Category: Niko’s Soap Box

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Back On Getting Side-Tracked

Now, where did we leave off?

We did get sidetracked with Tears of the Planet, and everything that came with it. But, now it seams like everything is back on track. For the most part. Running a business feels like it’s a train wreck waiting to happen. We just have to make sure that when things go wrong, we can steer that train back on the tracks. Hopefully we can avoid the wreck and go around it.

And, that’s what we have been doing for the last 6 and a half years.

6.5 Years?

It seems like yesterday.

We started off with an eBay store. I just checked the date too. Nov-26-2018.

It took us quite a while to get that first sale. But, it finally came, and slowly Kardboard Korner began to grow.

I don’t even know how I got to talking about the begining, but I remember that we had gone to the Flea Market, and found some Pokemon packs selling for a dollar. I thought to myself, how are they getting them so cheap that they can sell them for a dollar each. This was back when packs were going 3 for $10 at your local LGS.

Some of you might have already read this story before, and yes those packs were fake.

As you can see, we can get sidetracked pretty easily.

And, I just spent 2 hours looking at Japanese Vending Machines, trying to find a purveyor for Japanese stickers and cards. I’ve been meaning to change up the Sticker Machine at the store with something a little more unique. It seams like everywhere I go that has vending machines, it’s always the same stickers and tattoos that are in there.

Most of them aren’t even worth putting in. The only thing that really moves is the Pokemon card section. I could easily have put in a bunch of bulk, but I decided on Double Rares and anything unique that I can get for around a quarter. Luckily I managed to get a good deal on some Japanese EX cards, and those have people coming in just for the cards. I see people drop in 5 dollars at a time, trying to “Catch ‘Em All”.

Back on the Japanese stickers and cards, I haven’t found anyone selling them.

I’ll keep looking though.

Selling? kardboardkorner@gmail.com

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Final Fantasy IV

I can remember back in 1992, we would always go to Blockbuster, and we would rent a Video Game for the weekend. For some reason Final Fantasy II caught my eye, and it would always be rented out. Every weekend that we would go it would always be the first game I would look at to see if it was available. Finally, after what felt like years of going, it was finally there. I hurriedly grabbed it and told my mom this is the one.

I had no idea what Final Fantasy was. All I knew is that for some reason I wanted to play it. The drive home was longer than usual, as I read the instruction manual. I knew I’d be in for an adventure.

SPOILERS

The story started off on the airship, we started off taking down the enemies as they tried to attack our ship. Of course we won, Dark Knight Cecil was a beast, taking them all down one by one. We arrived in Baron, the King congratulated us, and then got pissed off that we questioned his intentions. And, he sends us on a suicide mission. Kain decides to come along, and off we go.

We reach Mist and little did we know that the package we had would burn the whole village down. I was devastated. This isn’t going to happen on my watch. I quickly restarted the game. And kept trying to discard that package that the king gave us. I tried using it in the castle, didn’t work. I tried selling it, couldn’t sell it. I tried discarding it. Nothing. Let’s try and use it in battle. Again, Nothing! And, then I realized, or at least I thought I did, that I should have used it on the Mist Dragon. I was ready, I marched my way through the Mist cave and got into the battle, and nothing. Silly me, I have to use it when it’s in it’s mist form. Nothing.

I gave up. I marched into Mist with my head hung low. Even though I tried and I tried, I still burnt the village to ashes. And, all I got for my troubles was a fight with Titan. I lost Kain, and I had to drag a girl across the desert. I didn’t even know where I was going. For 30 minutes I was wandering around the desert, I couldn’t find Kaipo, the village that was smack in the middle of the desert. I kept wandering around and around. I even entered a cave and this old man told me to go back to Kaipo!

At least I got plenty of experience.

After I finally found Kaipo, headed straight for the inn. Baron’s guardsmen came crashing in demanding I give up the girl. That’s not happening, I already killed her mom, and burnt down her village. I can’t let her get taken. Cecil fights them all off and the girl forgives Cecil and they start traveling together. But, before we go we take a walk around the village.

