Armitage relics, or: get your own personal (tiny) piece of Heinz Kruger’s costume
Screenshot of Heinz Kruger trading card — costume card produced by Upper Deck. Image located at Trader Crack’s Card Blog. Link kindly supplied by Dhana.
The base set of cards includes 99 different items, including 86 plot cards, 12 character cards and one movie poster header card. Each pack of cards has seven cards in it. You can buy one complete base set for around $20.00. Doing that would guarantee you an Armitage / Kruger character card, and it seems likely that a plot card or two might have an image of him as well, though I haven’t found these by googling (yet).
There are some other interesting items in this set, however, including personally autographed cards (though the advertising I saw doesn’t say whether Mr. Armitage autographed a card). Pictured above is another addition to the set, something slightly different — a “movie memorabilia card,” which is slightly different from the base card set. Note the little circle in the card with a plaidish pattern in it — that’s real cloth.
Yes, that little swatch of fabric on that card comes from a costume that HAS ACTUALLY BEEN WORN BY RICHARD ARMITAGE. But before you rush out to get it, there are twelve different of these cards, and ONE of them is inserted per forty-eight packs of cards. I’ve seen prices for the 24-pack box ranging from $62.95 to $74.95. At an insertion rate of 1:48 for the movie memorabilia cards, you’d have to buy two of those boxes just in order to meet the probability conditions for encountering each costume card even once, and even then there’s no guarantee. Since you don’t have access to the entire set, you could end up with multiples of one of the costume cards and no single instance of the one you wanted.
Ah, the search for that perfect relic …
Me + Richard Armitage 
Ah, even I who lovse having anything Armitage-related cannot see myself entering this fray. But it IS really cool. The idea to have an actual piece of a costume that has touched the magnificent body of Mr. Armitage available.
(Of course, the best thing of all would be to have what was INSIDE the costume. Well, a girl can dream, can’t she?! : ) )
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They are not selling pieces of Richard Armitage’s body quite yet 🙂
Lock of hair would be nice.
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Do you really think they cut the jacket into pieces? Don’t you think it would be much easier to make those cards with the left pieces from the cloth not used for the jacket initially? I am a pessimist and do not believe it is the true jacket. Or perhaps mine is the reaction of the fox in the fable with the berries hanging too high for him ;o)
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@CDoart I was way into the dreamy side of this with Angieklong then I read your comment and landed back in reality with a decided bump. 😦 While your comment is no doubt closest to the truth I prefer the idea that it was a part of something he had actually worn – however unrealistic that is – so I’m sticking with Angie!! 😀
Still haven’t see CA yet myself (the wait is excruciating) but hope to get there sometime next week as my grandkids’ schedules allow!
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Oh, sorry for tearing you out of your dream, Teuchter. That was not my intention! I think perhaps my reaction was that way, as I would not have even a minimal chance to get one card (like the too small fox not reaching the berries, who says they would have been sour anyway ;o)
I will hopefully see CA on 22nd of August ;o) In Germany the film starts so very late.
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Honestly, given my epistemological uncertainty I’m never even sure that what’s happening in front of me is real, BUT both the literature from Upper Deck and definitions of the term “costume card” on the web say that costume cards incorporate pieces of costumes worn by the actors. In the case of this set, there are also “insignia cards” which include patches of insignia used in the film — but these are specifically labeled as not having been worn during shooting. So yeah, I think at least as far as we can tell, these fabric swatches are actual costume pieces.
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THose cards are going to be very valuable in the RA as well as the comic world real soon- collector’s will be putting out the bucks!
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I just saw an eBay auction for the Heinz Kruger costume card with an opening bid of $75. 😦
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Have you ever seen “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” Robert Zemekis’s ode to Beatlemania? There’s a scene where one of the characters buys sheets at JCPenney’s and cuts them up and sells them as Beatles sheets to earn $50 to pay off a security guard at Ed Sullivan.
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I can’t help but compare these to the role of relics of the saints in the Middle Ages. One assumes that these items were faked, but they were the object of great desire, including commissioned thefts. In order to justify the thefts, a tradition grew up that relics only left their owners if they wanted to go along with the thief. So the point is really the belief that the item belonged to the source — and all the attendant cultural power that gave it.
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I think in the case of some BeatleFans the pieces of sheet probably served a more earthy purpose. 😉
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Why, Jazzbaby1, do tell! 😀
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I’ll wait until Richard’s card with the authentic cloth is on sale on eBay 🙂
Very interesting-didn’t know these cards existed!
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I’ve got to say that I’m with the sceptics on this one. Would they have shipped all the costumes back to the US? And if so, would they really have chopped them up and applied them to cards. Anyway, I think RA himself might feel there was a better way to spend money!
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Upper Deck is also incorporated in the UK, and it seems to be the industry leader in card authentication, including anti-counterfeiting holograms and videotaping signatures of cards. I have to say that I’m sticking with humani nihil a me alienum puto on this one as I’m increasingly hesitant to cast aspersions on the way that people derive happiness and/or meaning from their lives. My guess would be that he’d be embarrassed by the concept, as he seemed to be by the Guy of Gisborne action figure, but he’s demonstrably spent a large amount of money on a car that he was excited about and presumably he could have gotten transportation for much less.
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If I had the spare cash, I wouldn’t mind at all having one of these cards. However, I don’t, but I won’t hold it against those who do and choose to invest. These trading cards are a big business and very popular with a lot of collectors. If it makes you happy, brings you pleasure and it’s not illegal and nobody gets hurt–why not?
I am glad Mr. A bought himself a really nice car, even if he is shy about where he parks it. 😉 I’m sure he went through many years of beaters. The guy deserves a little luxury.
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I just want to mention I did a little bit more reading about Upper Deck costume cards. In the reporting about them the materials used to make the cards are described as “screen used,” and there’s some complaint / criticism among movie buffs that costumes are being destroyed for this activity.
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Yeah, I can see why that would upset some movie memorabilia buffs.
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I think in some of the pictures RA’s jacket looks a bit bullet hit anyway, so to cut it up further would not be such a big step from that. I still did not see CA, so I cannot say what they did with the jacket on screen already.
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[…] fans than I point out the manufacturer of collectible Captain America merchandise, including trading cards and something called a costume card. I see some of this stuff in bookstores, and even buy some of the publications. July 2011 saw not […]
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me + richard armitage relics « Me + Richard Armitage said this on June 16, 2012 at 5:07 am |