Popular items went quickly, as fans snapped up everything from bobblehead sets of the 1965 American League champs for $400, to major-league baseball media guides for $1. Framed newspaper pages went for $50, and T-shirts were available for $5.

Ron Miller of Buffalo, Minn., started waiting outside the Metrodome at 4:30 a.m. He managed to score the one item he really wanted: A 30-foot banner noting the late Kirby Puckett's induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.

“I've been collecting Puckett stuff for 15 years, so this was a no-brainer at $100,” Miller said. “This is the one thing I came here for.”

Centerville, Minn., resident Kevin Peickert bought a life-size cutout of Kent Hrbek for $50. It was worth the 12-hour overnight wait, he said.

“I knew you had to be here early to get the good stuff, because it was going to be gone right away,” he said.

The event was one last chance for fans to snap up leftovers from the team's 28-year residence in the Teflon bubble, which closed at the end of this season. The Twins open next season at Target Field, on the other side of downtown Minneapolis.

As team staffers packed up for the move, they set aside anything and everything that wasn't worth taking.

Team spokesman Kevin Smith was amazed by the brisk turnout Saturday.

“I can't explain it,” he said. “Maybe this is kind of closure for people - we had the last (regular season) game, then the 163rd, then it was all over. It's one last chance. A lot of the stuff in here really resonates for people. And if you're a collector, there's good stuff to be had.”

The sale began at 10 a.m., most of the items piled on folding tables along 15 sections of the Metrodome's concourse. Within two hours, the pickings had grown slim.

“Not much left but bobbleheads, Homer Hankies and refrigerator magnets,” said Rusty Krentz, who drove three hours from her home in far western Minnesota. “It was worth it, though.”

Among the other deals: a bobblehead of TC, the team's furry mascot, for $5; logo-emblazoned socks for $4; ball caps and straw hats for $3; and plastic bats for $2.

A bobblehead collection of the entire roster of the 1987 World Series champions went for $350.

Ben Golnik, a political consultant from St. Paul, found that particular deal too good to pass up.

“It's a serious collectible, and at what, $17 a doll, really isn't that expensive,” he said.

___

Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-CS-11-07-09 1653EST

LONDON (AP) — What makes a British cultural institution? Style? Sophistication?

In the case of comic magazine Viz, the ingredients are swearing, toilet humor, and biting satire.

Martin Rowson, editorial cartoonist for publications including The Guardian newspaper, calls Viz "magnificently rude, irresponsible, stupid, puerile and brilliant." The magazine has influenced a generation of British humorists and celebrates its 30th birthday with a major exhibition opening Wednesday at London's Cartoon Museum.

Describing Viz is tricky — especially in a family publication.

It has echoes of classic U.S. humor magazines Mad and National Lampoon, with a dash of The Onion's news parodies. Like South Park, it exploits the comic potential of potty-mouthed children, and like The Simpsons, it skewers the mob mentality.

In form, it spoofs the wholesome children's comics of a bygone age — publications like Beano and Dandy, home of cheeky characters like naughty schoolboy Dennis the Menace.

Viz takes the comic-strip format and adds a scatological, satirical or just plain silly twist. A typical strip might involve the adventures of Black Bag, the Faithful Border Bin Liner — a loyal, Lassie-like companion who happens to be a plastic garbage bag.

Recurring characters include pompous TV personality Roger Mellie: the Man on the Telly; Finbar Saunders and his Double Entendres; woman-baiting Sid the Sexist; the sanctimonious Modern Parents — and many others too salty for discussion here.

In the magazine's pages, Britons are drunken, lecherous, conniving and often stupid. Real-life figures — from rock stars Sting and Bono to Osama bin Laden — are ruthlessly mocked. There are parodies of tabloid newspapers' obsession with celebrities and aliens, and the long-running column Top Tips, which offers nonsensical nuggets of advice like "Don't waste money buying expensive binoculars. Simply stand closer to the object you wish to view."

"It's in that great tradition of vicious and surreal British humor that includes Monty Python," said writer and broadcaster Charlie Brooker, who cites Viz as a major influence on his own screeds against the idiocy of television.

Graham Dury, one of three writer-cartoonists who create the magazine in a small office in Newcastle, northern England, said that when it first appeared in 1979, Viz was unique — "a children's comic that could be read by adults and laughed at by adults."

"We weren't the first people to do cartoons with swearing in — there was Robert Crumb and stuff like that," he said. "But we were the first to do it like a children's cartoon. It did look very much like the Dandy and the Beano, because we all read comics like that, and then when we got to 13 or 14 we stopped because they weren't made for us anymore. We thought it would be nice if you could just carry on reading a grown-up version."

