Palladium Stuff

I'm on the verge of flipping a coin when it comes to deciding whether or not to record a Roboblog Chronicles tonight. I kind of want to, but I'd also kind of like to get up early in the morning. Maybe I can do it in the early afternoon instead ...

Anyway, Treiz passes along some new Palladium news.

Palladium Collectibles & Art Auction #1

Recent outlays of cash to pay for the new Robotech® RPG license and numerous upcoming Palladium Titles have drained Palladium’s cash reserves to painfully low levels.

This auction will raise money to help make sure Palladium doesn’t stall in its recovery. Case in point, we don’t have the $10,000 to print 30,000 copies of our new Summer Catalog, nor the money to reprint a dozen books. This will help us do so.

Half the auction will be signed books published by Palladium as well as prints, posters and related products, and the other half will be artwork and animation cels. Some items are inexpensive, others are worth several thousand dollars. All are fun to look at.

Please spread the word, especially to people you know who might be interested in some of these unique collectibles, books, posters, prints, Palladium artwork, paintings, comic book art, and other types of art. And make sure you take a peek to see if there are some items you might want to scoop up for yourself. Keep an eye on Kevin's Ebay Store for more details.

First and foremost ... so they're paying for the license, that means it's really, truly GO, right?

Right now there's a bunch of random stuff in Kevin's eBay store, but at the bottom of the press release it says that these auctions begin June 14. And for we ROBOTECH fans, the bits right at the bottom are the most noteworthy:

ARTWORK
– Most from Kevin Siembieda’s personal collection.

Kevin Siembieda artwork (various), pencil and ink. Kevin Long artwork, inked. Kevin Long Robotech Painting to Southern Cross ($2200-$3500 est. value). Kevin Long black and white Robotech art. Vince Martin art from Kevin’s personal collection. Robotech®: The Sentinels® animation cels. Rare. Robotech® Macross SDF-1 cel painting. Robotech® New Generation cel. Akira animation cell (Est. Value $2500-$3500). Comic book art (various). Beetle Bailey, 1957 – newspaper comic art (Est. Value $1000-$1500). Hagar the Horrible, 1980's – newspaper comic art. “Colored” Prince Valiant Sunday Page – penciled, inked and watercolor painted by the artist, John Cullen Murphy – super rare! We have NEVER even heard of a Prince Valiant page hand-painted by the artist himself! Rare and unique ($4,500-8,000 estimated value). Robotech Animation cels ($120-$300 est. value). And more . . .

That's right, actual honest-to-god ROBOTECH RPG art, including what appears to be the cover painting to the Southern Cross book. Ye gods, if I wasn't going to California in a few weeks, I'd be all over that. I'm also always quite the sucker for cels. If there are any good Southern Cross cels, I might have to part with some of my trip savings and miss a few meals out there in Cali ...

See this complete release at the Palladium Books website here.

Kevin Siembieda also sent out another press release which contains some more ROBOTECH-related remarks. This one's kind of irksome. He's talking about problems and frustrations he's having with shops ordering books, and then comes to ROBOTECH ...

Robotech®. Here’s the big one you are not going to believe. Hobby distributors seem to have decided Robotech® is old, forgotten and unwanted. As a result, pre-orders are HALF of what they would order for a typical Palladium product. More madness and fear.

Robotech® is the RPG line we get requested more than any other! I’ve had hundreds of gamers tell me, personally, they can hardly wait for the release of new books. Plus, there is renewed interest in it from long time fans who miss it and new fans who have recently discovered it on DVD! The distribs should be ordering double their usual numbers, not half!

We are confident fans want Robotech® and believe we will sell truck loads of the new RPG and sourcebooks. But . . . arrrrrgh, it makes you want to tear your hair out sometimes.

*sigh*

That's life in the ROBOTECH trenches for ya.

See that complete press release here.