Amazing Stories
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 Amazing Stories Pulp June 1934 Abner Gelula Walter Kateley $24.99 Time Remaining: 29d 7h 8m Buy It Now for only: $24.99 |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE7 1951JOSEPH TILLOTSON $9.99 Time Remaining: 3h 34m |
 Amazing Ghost Stories 16 Matt Baker Cover $15.00 (1 Bid) Time Remaining: 1d 2h 41m |
 AMAZING STORIES QTLY SPG 1942 ED RICE BURROUGHS PULP $59.99 Time Remaining: 2h 29m |
 Amazing Stories Pulp October 1941 INVISIBLE MEN of MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs $59.99 Time Remaining: 29d 12h 54m Buy It Now for only: $59.99 |
 Amazing Stories November 1943 GGA with a Ray gun $12.00 (1 Bid) Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories PULP APRIL 1948 Robert Gibson Jones Monster Men From Mars FRESHP $24.99 Time Remaining: 3h 51m Buy It Now for only: $29.99 |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE12 1941ROD RUTH COVER $24.99 Time Remaining: 29d 5h 18m Buy It Now for only: $24.99 |
 Amazing Spider Man 98 CGC 90 OW WH Drug Story not approved by CCA $100.00 (10 Bids) Time Remaining: 2d 12h 38m |
 Amazing Stories February 1950 High Grade First Paul Warmin Sci Fi $29.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 AMAZING STORIES APRIL 1949 $5.99 Time Remaining: 13h 22m |
 AMAZING STORIES SEPT MAY 1947 VG FN SCI FI FANTASTIC HAMILTON STAR ADVENTURE $19.99 Time Remaining: 29d 9h 23m Buy It Now for only: $19.99 |
 Amazing Stories December 1950 John Jakes Cool Golden God Cvr $19.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 KELLY FREAS PULP COVER SIGNED AMAZING STORIES 12 1994 VG $9.95 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 48m |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE12 1941ROD RUTH COVER $9.99 Time Remaining: 28d 8h 28m Buy It Now for only: $9.99 |
 Amazing Stories May 1950 High Grade Robert Bloch $39.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 KELLY FREAS PULP COVER SIGNED AMAZING STORIES 9 1993 RUSSELL MILLER VG $9.95 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 48m |
 Amazing Spider Man v2 36 CGC 90 9 11 WTC Story $20.50 (7 Bids) Time Remaining: 2d 16h 36m |
 AMAZING STORIES MAR 1944 SCI FI FANTASY PULP GD BLOCH NO BACK COVER $4.99 Time Remaining: 15d 12h 38m Buy It Now for only: $4.99 |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE4 1951CHARLES GJONES $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 2h 54m |
 AMAZING STORIES 1941 NOV PULP SCI FI NAZI SUB CVR $199.99 Time Remaining: 12h 45m |
 Amazing Stories PULP Magazine December 1949 RG Jones Cover GGA $18.95 Time Remaining: 11d 14h 4m Buy It Now for only: $18.95 |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE12 1951RGJONES COVER $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 2h 19m |
 KELLY FREAS PULP COVER SIGNED AMAZING STORIES 5 1983 BENFORD FOSTER VG a $9.95 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 48m |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE12 1952LEO RSUMMERS $24.99 Time Remaining: 2d 2h 34m |
 Amazing Stories April 1931 $19.99 Time Remaining: 17d 8h 2m Buy It Now for only: $19.99 |
 Amazing Stories December 1945 Rog Phillips 1st story $25.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories January 1943 J Allen St John Cvr $35.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories March 1950 $19.99 Time Remaining: 17d 7h 26m Buy It Now for only: $19.99 |
 Amazing Stories July 1952 Pulp Magazine $12.99 Time Remaining: 2d 15h 22m |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE8 1951RAYMOND FJONES $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 2h 19m |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE11 1951SWIATEKKRUPA $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 2h 19m |
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 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE7 1951TILLOTSON COVER $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 2h 19m |
 Amazing Stories January 1941 Burroughs St John Cover Paul Back cvr $59.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories January 1948 Flight of the Starling $24.95 Time Remaining: 13d 48m Buy It Now for only: $24.95 |
 Amazing Stories January 1947 McCauley CVR $20.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories November 1942 GGA Caveman Cvr $29.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories PULP Magazine May 1947 James Teason Cover Desert of Damned $19.95 Time Remaining: 11d 14h 4m Buy It Now for only: $19.95 |
