Drew Tucker

 Drew Tucker, one of the original 25 artists for Magic, graduated from SIUC with a Graphic Design degree. After a couple of years, he moved to the Seattle area and , while he had done commercial work for a few years, got his first illustration commission from Wizards of the Coast for Magic. Eventually he moved back to the Carbondale area and taught art and graphic design at John A. Logan College for a number of years, until the Rauner administration when potential budget cuts caused him to find a position outside the area.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness

 Remember the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from your youth? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Other Strangeness RPG released in 1985, two years before the cartoon and toys swept the nation. Palladium Books was the first company to recognize the potential impact of the Turtles and was the first company to ever license the rights to them

To the Aid of Falx

It is not surprising if you have never heard of "To The Aid Of Falx". It was a 16 page module released by TSR in 1982. Written by Frank Metzer with art by Jim Holloway, only members of the RPGA at the time could purchase it. The only module rarer than this one, as far as I know, is the first printing of Palace of the Silver Princess, all of which copies were recalled and destroyed, although some remained in distribution.

Temple of Elemental Evil

Got in a copy of the original Temple of Elemental Evil over the weekend. The first edition version , still in pretty good shape. I remember the year it came out at GenCon. D&D players had been waiting for it for several years, ever since the village of Homlet module came out. Players had gotten to the point that they thought the TOEE would never release so when it finally arrived, the line at GenCon was a block long (rather like Illinois marijuana dispensaries last January) and 90% of the people walking around the convention had a copy.

Summer Magic

Have you ever heard of the Summer Magic se? Most people have not and I had forgotten about it until talking Magic with an old Magic player/dealer this weekend. You can read more about it here but essentially, WOTC ran out of Revised boosters in early summer 1994 with 4th edition coming out  much later that year In addition there were a number of errors in Revised that needed fixing, such as borders, apostrophes, coloring, etc.

WOTC therefor ran a rush production run of cards that were supposed to fix those errors. However, since Carti Mundi was tied up printing Jyhad and Fallen Empires, there was no room for a reprinting of Revised or pushing up 4th edition, so, for the only time as far as I know, WOTC went with another printer for a run of cards. However, this run came with its own set of errors and was printed on different quality card stock, leading many people to believe they are fakes.. Due to these quality problems, the cards never received wide release with regions in Ireland and other points in Europe as well as the US Midwest receiving most of what did release.

Due to their scarcity, only about 10 complete sets are known to exist, with prices for basic lands in the sets running about $100. The most common way to identify a card from the set, which WOTC denied esited for about 2 years after it was printed, is in the line identifying the card's artist as the printing year, 1994, appears on the line as well.  You can read more about the set and see some of the cards here.

Palace of the Silver Princess

One of the rarest of published D&D items is the first print run of the Palace of the Silver Princess, possibly due to the racy illustrations inside, although others said it was due to  illustrations by artist Erol Ortus that transformed monsters called "ubues" into hermaphrodites with the heads of TSR staff and other illustrations incorporating the like of Gary Gygax.   Be that as it may, Jean Wells, original author of the adventure, says she objected to the illustration but was overruled as management said it was too late to reprint. However, by the time the printed adventure arrived, upper management changed its mind. Some 5000-10000 warehoused copies were dumped in the Lake Geneva landfill and TSR recalled as many shipped copies as possible.

The adventure was rewritten by Tom Moldvay, using standard D&D monsters, instead of the new ones Wells had created, and reissued the book with new art and a green cover, instead of the previous orange cover. However, save for the setting, little remained of Wells' original work and the original content is viewed as mild by today's standards. The Moldvay and Wells' version is comparatively common, selling for $15 to $30. However,  roughly 100 copies of the "orange cover" exist and have sold for over $3000 at auction.