(PNS reporting from PDX) Area collector Reynaldo “Ronnie” Morales’ heart was broken Sunday night when a last-minute auction bid from an eBay “sniper” pushed the coveted September 1953 issue of Amazing Future Tales out of his grasp and into the arms of another.
The sniper killed Morale’s chances with a $37.83 winning bid.
Morales had bid $37.62, confident that his bid of $5 and an oddly-random number of pennies more than the highest posted bid was the combination that would win the auction for the rare issue, which featured the first and only installment of Chola Low Riders from Outer Space.
“I’m pissed, really pissed,” he told a friend Monday morning at the Mississippi Avenue Fresh Pot cafe, an independent shop that proudly serves coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters.
“I sat staring at the screen all Sunday watching those prices and almost missed the Super Bowl. Refresh, refresh, refresh, nada. I was sure it was mine.”
“I’m watching the screen, I’m the high bidder and then, a millisecond before the deadline, this total stranger snipes in with a winning bid. Who is he? I don’t know — there’s very little about him, calls himself SirVoxALot1993 in SoHo, NYC. Dammit!”
Morales, 37, of North Portland (photo), is a freelance Drupal developer and a self-described “collector of Mexican-American pop culture ephemera.”
“It’s about the semiotics, sure, but this cover spoke to me on an emotional, gut level,” he complained.
“Check it out. I have it on my iPad. Hold on. OK. The chola closest to the camera is mad-dogging at something scary off in the distance. Homegirl has her ray gun set on kill. You can’t see it but you can imagine the horror she’s facing. But there’s no explanation…just the tag line at the bottom of the cover. ‘Born to live la vida loca, but ready to die, madrefoca!’ That kills me. Remember this comes from a time when authors like Norman ‘Naked and the Dead’ Mailer still used words like ‘frigging’ because ‘fuck’ was off-limits. I wanted that magazine.”
Morales’ coffee companion, Kona Kosmopolitan, a contract techoanthropologist and published futurist, tried to cheer her pal:
Dude, be cool. What goes around comes around. Remember how you were all sad when you were out-bid on that issue of Future Fantasy with the Techno Titties from Tijuana cover and then you bought it at a yard sale for a quarter? Here, let me get you another latte.
Magazine cover via the fine folks at the Thrilling Tales PULP-O-MIZER. Photo by Chad Fitz.