 Amazing Stories September 1948 High Grade Bondage Cleavage Cvr $49.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories December 1948 Wild Sorcerer Queen Cvr $37.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories May 1947 Virgil Finlay interior $29.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories March 1947 Pulp Magazine $5.00 Time Remaining: 29d 5h 19m Buy It Now for only: $5.00 |
 Amazing Stories July 1943 McCauley CVR Finlay illos $25.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories February 1942 High Grade Burroughs Giant $175.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 LUFKIN TOOLS AMAZING STORY OF MEASUREMENT 1973 Promotional Giveaway Comic Book $9.95 Time Remaining: 29d 16h 57m Buy It Now for only: $9.95 |
 Amazing Stories April 1952 golden gods FC $15.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories February 1947 Robert Gibson Jones Cvr $20.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Golden Age DVD PULPS MAGAZINES AMAZING STORIES 2 Experimenter Ziff Davis Asimov $9.99 Time Remaining: 9h 2m Buy It Now for only: $11.99 |
 AMAZING STORIES 1926 1939 + QUARTERLY 50+ ON DVD PULPS $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 14h 10m Buy It Now for only: $9.99 |
 Amazing Stories January 1950 GGA Dancing for the DOM $15.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE1 1949JALLEN STJOHN $40.00 Time Remaining: 2d 9h 29m |
 Amazing Stories October 1934 laser cover by Morey moisture stains Eando Binder $35.00 Time Remaining: 25d 8h 40m Buy It Now for only: $35.00 |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE6 1949ARNOLD KOHN COVER $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 8h 58m |
 Amazing Stories July 1950 High Grade GGA Cleavage Cvr $29.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories March 1948 Swashbuckling Good Girl Art Cover $39.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories Oct 1937 Morey Cover $69.00 Time Remaining: 17d 8h 24m Buy It Now for only: $69.00 |
 Amazing Stories July 1942 Wild J Allen St John Cover $55.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE7 1941STOCKTON MULFORD $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 2h 19m |
 AMAZING STORIES PULP MAGAZINE8 1952WALTER POPP COVER $9.99 Time Remaining: 28d 8h 28m Buy It Now for only: $9.99 |
 Amazing Stories September 1950 John Wyndham $15.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories March 1951 John Jakes $20.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories February 1952 John Jakes Emsh Valigursky int $20.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories May 1948 Pulp Magazine $9.00 Time Remaining: 29d 5h 25m Buy It Now for only: $9.00 |
 Amazing Stories June 1942 Emil Petaja 1st story $39.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories October 1951 John Jakes Valigursky int $29.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 AMAZING STORIES 1952 October sf fantasy PULP gga $21.00 Time Remaining: 25d 13h 21m Buy It Now for only: $21.00 |
 Amazing Stories July 1949 I paint from death Cvr by Jones $29.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Spider Man 95 CGC NM 94 London Story owtw $102.50 (8 Bids) Time Remaining: 2d 4h 49m |
 Amazing Stories 8 Vintage Science Fiction Magazines Hugo Gernsback on CD $9.99 Time Remaining: 26d 2h 36m Buy It Now for only: $9.99 |
 KELLY FREAS PULP COVER SIGNED AMAZING STORIES 8 1991 VG a $24.95 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 48m |
 Amazing Stories March 1943 High Grade the Metal Monster Cvr $59.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories June 1941 Burroughs St John Cover Paul Back cvr $99.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories PULP Magazine May 1948 RG Jones Cover Armageddon $24.95 Time Remaining: 11d 14h 4m Buy It Now for only: $24.95 |
 Amazing Stories March 1941 Burroughs St John Cover Paul Back cvr $129.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories March 1949 High Grade The Chemical Vampire Cvr $49.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories June 1934 cover by Morey Subjugating The Earth $35.00 Time Remaining: 25d 8h 48m Buy It Now for only: $35.00 |
