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Your narrator, the Leader
The Leader attended the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Con in Hunt Valley, Maryland on 15 and 16 September 2016. This show remains his favorite of the year since it isn’t overcrowded like bigger shows and the dealers always bring interesting popular culture merchandise to sell. The Leader was pleased to see his dealer friends from past years - Gene Carpenter, Tony Albert, Brendan Fraser, James Turiello, Chuck Rogers, Ron Adams. The Leader was especially pleased to see his old comic book collecting friend George Milhalik return after a two year absence from this show.

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Thursday 15 September 2016
Peter Klaus
I last saw world class Phantom collector Peter Klaus at the Baltimore Comic Con 3 September. Pete usually attends this show to check the unlikely possibility that a Phantom collectible he doesn’t already have might surface. The poster he is holding here is from a comic book that will soon be published. Pete usually knows what’s happening with the Phantom before the general public finds out.
Gene Carpenter & Derek Woywood
Gene and Derek were setup next to each other at the Baltimore Comic Con and I was surprised to see Derek helping out at Gene’s tables at this show. Derek promotes the Philadelphia Comic Con which he says is the longest running comic book show on the East Coast. Indefatigable show dealer Gene Carpenter said he had already done over 30 shows since the start of this year. He will setup at a few more shows before I next see him at the Virginia Comic Con in Richmond the last weekend of October.
Tony Albert
Veteran Disney collector Tony Albert always sets up at this show and always has a few expensive and rare Walt Disney items. Asking price for the Pinocchio items he’s holding are $750.
Tony Albert
Tony with a window card for the 1960s cult sex movie Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! starring big boob model and actress Tura Satana.
Tony Albert
Tony with a $275 Playboy hardcover book. It’s expensive because of the Hugh Hefner and various Playmate autographs.
Bryan Schemine
I first met Bryan Scheming at last year’s show where he had a nice selection of 1960s TV and movie record albums. Here’s a 1970s Planet of the Apes board game.
Bryan Schemine
Brian with a framed Planet of the Apes display with photos and autographs from some of that film franchise’s major actors: Charlton Heston, Maurice Evans, Linda Harrison, James Franciscus and others.
Brendan Faulkner
Brendan Faulkner of R&B Enterprises in Danbury, CT always has some of the rarest and most esoteric collectibles at this show. Note the 1930s and 1940s movie magazines and science fiction pulps in the foreground.
Brendan Faulkner
The Conan the Barbarian hardcover book is from 1950s speciality science fiction and fantasy publisher Gnome Press. Asking price is $150. I had never heard of G.O.G. until this year when the Blu-Ray disc company Kino Lorber released a restored version of the ‘lost’ 1954 3-D movie G.O.G. starring Richard Egan. I never suspected there was also a 1954 book until I saw it at Brendan’s table. Leave it to him to find something like that.
John P. Del Gaudio
I first met John Del Gaudio of Rochester, NY at last year’s show. These two nice Charlton Heston collectibles caught my eye at John’s table. At left is an oversize press kit for the 1959 Heston movie Ben-Hur. At right is a large plastic ring bound softcover book from 1974 about epic movies with the Ben-Hur chariot race on the cover. I bought this book new in 1974 and still have it tucked away but John’s appears to be in a little better shape than mine. There is a series of these oversize books from the 1970s and they are not easy to find.
Keir Dullea & Gary Lockwood
At 5:00 p.m. I had to stop taking pictures in the dealers’ room and run upstairs to the seminar room where actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood were giving a talk with the emphasis on their roles in the famous 1968 Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. I took a few pictures of them and would have liked to hear more about how how Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole piloted the Spacecraft Discovery One to Jupiter and what happened next. But I already knew most of that since I had already read the book and seen the movie in 1968. So I went back downstairs to finish taking pictures in the dealers’ room.
Martin Grams, Jr.
Martin Grams, Jr. (green shirt) is this show’s promoter and does his share of the grunt work. Here is is setting up the equipmemt for the 9:00 p.m. screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey in the same seminar room where Dullea and Lockwood had spoken earlier. I chided Marty for not having Dr. Bowman and Dr. Poole on hand to narrate the movie for us but Marty said they couldn’t stick around that late. Before Marty arrived, I had set up my camera and took some time to do some bragging to the younger members of the audience about me having seen the movie when it was first released in 1968. I said I had already read the book by Arthur C. Clarke so I understood the movie better than the many movie critics and general public of that day who hadn’t read the book and were confused by the mysterious events in the movie. I also put in a plug for the paperback book by Arthur C. Clarke Lost Worlds of 2001 which explains how he and director Stanley Kubrick worked on the movie together. Marty said he had just recently read the book and agreed that it explained events in the movie better than the movie itself did.
2001: A Space Odyssey
I have to admit to feeling a little tingle of nostalgia when seeing part of 2001 on a (much smaller) movie screen again after 48 years.
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