Is that Rosa? Hurry talk to her. Nothing, she’s out. She’s sick, we need to save her. Luckily, they know what she needs, so it’s our job to hunt down the Antlion.

End Spoilers.

And, that was my first Experience with Final Fantasy. I figured we should talk about the Games and Characters that make up the TCG. In order of the way I played them. We’ll post more on Final Fantasy IV in the following days.

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SSL and the Undead Toy Show

Hopefully you missed it.

We had our SSL Certificate expire for some reason, and it didn’t automatically renew itself like it was supposed to. Well it did renew, it just wasn’t showing up as renewed.

Tried logging on to the site, and well it caught me by surprise. No worries, just get a hold of our domain host, and have them take care of it. It took them about 30 minutes to take care of it for us.

And, now we’re back to normal.

So, what happened last week?

We did the Undead Toy Show, in Countryside. That was OK. I’ve noticed that there is a lot less foot traffic this year, as compared to other years in general. Shows and Events are just slower than usual. But, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop what we’re doing. How else are we going to meet everybody, and hopefully sell them stuff.

Like a Wolfpac Sting wrestling buddy.

Where will the next show be?

No Clue.

And, if we don’t find anything, we’ll be at the Swap-O-Rama on Sunday.

See you there!

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It Was A Good Day

The alarm goes off, It’s 5 in the morning and I need to get ready.

Sunday Mornings are meant for sleeping in.

Not today, we have to give the flea market another shot. Last Saturday sucked, but it could have been multiple reasons for that.

Slowly crawl out of bed, and what we need is Coffee. Plenty of it.

Then it’s time to load up the truck, and we’re off.

Wait in line, get inside, set up.

It’s cloudy but the weather says it’s not going to rain.

Plenty of foot traffic, already seeing some people I know. Making sales, I’m starting to think the flea market isn’t that bad. It’s actually going great today.

Que the Eurythmics.

“Here’s comes the rain again.”

It didn’t rain that hard, but when you have Kardboard all over your tables with nothing to cover everything, you got to move quick. Started throwing everything back in the truck. Found a giant blanket and just threw it on everything. We got to save everything.

Now we’re here standing under the hood of the trunk just people watching. The rain lasted about an hour and some of the other vendors were already leaving. I thought about it, but the weather did say no rain. So, I took my chances and set everything back up again.

It didn’t rain again which was good, and the traffic started rolling again.

90% sold was Pokemon, which is understandable. And, I got rid of somethings that I thought would never sell.

Win/Win for me.

Now it’s time to figure out where we’ll be next weekend. If we can’t find anything we’ll be back at the Swap-O-Rama in Alsip.

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Final Fantasy I P.001

Yes, it’s time I started to teach my little helpers all about the business. That means we need to start playing through the whole Final Fantasy series, and we’re starting off with the OG Final Fantasy.

I started looking for my old PSP, and the charging cables for it, and it was no where to be found. I told the kids that it would have to wait for another day. Then I started looking for some cards that I was going to start sorting, and lo and behold, there was the plug for the PSP. I tried looking for the Composite cords to hook it up to the tv, but couldn’t find those either, so we all sat together on the couch, huddled around the PSP.

-Spoilers

We started off by picking our classes, and naming the characters. We chose a Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage and a Black Mage. We named them and off we went. It took us a while to get through the King’s dialogue, because another reason we’re doing them, is to help them learn how to read. With one going into 1st grade, and the other into Kindergarten, what better way to learn then to play Final Fantasy. Sure it has words like coincidence, and prophecy but, it also has words like, the and is.

The next hour was spent walking around the town, and walking around town some more. And more. They decided to walk around in circles, as they thought that each entry to the town was going to be a different town. It was in and out of Cornelia.

Then it was off to the World Map, trying to get into the water, or crossing the bridge that wasn’t there yet.

The Monsters kept attacking us, and we kept battling them over and over.

After that it was time to buy our Weapons, Armor and Spells.

And, it was bedtime. Saved the game, and we’re getting ready to head to the Chaos Shrine.

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