 Amazing Stories V26 5 May 1952 Classic Cover $34.99 Time Remaining: 2d 15h 22m |
 Amazing Stories July 1951 We the machine Cvr $15.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories August 1941 Ultra High Grade Burroughs $199.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories Dec 1929 $25.99 Time Remaining: 18d 8h 56m Buy It Now for only: $25.99 |
 Amazing Stories June 1946 High Grade Male Whipping Cvr $49.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories Sept 1951 Giant woman carrying a man Frank robinson story $20.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories February 1938 $59.00 Time Remaining: 17d 8h 12m Buy It Now for only: $59.00 |
 AMAZING STORIES BEDSHEET ANNUAL 1 PULP GD 1927 BURROUGHS PAUL RARE MARS $399.99 (2 Bids) Time Remaining: 5h 42m |
 Amazing Stories April 1949 High Grade Wild Werewolf Cvr $39.00 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 18m |
 Amazing Stories Pulp April 1950 Robert Moore Williams When Two Worlds Meet $24.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 25m |
 AMAZING STORIES 1949 January sf fantasy PULP $36.75 Time Remaining: 26d 5h 41m Buy It Now for only: $36.75 |
 Amazing Stories Pulp September 1942 Robert Moore Williams Blitz Against Japan $39.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 36m |
 Amazing Stories Pulp July 1941 Robert Moore Williams Survivors From 9000 B C $39.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 30m |
 AMAZING STORIES 1945 1954 +ADVENTURES 40 PULPS ON DVD $9.99 Time Remaining: 2d 14h 10m Buy It Now for only: $9.99 |
 Amazing Stories Quarterly Pulp Fall 1948 Alexander Blade Richard Shaver Browning $49.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 36m |
 Amazing Stories Pulp May 1949 Alexander Blade Peter Worth Frank Patton Derreaux $24.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 33m |
 AMAZING STORIES Magazine Vol 11 No 4 August 1937 FIRST EDITION FN FV $17.99 Time Remaining: 1d 9h 2m |
 Amazing Stories March 1947 Pulp Magazine $7.99 Time Remaining: 20d 10h 13m Buy It Now for only: $7.99 |
 Amazing Stories Pulp May 1941 15th Anniversary Issue Adam Link Faces a Revolt $74.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 33m |
 Amazing Stories Pulp November 1942 Robert Bloch After an Age Eando Binder $49.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 33m |
 Amazing Stories Oct 1935 High Grade Rocketship cover $49.00 Time Remaining: 9d 8h 24m Buy It Now for only: $49.00 |
 Amazing Stories Pulp July 1940 Steber Eando Binder Adam Link Champion Athlete $29.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 30m |
 Amazing Stories Pulp September 1943 Frank Patton War Worker 17 $24.99 Time Remaining: 2d 13h 36m |
Amazing Stories
Discover the Amazing Story of the Creative Card Clips, a Failed Invention
The "Creative Card Clips” Children's Toy - Patent No. D286,555
This is a story about my experiences with creating a simple invention. A children's toy in this case, prototyping it, patenting it, getting it manufactured, and attempting to market it. We never actually sold enough product to turn a profit.
I was thinking about building "card houses" out of playing cards. I thought "wouldn't it be great if there were some way to build things out of playing cards so they would not collapse so readily?". I went out to the garage and after looking around a bit at all the crap on my work bench, I spied a piece of 3/8 inch diameter plastic tubing. I cut off several 3/4 inch long pieces of the tubing, and cut down into the end of the tubing with a razor blade, making four slits about 1/4 inch deep in each end of the tubing spaced equally around the openings.
I tried sliding playing cards into the slits. The cards were held firmly. Hey this might work! By about 2:30 a.m. I had a set of about 50 of these little pieces of tubing turned into “card clips”.
The next day I gave the clips and a few decks of cards to my kids, to see if the toy was "entertaining". I have four children who at the time ranged in age from 6 to 13 years old. We spent several hours playing with the cards and clips. We were having a great time with them. I called a friend of mine who had two kids as well, and of about the same age. I took the clips and cards over to his house and we tried them on his kids. His kids became quite involved in creating various items with the cards and clips.