Founded by teenage brothers Chris and Simon Donald in their Newcastle bedroom, inspired by the do-it-yourself ethos of punk fanzines — and partly funded by a small-business grant from Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government — Viz grew from local student favorite to national best-seller. By 1990, it had a circulation of more than 1 million copies, making it one of Britain's top-selling magazines. One survey of the time estimated that two-thirds of 18- to 35-year-old British men had read it.

There were spinoff TV cartoons and an animated feature film. Highbrow humorist Auberon Waugh said that "if the future generations look back on the literature of the age, they'll more usefully look to Viz than they would, for instance, the novels of Peter Ackroyd and Julian Barnes."

Viz's mockery of tabloid culture and trash TV has been widely imitated. The magazine also helped spawn a slew of huge-selling "lad mags" in the 1990s, which embraced the spirit of political incorrectness but ditched Viz's satire and, arguably, its sophistication.

Viz now sells a more modest 80,000 copies a month and resolutely goes its own way. The cartoonists shudder at the memory of the time their publisher suggested consulting focus groups.

Judging by the long lines of buyers at 30th-anniversary book signings, readers remain plentiful, mostly male, and range from students to middle-aged office workers.

In its disdain for politics of both left and right, its lusty embrace of bad behavior and its refusal to look on the sunny side, Viz is uniquely British.

Viz cartoonist Simon Thorp said the magazine's key premise is "that everything's rubbish, including this comic. It's a magazine that's masquerading like it's been produced by stupid people."

It's a sensibility that has not always traveled well. Viz sells in small quantities in Canada and Australia, and scarcely at all in the United States, a country that in some ways remains separated from Britain by an Atlantic-sized humor rift.

Thorp recalls how several years ago the magazine produced a map of the British Isles showing all the country's worst features — towns and cities were represented by serial killers, hooligans, toxic waste dumps. It was a big success. A similar map of Europe followed.

"And then we thought, we'll do an American one," Thorp said. "But when you go to America, you realize everybody in America loves America. You couldn't really start slagging it off. It would seem really rude and unpleasant."

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

#   #   #

The Fayetteville Observer reported that a crew from the NHK Kagoshima Station visited Warpath Military Collectibles in Fayetteville, where several of the flags are for sale or on display.

The good-luck flags have a red circle on a white background and are inscribed with Japanese characters. Members of the soldiers' families and communities signed the flags wishing them good luck on the battlefield.

The TV crew also wants to talk with veterans or their families who sold the flags to the shop.

A 30-minute documentary will be broadcast on Dec. 8, the 68th anniversary of the U.S. declaration of war against Japan, the day after the Pearl Harbor attack of Dec. 7, 1941.

___

Information from: The Fayetteville Observer,
http://www.fayobserver.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-10-07-09 0809EDT

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) - The world's largest collection of Grateful Dead memorabilia has found new life on the Internet, where the psychedelic rock band's recordings, photos and collectibles will be preserved online.

The Grateful Dead Archive is currently housed at the McHenry Library on the University of California, Santa Cruz campus.

The school's library has received $615,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to photograph the collection items and upload them to a new Web site, The Virtual Terrapin Station.

Once uploaded, the public will be able to access the collection online and contribute their own digital photos.

The extensive collection includes thousands of pictures, toys, posters, journals, show tickets and other pieces of paraphernalia donated by band members and fans.

___

Information from: Santa Cruz Sentinel,
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-09-30-09 1247EDT

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Taking a page from the wildly popular Comic-Con, Disney is wishing upon a four-day expo this weekend to draw more enthusiasm from its loyal and well-wired fan base.

Clubs and fan fests have long worked to rally Star Trek, Barbie and comic book collectors, but the D23 Expo, which opened yesterday in Anaheim, and an online fan club of the same name launched earlier this year are Disney's first attempts to organize and romance its far-flung followers.

Over the long run, strengthening the relationship between the company and its fans online can create self-perpetuating marketing, where eager fans can promote Disney products online without the company incurring further costs.

By copying Comic-Con - which attracted about 126,000 comic book lovers to this year's July event in San Diego - Disney can tantalize devotees with behind-the-scenes access to the franchise's celebrities and upcoming movies.

"When you talk about Disney fans, they want to consume every iota, every scrap of minutiae they can get their hands on,'' said Steven Clark, head of D23. "All this is unprecedented - we've never granted this kind of access to our fans.''

