Nostalgia - Rogue Trader books…

[HerbertTarkel]

Found this shrink-wrapped 30th anniversary reprint of Rogue Trader today at my local-ish shop. Wasn’t cheap, wasn’t too expensive; I owned the whole set of the RT books back in the day.

Now, to open the shrink wrap, or not? I’m probably going to!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

You absolutely should. It's a cool book with all sorts of useful (and cool) things in there. 

[Tactalvanic]

Get the wrap off it and see if its anything like you remember.

That and its fun to play with your toys.

Do it, otherwise why get it ?

Feed your nostalgia.

[LouieN]

Wow what a find AND YOU REMOVED THE SKRINK WRAP!!!???!!!

really have fun...

[Rick]

Take the shrinkwrap off, it isn't a first printing in that condition after all, just a reprint. Now if it had been an original first printing still in it's shrinkwrap, then I'd suggest leaving it that way, but it's not. It's cool, it's great but it's a reprint - take the shrinkwrap off and enjoy it for what it is!

[HerbertTarkel]

Heck yeah, that shrink wrap is gone. It’s not a first print, as others have pointed out; and it’s all I remember, and more! Love the nostalgia of this. So many good memories!

[carlos marighela]

Plastic wrap on magazines and books was meant for a reason. You maybe excited but unless you are positively tumescent about your purchase and suffer from a hair trigger, it's probably safe to remove the wrapping. 

I delight in binning the 'collectible' packaging on vintage kits and diecast toys on the principle that 'it's a model, it was meant to be built/ it's a toy, it was meant to be played with. Now I have a number of first edition books, some quite valuable but none of them are covered in plastic wrap.

I always though Rogue Trader was a sly reference to BTD but presumably it predates them. 

[carlos marighela]

Of course there is an alternative view. A couple of exes of mine had Italian parents, of the 'Garage Italian' variety. With that particular variety the kitchen is set up and entertaining is all done in the garage. The house was only visited for sleeping purposes, family life revolves around the garage cum kitchen-living area.

The parents did have a living area within the house but as it was almost never used. The furniture, purchased new in 1970 something, was still in its plastic, preserved as if in amber from an earlier age. No dust, food or human contact had sullied it in several decades. The one notable item not so preserved was the obligatory tapestry of John F Kennedy in the hallway, which my GF purloined and it adorned our pad in all its kitsch glory.

[HerbertTarkel]

That’s too funny, Carlos!

I too actually take pleasure in “ruining the collectable” nature of things by opening them. I once gave a friend’s son an insanely high-value Darth Vader Kenner toy, on card, and laughed insanely as the 7 year old ripped it open - he was a Vader fan. Somewhere some collector  cried … 

The furniture! My grandparents on one side - who were Italian - had that same plastic covering 

Too funny.

[carlos marighela]

Alas, the progeny, the second and third generations of migrant have given up much of their heritage. The bespoke, family owned and once famous three store Italian furniture chain that served their parents with the baroque, ivory and gold, bemirrored,  beds with the built in clock radios has pretty much gone. For a while the Arabic community sustained that particular taste in furniture but it's down to one shop in much reduced circumstances. The children shop in Ikea or some other big brand chain.

The rows of factories that surrounded my former paramours' parents homes  and sustained their households have gone.  The rag trade is dead, the car manufacturing industry is dead, pretty much all manufacturing is dead. Shiny new townhouses have replaced them. The houses and workers cottages whose gardens were either concreted wall to wall out front or had every bit of available space, front and back turned over to vegetable production are mostly gone. The palazzo con terazzo type affairs with the stone lions by the doors and the permanently closed steel shuttering on the windows are few and far between these days.

The inner northern suburbs have gentrified, the little coffee shops where their grandfathers would escape to, away from nonna and the kids to drink coffee and grappa and play scopa all day have been bought out by fucking hipsters and turned into ghastly bars or cafes where idiots these days seem to believe that the internationally renowned Australian (read Melburnian) coffee culture originated. 

The world changes, life moves on but on those rare occasions when nostalgia moves me, it's things like the absence of nosiy mass participation bottling of the family sugo and taking the piss out of Roberto Baggio's footballing prowess that comes to me. The past is a foreign country as it were but there's probably no point shrink wrapping it.

[Storm Wolf]

In the words of Arnie, "Do it!, Do It now!"

Carlos, here in the UK its even worse, as the first industrial nation and now the first post industrial nation, all I can say is it sucks 

However, you put it much more eloquently than I 

I`d call it melancholy Carlos

Glen

[HerbertTarkel]

Opened and enjoyed …

Feels so much better than sitting on a shelf somewhere. 

[Storm Wolf]

Ooh shiny! Much brighter than the two original falling apart copies that I have.

Enjoy 

[HerbertTarkel]

Ooh shiny! Much brighter than the two original falling apart copies that I have.

Enjoy 

It’s so much fun to go through; and it smells like a new book - not like 40 years of smoked in gamer rooms 

[Storm Wolf]

It’s so much fun to go through; and it smells like a new book - not like 40 years of smoked in gamer rooms 

I hear ya!