Our kids were building quite a variety of things with the cards and clips. They built guns (of course), castles, cars, boats, planes, hats, necklaces, and all kinds of buildings. I built a castle the kids could get inside of it was so big. It took about 20 decks of cards. I also build a robot 6 feet tall.
To get a ball park idea of what the clips might cost we calculated what it would cost to produce the clips using injection molding with a 20 cavity mold. We came up with a cost of about $0.0125 per clip. (1-1/4 cents per clip). The tooling was about $13,000.
Next we needed to decide how to package the product. We looked into a variety of packaging alternatives such as blister cards, pre-formed plastic packages, and plain old boxes. We went with the blister cards. They were inexpensive and we could buy the equipment to do it ourselves fairly cheap. We produced the art for the blister cards and made up a catalog sheet.
We wanted to package the clips with a deck of cards, but we found that the decks of cards were way more expensive than the clips. We wanted to keep the retail price low, so we ended up packaging together about 30 clips and a half deck of cards. You could get just clips, or clips with a half deck of cards. I can't remember the pricing details.
We went to our local patent attorney and had a patent search performed. For the card clips we could not get a utility patent as there was nothing new and novel about my clips...basically a paper clip. We could however get a "design patent". You can tell a design patent because it always starts with the letter D ahead of the numerical digits. The patent number for the card clips is D286,555. A design patent simply prevents others from making "exact duplicates". They are easy to get around because if you change anything at all it won't infringe on the original patents.
We figured we could sell the card clips to distributors via trade shows. The shows didn't pan out for us though. As soon as a rep found out we would not be doing national advertising he would loose interest. Buyers pointed out to us that they had no "empty shelves", and would have to eliminate some other item to include the clips. We managed to sell a few thousand packages to Safeway and a couple of catalogs. I imagine that if we had been persistent and attended enough trade shows we may have been successful with the clips, but fate had other plans for us.
A very wealthy acquaintance of my partners happened to notice the clips in my partners office one day, and asked if he could get involved. This individual was highly successful and was selling his product nationwide as well as over seas. We said "yes you may get involved". Duh Big mistake.
The individual gathered together his key personnel, his best sales reps, his corporate controller, his advertising agency, etc. and we formed a corporation. We put up all of the equipment, tooling, and patent, and they put up the cash. It was decided to obtain more professional packaging, and our wealthy individuals "team" would sell it not only nationally, but plans were made for South America and Mexico as well.
We were feeling pretty good. We developed attractive packaging in cardboard boxes covered with photos of assembled projects. We had packages of either red clips or yellow clips. A dozen of the packages fit into a shipper. The shipper was designed to fold into a point-of-purchase display case.
And then we waited. The first sign of trouble was when only the wealthy individual put up any money. None of the others could seem to get around to paying us for the stock.
To make a long story short, none of the "team" did anything with regard to the clips. They were only involved because Mr. wealthy individual was their biggest client or whatever. Even Mr. wealthy grew bored and quickly lost interest, leaving my partner and I with 100,000 packages of card clips, lots of debts, and no support, no money for advertising, no salaries either.
Eventually the corporation declared bankruptcy. The best laid plans of mice and men…
About the Author
William Lund has been an inventor for over 35 years and has over a dozen patents. He has a website for helping inventors Invention Help He has another website:Making money online For helping webmasters make money online.
Amazing stories?
I want to read about any amazing story about how a samurai defeated 500 men, a gladiator who defeated the lion. Or this story i heard about this samurai who got hit with about 20 arrows and was still alive. any storing along those lines please?
"Essence of Aikido," by its founder, Morihei Ueshiba;
"Psychonavigation," John Perkins;
"Climb the Highest Mountain," Mark Prophet;
"Entering the Circle," Olga Kharitidi, M.D.;
"West with the Night," Beryl Markham;
"Inside the Aquarium," Viktor Suvorov;
"The Long Walk," Slavomir Rawicz.
"Expecting Adam," Martha Beck, Ph.D.
"The Great Divorce," C. S. Lewis.
These are all amazing victories, stories of courage, great and small.
Amazing Stories - The Mission Part 1