The Golden Ticket
I was fortunate to be in my mid-teens when the Non-Sport Trading Card industry boomed in the early and mid 90s. And I might have been solely responsible for that boom, honestly. With my morning newspaper route money (about AU$60 a week if memory serves, which is about AU$150, US$107 or €91 now) burning white hot in my pocket, I would catch the train from my beloved Blackburn Station in Melbourne every Saturday morning in my quest to buy things I liked. It was invariably comics, fantasy books and packs of trading cards.
I had a few stops along my quest. First up was Alternate Worlds in Camberwell, a comic shop where I just so happened to buy one of my all-time favourite comics (my buddy Bart Sears’ ‘Brutes & Babes: It Begins…’), but also a copy of the Frank Frazetta: A Retrospective by the Alexander Gallery. They also had the Frazetta Trading Card packs and I may have made some mid-week post-school journeys to buy more than a few of those too.
Next stop was Minotaur in Melbourne’s CBD, back when it was on Bourke Street. The comic section was on the first floor and lordy did I spend a lot of time there. Among probably hundreds and hundreds of comics I purchased and quickly bagged and boarded, I also bought a nice collected version of Simon Bisley’s Slaine, Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries book and Frazetta’s Pillow Book (that will get it’s own review soon!).
Windsor, but not the Barry Smith kind
Occasionally, if the mood struck, I would hop on another train to Windsor to visit my favourite bookstore for old Fantasy books, Syber’s Books. Penny, her gigantic cats (who used to sun themselves in the front window) and the smell of well-aged books will be sorely missed by myself and many others.
Just down the road from Syber’s Books was the original branch of Alternate Worlds. They even had two stores there for a while, one to hold the huge amount of back issues they had for sale.
It was at the original store that I came upon a table piled high with items at reduced sale prices. On that table was a sealed box of the first series of Jeffrey Jones cards.
As a kid used to buying a couple of packs of cards at a time, the prospect of getting to open a complete box of cards for not much more than the price of a handful of packs was almost overwhelming to my young and obsessive mind.
I can still recall getting home and going straight for that box in favour of the comics I’d also bought. This in itself would have been unusual, because comics ruled my world back then.
Unapologetically Pedantic
There are 36 packs of 10 cards in each box and the set contains 90 cards, including the obligatory checklist that card sets used to do back then. Being the methodical chap I have always been with this sort of thing, I would open a pack and then set the cards in piles organised by card number batches of ten. Because you have to do this stuff right, am I right?!
Anyway, somewhere in those 36 packs of cards, I just so happened to find this here card.
Which brings me to my love of Jeffrey Catherine Jones. At the time of opening that fateful pack of ten cards, I would have already been a fan of hers for probably a few years. I’d spent long enough looking through old fantasy books to have become acquainted with her work; and I’ve always had a good eye for spotting an artist once I get to know their style.
Choices
For me, JCJ is a poignant and heartbreaking tale. She’s a person that was capable of seeing such delicate and intense beauty, yet felt uncomfortable in their own skin for most of their life. If you ever get a chance to, sit down and watch the wonderful documentary on her called Better Things: The Life and Choices of Jeffrey Catherine Jones. It is beautifully done and I’m probably going to watch it again tonight now.
Finding a little bit of cardboard with that beautiful person’s signature on it still makes me smile to this day. I never got to meet JCJ, but I think that she would love to hear that she still has a legion of fans. She touched us deeply and continues to do so to this very day. Through her vision of the world and how she expressed it through her art. She shared herself with us on a very intimate level and we are all the better for it.
As for that signed card… Well, it sits here in front of me as I write this post. It makes me wonder how many of those 1000 signed cards are accounted for (not to mention the Series 2 ones as well!). A quick look at eBay will reveal that there are still many more boxes left unopened. So it’s quite safe to say that there are still more signed cards hidden away somewhere.
The Jeffrey Catherine Jones signed card quest continues…
Back in 2019, in a moment of pure indulgence, I bought a listing of seven of those sealed boxes. Seven of them. Guess how many signed cards I found? Not a single one. Not one! Did I mind? Absolutely not. Would I do it again? Absolutely yes. Will I do it again? Probably.
I’ve often thought of those signed cards, like hidden treasures just waiting to be found. And the clock is ticking. It’s a fact that as time goes by, the UV protection once a selling point are now destroying those cards. Over the decades that protective coating has continued to react, even without air or sunlight. Because the cards are stacked on top of each other, the polymers from adjacent cards actually start to merge. It’s a process excellently named plasticiser migration.
Back when I was opening those 252 packs of cards, it was readily apparent that this was the case. Most of the cards were only slightly stuck together. But there were also some real doozies that, when finally separated, removed some of the image from each other. There are tricks to alleviate this problem, apparently. Freezing the packs might work. And twisting the cards so that the images don’t tear from the cards is another.
A Quest Begins
I honestly don’t think it’s right that there are undiscovered cards out there with Jeffrey Catherine Jones’ signature on them. They either might never get discovered, or will be ruined by a chemical reaction through time. In fact, I don’t think I’m going to stand for it.
So, I’m going to start buying me some Jeffrey Jones Trading Card boxes again. I may never find another signed card again, but I’m going to open a lot more boxes before I give this quest up!
The Jeffrey Catherine Jones Signed Card Registry
Now, this part gets a little interactive. I’ve created a registry of the signed cards from Series 1 & 2 (as well as a section for cards signed at conventions and such) and I’m asking anybody that is fortunate enough to have any of the cards in your collection to either add your information to the registry, or you can contact me with the details and I will add them for you.
The Jeffrey Catherine Jones Signed Card Registry
I think we, as her loyal fans, owe her this. Don’t you think?
A note on referring to JCJ by her full name: It is well documented that Jones long felt she was more feminine than masculine. She may have regretted transitioning to a female in her later life, but I don’t think this means that she ‘felt’ any less feminine after the fact. With that in mind, I think that including Catherine in her name and using the she/her pronouns is not only considerate of her, but it is also quite correct to do so. The tricky part comes when you have to reference the titles of products that don’t use her full name. I think it safe to use the exact title of the products as they were when published. I’m fairly sure JCJ wouldn’t hold that against anyone.
Click here for my in-depth review of JCJ’s The Dark Planet piece
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