Saturday, August 2, 2014

True Crime Trading Cards

You may remember a post from a few weeks ago where I mentioned my set of True Crime trading cards. I have the entire collection, save two bonus cards. I'll talk more about that later on in this this article. All of the following images are scans from my personal set of cards. ENJOY!

                             

True Crime trading cards were published in 1992 by Eclipse Comics amidst
controversy, as they featured serial killers, gangsters, and mass killers. It's understandable that crime victims and advocacy groups pushed to have the sales of these trading cards banned, or at least limited. Virtually none of those attempts succeeded. In fact, all the hoopla actually helped to drive sales of the cards up. The fear was that these cards would "glorify" murderers into a hero status, not unlike a professional athlete or other public figure. Nothing could be further from the truth however, as the reverse side of each card tells the story behind the face on the front of the card in a factual, concise, easy to read manner. No judgement is passed. No dramatized interpretations offered. Just the facts ma'am. Eclipse published several unorthodox trading card sets on a variety of topics including the Iran-Contra Scandal, Beverly Hillbillies, and Kraft Foods Negro Leagues Giveaway Cards. There's a complete index on luckymojo.com. According to that website, Eclipse went out of business in 1994.

I really can't say for sure how I initially learned of these cards. Probably from a local newscast when I was living in Sacramento. I do remember the first time I bought a set, though. It was at the Birdcage Shopping Center in Citrus Heights. I wasn't even there looking for the cards. For the life of me I can't remember who I was hanging out with at the time or what we were doing in that part of town (I rarely left downtown Sac at the time). In fact I had probably forgotten about them until I saw a few packs sitting on the counter next to a cash register inside one of those shitty little head shop stores sprinkled throughout that area. When I saw them, I knew I had to have them. I don't remember how much they were exactly, but they couldn't have cost too much seeing as how I was pretty poor at the time. Probably just a couple or a few bucks per tin-foiled pack of twelve. I was immediately hooked. 

I grew up on science fiction movies and collecting Star Wars action figures when I was a kid, but I never really got into baseball cards or comic books or anything like that (now that I think about it, I did have a whole bunch of Star Wars cards). But the True Crime cards were different. The artwork, beautifully executed by Paul Lee (see what I did there?), gives each figure weight to the crimes they were involved in, whether they be perpetrator or investigator. The images are realistic and stylish at the same time. Lee's artwork captures the subject as if in a real life moment, or a photograph. For the most part he makes no attempt to demonize or sanctify the subject, but it's hard to ignore the spattering of blood across the front of most of the serial killers depicted in this series.

I was also never into crime dramas or mysteries as a form of entertainment. Bored me to fucking tears as a kid. That being the case, I've always had a curious fascination with the subject of murderers, especially in the case of serial killers. These cards certainly helped to satiate my morbid curiosity. As mentioned earlier, the information on the back of the cards provides the collector with information about the crimes committed and the persons involvedSince there's only so much room on a trading card, the text is pretty much straight to the point, highlighting only the most important details of a particular case. 
But it's enough so that the reader isn't left with too many questions, or feeling like there's not enough information. You could probably imagine that by now, some of the facts have changed as new evidence has been discovered, and even some cases solved. These cards are, after all, twenty-two years old. The Green River Killer for example, we now know is Gary Ridgeway. He was captured in 2001 and is serving multiple consecutive life sentences in Washington state.
The excellent artwork and easily absorbed information alone were good enough for me to collect these cards. But knowing their role in the current pop culture at the time as a controversial product, and the fact that they weren't very mainstream, meant that I had to have them. Where I bought my first set at the Birdcage Shopping Center was pretty far away from my normal hang out zone, but luckily there was a baseball card store right down the street from my job at a tire shop in Elk Grove, CA. I went in there after work on a payday and asked if they had any. They didn't, but they could order them! I can't remember how much I paid for a full box, probably twenty five to forty bucks, but it was worth it to me. I ended up ordering several boxes over the course of a few weeks, and eventually gathered together the entire set, including the hologram card seen at the top of this page. The only cards I am missing from this set are two of the four bonus cards of the Rodney King beating. I have cards "A" and "D", and am missing "B" and "C" (if anyone out there can get me the two cards I'm missing, I'll make a video proclaiming that I like you and post it to the public for all the world to see). 

My favorite card in the entire set is of
Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme. These two teenage girls fell in love and eventually murdered Parker's mother with a brick to the head. The reason I like this card so much is because a few years after collecting these I was watching a movie with a girlfriend called Heavenly Creatures. About halfway through the film I realized "Hey, I know what this is about! I learned about it from my True Crime Trading Cards!" I think seeing that movie helped to validate for me that these cards weren't just some novelty to be taken lightly, and that they had real world worth, because I actually learned something from them!


The timing of these cards was nearly perfect, the early 1990's. American entertainment was in mid-shift from the innocence of programs like Leave it to Beaver, Star Trek, and the Cosby Show to edgier shows like Married with Children and the Simpsons. And soon the television exploded with "reality" news and gossip shows like Inside Edition, A Current Affair, Cops, and MTV's The Real World. Americans were becoming more fascinated with, and more accepting of, "reality". Even if it was scripted to a point, or just gossip. More and more violent, sexual, and otherwise "disturbing" images were seen on mainstream tv as cable television expanded its reach to the public, thus numbing Americans to the horrors of the actual world surrounding them. And only a couple of years in the future, the horizon of the internet would come to full bloom, bringing even more content, this time from the entire world, to the American family, further disrupting the status quo of house, wife, 2point3 children, and a two car garage in a suburb. This was the beginning of the end of an era ruled by Baby Boomers since the 1950's. Although still driven mostly by analogue technology, the world was opening up, and the truth was coming out, even if it was disguised with lies, quicker cuts in the editing room, and swooshier news logos. Yet amongst all the clutter, the True Crime trading cards shine brightly, at least for me, because they are honest and they are real. The only thing that feels "missing" from them is the OJ Simpson trial. Had Eclipse not gone under, I'm sure they would have made a set of cards for that story. BUT!... someone else did.

Now, without further ado, click here to see my entire collection. The link to this album may take a bit to load, depending on your connection. And my apologies for the fuzziness of some of the text in some of the images, as the lid for my scanner isn't heavy enough to press some of the cards down completely flat. Enjoy!

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Hi, maybe you can help me:
    1) was there only one holoram card (the electric chair), and
    2) were the bonus cards only A - D ?
    Thanks. Hope you can help. - A.Collector :-) (shrewd_cat76@hotmail.com)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi. I am SO sorry for not seeing your question until now. Hopefully you're still out there and will see this! To the best of my knowledge there was only one hologram card and a total of four bonus cards, A-D.

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