color of the little heart in the bottom right corner. At the price he was offering I had to jump on the deal and request that he do a Fluttershy piece for my collection.

His turnaround time was pretty quick and he did a nice illustration for me. This is the second commission I have gotten from him, and he has been professional and kept his promised deadlines each time. He's got a website that you can go look at. Most of his stuff is a little darker than My Little Pony (what isn't darker than My Little Pony?) with subjects like zombies and horror and gritty comic book heroes; he also does quite a bit of excellent Star Wars art. Everything about this transaction went pretty well, and I am happy with the card I got.

The back of the card features the usual sketch card information. I wonder if the reference to IDW Limited's stable of artists was an intentional horse pun? Tim actually made use of the box for the artist's name, which happens less frequently than you might think. I've heard that sketch cards don't often pay all that well, so I would think the artists would make sure to put their names on them somewhere and at least get that exposure from their work.

Mary Bellamy Sketch Card Commission

Mary Bellamy is one of the artists that posts occasionally on the Blowout Cards forums. She has worked on many sketch card sets, self-published several comic books, and also has done work for publisher-owned comic book properties. Her most high-profile work is probably the covers she has done for the My Little Pony comic books.

  

A few months ago she posted a thread offering discounted sketches to help cover some unexpected car repairs she was getting done. I jumped at the chance to get a My Little Pony sketch card from her, featuring a situation from an episode of the Friendship is Magic animated series. In the episode, the character Fluttershy steals the Princess' sick bird, Philomena, in an attempt to restore it to health. After Fluttershy has tried many remedies the bird escapes and leads Fluttershy on a chase, which ends with the bird combusting and falling into a pile of ashes just as the Princess shows up. Fluttershy offers many apologies, and in the midst of the apology the bird comes back from the dead as a beautiful Phoenix. It's a pretty funny episode, and I asked Mary if she could draw Fluttershy and Philomena for me. It wasn't too long before I had this Personal Sketch Card in my mailbox:

I also selected three more cards from her sketch binder, featuring some of my favorite comic book characters. Before sending the cards off to me, Mary took some time and added extra details to the background of each card. I thought that was a nice addition.

The first sketch shows Cloak and Dagger, two relatively minor Spider-Man characters who became fan favorites and still pop up in books from time to time. For a while they even had their own series. 

In the middle is She-Hulk, Bruce Banner's cousin who received her powers after he gave her an emergency blood transfusion.

Last is Power Girl who, like most DC characters, has a complicated and ever-changing back story. She is Superman's cousin from an alternate universe, or basically another universe's Supergirl. She gets bounced back and forth between the different universes. I think that currently she is back on her original adopted home planet, Earth-2.

Click Here to View Cart 6: A Ponycon Flash Sale Cheese Sandwich

In February the annual My Little Pony convention, Ponycon, was held in New York. It's a pretty big deal, and as part of the celebration the makers of My Little Pony trading cards held a few flash sales on their website. The first time I got a card in one of the Enterplay flash sales I was able to flip it on eBay for $250. The second time I got a flash sale card, I got a ~$30 Fluttershy card for my personal collection for $5. This time the big flash sale offering was a promotional foil card featuring the character Cheese Sandwich. I was able to get in there in time to get one. They usually release just 10 or 20 cards at a time to the public in these sales and there are hundreds or maybe even thousands of people vying to check out first. It helps to go into these things with a strategy and not get distracted or freak out when the stuff populates in the webstore.

Enterplay struggles in the realm of shipping collectibles, so the card arrived in a soft sleeve in a plain white envelope (PWE) and had a big fold in one corner where it had been damaged during shipping. I sent an e-mail in to their customer service explaining the problem and offering to send the card back in exchange for a new one. They told me to keep the one I had and promised to send another one with additional protection. It arrived packaged in a Card Saver, but half the card had slid out of the Card Saver and about a quarter of the card was hanging out of the envelope, too. Outside of a touch of white on the corner it was undamaged, so I decided to let it go. I believe they priced it at $4 this time. On eBay it regularly sells in the $20-30 range, with some outliers going for $15 and others hitting $50. I haven't felt a whole lot of motivation to list it yet, and I might just wind up holding on to it.