Disney is corralling all the divisions and businesses under its umbrella - about 30 brands, including Pixar, ABC-TV and the theme parks - for the event at the Anaheim Convention Center. For $37 a day, attendees get advance movie screenings, peeks into the Disney archive collections and updates on the company's theme park expansions.

While it's open to the public, the expo is the capstone event for the D23 club, which was named to signify creator Walt Disney's 1923 move to Hollywood. The company started selling $75 annual memberships in March but won't say how many have been sold. Members-only perks include a subscription to a collectors' magazine and access to exclusive events.

Stagnant DVD sales, less spending at theme parks and lower ad revenue at the company's TV networks have dampened Disney profits the past three quarters compared to last year.

The expo itself is less a reaction to a few bad earnings reports and more of an investment in brand loyalty, said New York-based financial analyst David Bank of RBC Capital Markets.

"I think it's more about tending a garden that's generally well-maintained, as opposed to fixing something,'' Bank said.

Clark was mum on whether the expo will make or lose money, although they have planned for tens of thousands of attendees. Merchandise revenue from the event will certainly be welcome, but perhaps the biggest perk for Disney is coveted, one-stop access to the Net-savvy fans who perpetuate the company's name.

"Consumers are becoming very powerful arbiters of what they like and don't like,'' said Gareb Shamus, CEO of Wizard Entertainment, which owns five Comic-Con operations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Toronto and Anaheim.

Companies are transitioning from wooing retailers to wooing the consumer - and ultimately, their Twitter followers, blog readers and Facebook friends, said Shamus.

That fan-centric model is already at work for companies like Mattel, which rallies its 8 million U.S. Barbie collectors through a paid online fan club and a sold-out, three-day annual convention.

What the company tries to leverage with its $25 fan club memberships is a collector's appetite to be in-the-know, according to Mattel's Barbie Collectors spokeswoman Liz Grampp. The company uses exclusive online bulletin boards to leak Barbie news to the 7,500 club members.

"It's about scarcity, rarity and the thrill of the hunt,'' Grampp said. "If we release the information slowly, we can balance the excitement and the frustration.''

But companies with influential fan communities face a two-edged sword. Fans empowered with fierce, longtime loyalty and the latest technology have been known to let their strong, sometimes negative opinions fly.

Disney's unofficial Internet watchdogs include Al Lutz, creator and full-time operator of the Web site MiceAge, which gets more than 2.5 million page views each month. Lutz said courting fans online is a shift for Disney, which was once wary of its wired commentators.

"Early on, they blamed the Internet for a lot of their failures and bad word of mouth,'' he said.

Shortly after Disney launched its fan club this past spring, MiceAge posted blogs skeptical of the $75 membership fee and recommending fans hold out on joining. Later, the site reversed that position when Disney released a schedule of members-only events that one columnist called "pure magic to a Disney fan.''

"Apparently fans asked and they listened,'' Lutz wrote.

On D23's Facebook page, some fans grouse at what seems to be a money-grubbing Expo. An overwhelming majority, however, is spellbound by a program that includes personal appearances by company heroes like president Robert Iger and Pixar chief John Lasseter.

Disney fan Jennifer Morrissey, 33, is so devoted that she decorates her home with Disney collectibles and had Mickey Mouse tattooed onto her ankle. She is flying from Boston to spend all four days at the Expo and said Disney is finally seeing the importance in courting their fan core.

"In the past, they were more interested in the bottom line,'' Morrissey said. "They're finally getting that we exist and there's a need for something like this.''

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-09-09-09 1657EDT

ROEDENTAL, Germany (AP) - Ceramics craftsman Udo Troeger labors on a porcelain figurine at the M.I. Hummel factory, working alone under low-hanging fluorescent lights. A blaring radio fills the silence amid rows of empty desks.

That Troeger, or anyone, remains at work represents progress for Hummel. The 74-year-old line of sentimental porcelain figures popular with collectors is trying to make a go of it under new owners, having been shut down from October 2008 to late February as a consequence of the economic downturn and the bankruptcy of its parent company.

Hummel is rehiring dozens of its artists and new management is cautiously upbeat, mindful of the troubles that put former owner Goebel Porcelain Factory in bankruptcy in 2006.

"We've had a good start," said Dagmar Treuner, product manager for the newly created firm Manufaktur Roedental GmbH. "We've had to hire more workers to keep up with demand."

Now, the plant has 111 staff. But the hundreds of layoffs are hard to forget when vacant, bright-green painting stations fill entire rooms at the plant in Roedental, a small town amid patches of forest and farm fields 120 miles (200 kilometers) east of Frankfurt.