Click Here to View Cart 4: Flash Sale Fluttershy

The company that makes My Little Pony trading cards and the My Little Pony Trading Card Game, Enterplay, holds flash sales on their webstore every Cyber Monday. Anyone who is super into my blog will remember that last year I was able to snag an Applejack Rare Foil card for $5 that I flipped on eBay for $250. These Rare Foil cards are usually only available at certain conventions or other fan events, so they aren't often available. When Enterplay holds the flash sales they usually only release 25 or fewer on the site, so to get one you need to be logged in to your Enterplay account, have your Paypal set up to log in with one click, and have your preferred payment option set as the default. This year there were a number of sales throughout the day, but they were mostly for things I already had (binders) or things I didn't really want (collectible dog tags). I did order a t-shirt, which I just realized never arrived. After going to Facebook I see that I am not the only one. Enterplay is pretty good about responding to people on Facebook, though, so it should be resolved soon.

Anyway, the last flash sale of the day was the big one, and I was lucky enough to see it pop up on the store's front page, add it to my cart, and check out in time to get the item. Instead of being for a specific card the sale was a pick-a-card sale, which meant that with a couple of exceptions you could pick any card from the trading card sets or the card game.

I wasn't prepared for that, so I didn't know what card I wanted. I knew that maybe I wanted a Fluttershy foil card, but I didn't know the number or at which event it was distributed. But I noticed in the small print that if you weren't sure right away you could e-mail Enterplay after the fact to make your choice. The important thing was to get the order in. I typed something like, 'Fluttershy special card,' in the box and checked out. I got an order confirmation and knew I was golden for the second year in a row. The thing sold out in about 20 seconds, because there were hundreds of people trying to buy 25 items.

The choosing a card thing caused a whole pile of sad/angry comments on Facebook, as many folks did not read the part of the item description stating that you could e-mail your selection in later. They sat around and thought about their selections for a while, and by the time they did that, typed it in to the Comment box, and hit the Order button it was way too late. There were also people who were watching the Facebook page to see the sale announcement, then clicking over to Enterplay's store. By the time the announcement came up on Facebook the thing had been sold out for two minutes. Flash sales are all about timing and technique, yo. I was pretty pleased with myself for being ready and getting my order in.

I sent a follow-up e-mail to let Enterplay know specifically which card I wanted. It was originally only distributed at the EverFree Northwest Convention in August 2012 and through an online survey in September 2012. If I had planned ahead a little bit I could have chosen a more in-demand card that I could have flipped on eBay for big bucks like I did the Applejack card. Depending on how many of the Fluttershy cards are on eBay at a given time, they sell for between $20 and $50. That's still a pretty good deal when you consider that I spent $5 to get the card. This one won't be sold, as it is one I wanted for my personal collection. It is also a nice reminder of the fun of participating in the flash sale frenzy and coming out of the fray victorious.

Click Here to View Cart 1: Off Like a Flash Sale

Edit: I decided to put it up on eBay. I didn't get $400 for it, but I did get $250! Not bad for a $5 investment.

Enterplay, the company that produces the My Little Pony trading cards, held a series of flash sales during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend in 2013. Some of the sale items included stuff from the then soon-to-be-released My Little Pony Trading Card Game and special My Little Pony Dog Tags. But the real prize of these flash sales is the limited foil cards that are usually only available at conventions and during these flash sales. Enterplay only puts up around 25 of them at a time and they sell out within a minute, so getting an item is a matter of logging in beforehand, constantly refreshing your browser for 25-30 minutes, and being lucky enough to check out before everyone else once the item appears on the site.

I missed a couple of the sales just by virtue of not being in the right place at the right time. Then I logged in on time to see the item, but it was just a discount on a box of cards that I already had a copy of. But that was actually a decoy, and I had a customer come in and need help during the time when the actual foil card got placed on the site fifteen minutes later. I caught another sale, but it was a dog tag that I wasn't interested in. So for a variety of reasons it seemed like I was missing every good sale and getting there for the dud items.

For the final sale I resolved that nothing would distract me from my goal. People at work (yes, I was frantically trying to buy a My Little Pony card while sitting in my chair at work) seemed to have endless requests for me, and my computer really wanted to log me out of the Enterplay site, but I powered through and eventually I saw the new sale item pop up on the screen. I added it to my cart, hit the checkout button, and logged in to Paypal. The order went through! For five dollars I was able to order a Series 2 # f38 Applejack card.

Then there was the waiting. I think it arrived at my house in early January, although I could be off by a couple of weeks on that estimate. I am not sure if I should keep it or sell it. Three copies of it have sold on eBay over the last two weeks, and they went for $161, $199, and $399.99. Four hundred dollars would buy me a lot of cards over the next couple of months. I could get the Fluttershy foil card and still have plenty left over for some 2014 Topps Archives Baseball, a Manute Bol autograph, and probably a few other things too. Hmmm...