As parent Goebel reorganized, it decided to shutter the Hummel factory and let go all 230 employees - so that it could focus on producing its glass and porcelain accessories.

Employees and collectors reacted to the news with disbelief, given that Goebel had been making the figurines since 1935.

"It was a difficult time for everyone," said Troeger as he worked. "The emotion from collectors was unbelievable."

"The decision was basically from one day to the next - everyone was completely caught off guard," said William Nelson, an American who has spent more than 20 years managing the M.I. Hummel Club in Ebersdorf by Coburg. The fan club counts more than 13,000 members worldwide. "People were shocked, disappointed, disbelieving and many said the interest was too great for Hummel to cease forever."

Joerg Koester, the director of Hoechst Porcelain near Frankfurt, stepped in, founding Manufaktur Roedental, which acquired Hummel's copyrights and production facilities. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Goebel had tried to maximize revenue from M.I. Hummel by increasing production, manufacturing up to hundreds of thousands of figurines a year. It didn't work.

"The old strategy was, in part: how many figurines do we have to produce to employ all these people?" Koester said.

The strategy backfired - figurines collected in warehouses and on retailers' shelves faster than they were purchased, deflating prices as supply outstripped demand.

"Instead, you need to realize it's a specialty market and limit production, growing slowly and carefully... We don't want to reach those levels again," Koester said. ``We'll be manufacturing a fifth of that.''

The recession has been hard on several other venerable hobby and collectible firms. Goeppingen, Germany-based model railroad specialist Maerklin Holding GmbH is operating under bankruptcy protection from creditors after it failed to secure new credit from banks. Ireland's Waterford Wedgwood PLC, battered by the global economic slowdown, has filed for bankruptcy protection after failed attempts at a restructure or a sale.

At Hummel, Koester, is relying on longtime employees such as Troeger, 55, who has 40 years of experience molding, casting and assembling the delicate pieces that make up each figurine.

The appeal of the porcelain figurines - such as the best-selling "Merry Wanderer," a walking boy carrying an umbrella and bag, or "Goose Girl," a bonneted girl with a pair of pet geese - is a combination of childhood nostalgia and the urge to collect. After all, they don't come cheap - prices begin at around $145 and can go up steeply from there.

"Forever Friends," which features two sisters staring at a swan and her chicks, and made in 2006, went for $1,650 recently on eBay.

The figurines are inspired by drawings of children done by a Franciscan nun, Sister Maria Innocentia, born Berta Hummel, which were published as cards and in books and caught the eye of Franz Goebel in 1934. Goebel was granted rights to produce look-alike figurines, and after her death in 1946, her convent created an artistic board to supervise and advise the manufacturing process.

Everything is done by hand - from the various casting molds to the drawn-on faces - and one figurine takes anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks to produce.

The nun's nephew, Alfred Hummel, who runs the Berta Hummel Museum in the small Bavarian village of Massing where she was born, remains an adviser.

"There's a lot of heart and soul involved," Hummel said. "It's not like selling cars."

Manufaktur Roedental is hoping this year's additional significance - the 100th anniversary of Sister Maria Innocentia's birth, marked by a multi-figure special edition piece depicting a parade of Bavarian children - will help to spark just that.
Employees, though, are as cautious with their hopes as they are with the delicate porcelain.

"It would be nice just to keep working," Troeger said as he assembled a palm-sized ceramic wagon for the anniversary figurine. "And, at the moment, it looks as though we can continue."
___
Associated Press Writer Caroline Winter in Berlin contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
http://www.mihummel.de/
http://www.mihummel.com/
Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WS-09-07-09 0952EDT

LAS VEGAS (AP) - It's a touch of old Vegas: Vintage neon signs are being restored and will adorn a stretch of downtown's Las Vegas Boulevard.

About 17 signs, some from casinos dating to the 1950s, will be part of the boulevard's Scenic Byways Plan, said Danielle Kelly, operations manager for the Neon Museum, which is providing the signs.

The signs - including the horseshoe that once topped Binion's Horseshoe casino and the slipper from the Silver Slipper next to the New Frontier casino - recall earlier years of the city that grew out of the desert to become America's gambling mecca.

"Everyone is working really hard to have the signs restored to their original condition," Kelly told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Workers recently installed the sign from the Bow and Arrow Motel at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Bonanza Road. It was restored earlier using private donations and was in pretty good shape and only had to be sanded, repainted and relettered. Its internal electronics didn't have to be replaced, said Mark Whitehouse, an account executive with Ultrasigns, which is doing the restorations.

The Hacienda horse and rider from the Hacienda Hotel, where the Mandalay Bay stands today, was already on display. Other sign candidates include those from the Algiers Hotel, the Black Jack Motel and the City Center Motel.

So far the project has gotten $240,000 from the sale of Las Vegas Centennial license plates to refurbish three signs. About $900,000 from the city went for median improvements in the Cultural Corridor.

Whitehouse said restoring the signs has been like getting in a time machine.

"At this point, they've become pieces. Art pieces," he said. "This is something we'd all like to do, and I'm doing it."

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-08-31-09 1954EDT

BURBANK, Calif. - At the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Mickey Mouse is rolling out the red carpet to greet his new cousin, Spider-Man.

The Walt Disney Company announced on Monday, August 31, 2009, that it would buy the company legendary comic book writer/editor Stan Lee helped to build: Marvel Entertainment. The deal, said to be worth about $4 billion, pays Marvel shareholders $30 in cash and about ¾ of a Disney share for each Marvel share they own.

"The boards of both companies have approved the deal, which was valued at $50 a share," The New York Times reported.

"We believe that adding Marvel to Disney's unique portfolio of brands provides significant opportunities for long-term growth and value creation," Disney CEO Robert A. Iger said in a statement.

"Disney is the perfect home for Marvel's fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses. This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney's tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world," Marvel's CEO Ike Perlmutter said.

MarketWatch reports that under the terms of the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters. Perlmutter will oversee the Marvel properties and will work directly with Disney's global lines of business to build and further integrate Marvel's properties.

Marvel's third-party deals (Sony for Spider-Man, Fox for X-Men and Fantastic Four, and Paramount for distribution of Marvel's self-financed slate of films) will remain in place.

___

Thanks to Scoop! for this contribution to Auction Central News. Visit them online at http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com.

AMHERST, N.H. - A 1966 magazine autographed by John Lennon and echoing the musician's hot-button claim that the Beatles were "more popular than Jesus Christ" is being auctioned at RRAuction.com. The auction coincides with the release of the remastered Beatles catalogue.

"Christianity will go," Lennon said in the September 1966 issue of the American teen magazine Datebook. "It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first - rock and roll or Christianity."

Lennon, whose middle initial at birth was "W" for "Winston" (later changed to "O" for "Ono"), signed across the photo accompanying his printed interview with the name "John C. Lennon." Presumably this was a sacrilegious reference to Christ.

The autographed magazine belonged to Datebook publisher Arthur Unger, who sent reprints of the Lennon article to Bible belt radio stations. Subsequently, masses of people burned their Beatles records in protest.

Unger recounted in a 1998 New York Times story that Beatles Manager Brian Epstein had been unconcerned about the outcry, stating, "They have to buy the records before they burn them."

According to Professor Brian Ward, expert on the Beatles and American popular culture and Chair of American Studies at the University of Manchester, England, the uproar was most intense in the American South, where many members of clergy condemned Lennon's remarks as blasphemous. Ward added that most Beatles fans were easily able "to reconcile their love of the Lord with their love of Lennon."

Ironically, the original interview with Lennon stating that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus" had been published by a British newspaper six months before the Datebook article, but there had been no backlash in England.

"Given that the mysterious ‘C' in John's signature falls right under the ‘C' in ‘Christianity' (in the Datebook article), and knowing Lennon's mischievous sense of humor, he was probably just punning on the name of another well known ‘JC,'" Ward said.

The John Lennon-autographed magazine is being auctioned on RRAuction.com in an online auction running from Aug. 31 through Sept. 16. For additional information, call 603-732-4280.

SOUTH AMHERST, Ohio (AP) - An expert at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library says he thinks an Ohio man's flea market find is one of the last Lincoln signatures.

It's on an envelope that was with papers Bruce Steiner bought in 2006 in South Amherst, 30 miles southwest of Cleveland. The writing says: "Let this man enter with this note. April 14, 1865'' and is signed "A. Lincoln." The date is the day the president was shot.

A handwriting analysis has been done by John Lupton, associate director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln preservation project at the Lincoln library in Springfield, Ill. He says he's "pretty sure" the signature is genuine, because it has Lincoln's distinct characteristics.

A Lincoln memorabilia dealer says it could be worth up to
$25,000.

Steiner doesn't plan to sell.

___

Information from: The Morning Journal,
http://www.morningjournal.com

Copyright 2009 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-08-17-09 0909EDT