Rodney A. Grant Autograph Card

As 2,000 veterans make their way to Standing Rock to hopefully alleviate some of the pressure at the pipeline protest site, where members of over 300 Native American and Aboriginal tribes and a few courageous others who defy the local government's threat of daily $1000 fines for standing alongside people trying to protect not just their land but also their entire region's water supply, I thought I could take a moment to feature character actor Rodney A. Grant - a member of the Omaha tribe of Nebraska - who is perhaps more known for his portrayal of Wind In His Hair in the 1990 Kevin Costner epic Dances With Wolves and legendary warrior Crazy Horse in the 1991 TV movie Son Of The Morning Star.

He also had bit parts in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), The Jack Bull (1999), Ghosts Of Mars (2001) and both iterations of Ghenghis Khan (1992 and 2010). On television, he was a regular on Hawkeye (1994-95) and had guest spots on Due South, Two and Stargate SG-1.

However, for the purpose of this post, I'll show him from his tiny part in the 1999 flop Wild Wild West starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Salma Hayek and Kenneth Branagh, with card #A-13 from Fleer/Skybox's 1999 Wild Wild West collection (and Autograph Series sub-set), with a close-up of his face and an on-card signature in thin (fading) black sharpie:

 I got this card in a re-pack of "Celebrity" cards.

Orestes Matacena Autograph Card

Here's a fun card to celebrate an historic event: Cuban character actor Orestes Matacena plying Spanish Dignitary in the 1999 big-budget flop Wild Wild West, the Will Smith movie that Kevin Smith inadvertently wrote a scene for when he thought he was writing a Superman script for Tim Burton:

It's card #A-10 from Fleer/Skybox's 1999 Wild Wild West collection (and Autograph Series sub-set), with a close-up of Matacena's face and an on-card signature in black sharpie.

You may also know him as Niko from the 1994 Jim Carrey film The Mask.

I got this card in a re-pack of "Celebrity" cards.

Chris Owens Autograph Card

Here is a signed card of actor Chris Owens as Jeffrey Spender from The X-Files, an FBI agent who definitely is the son of the Cigarette-Smoking Man and alien abductee Cassandra Spender, and possibly main protagonist Fox Mulder's half-brother:

It's card #A-5 from Inkworks' 2005 The X-Files Connections set; however, I have never purchased a pack of cards from this set - instead, these come from a "Celebrity Repack" by card company Razor and was in a sealed top loader with a sticker that said "Authentic Uncirculated", like this:

Apart from playing in The X-Files, Owens has had bit parts in many other TV series and small parts in the films Cocktail starring Tom Cruise (1988), The Recruit starring Al Pacino and Colin Farrell, (2003), The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth and William Hurt (2008) and RED with Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman and Mary-Louise Parker (2010).

I have yet to watch the current X-Files season, because I like to buy the DVDs/Blu-rays and binge-watch, so I'm always a season late on everything, but at least I don't have to deal with either commercials or  having to wait one to four weeks for the next episode.

Anthony Hopkins Clothing Card

So, uh, here's a bit of a downer. I actually got this card in a re-pack of sports cards, which also contained a golf autograph (since traded) and mostly (common) baseball and basketball cards - obviously not a pack meant for me, unless karma wanted to repay me for a past sin. It's from Razor's 2010 Pop Century collection, which was essentially a six-card box containing three autograph cards and three Celebrity-Worn Wardrobe swatch cards, probably at a ridiculously high price; my card is #SW-6 in the set, and features a piece of clothing (either a dress shirt of the inside of a blazer, in my opinion) guaranteed to have been worn by acclaimed actor Anthony Hopkins:

The Good: Sir Hopkins is an Academy Award-winning actor, known worldwide for his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs, Hannibal, and Red Dragon.

The Bad: I'm not a huge fan.

The Ugly: well, the card, overall. It's an awful design - I get the ''actor / theater curtain'' thing, sure, but why blue and not red? And why not a picture? Why so bland?

On the plus side, the celebrity's name is reprinted on the back, so it's not all generic. And my particular swatch has stitching on the side... which I can see because the swatch doesn't even make it to the edge of the hole.

I seriously wonder how little effort went into this sub-set (from images I've seen online, the autograph cards are light-years better), so much so that it makes me doubt the authenticity of the pieces; I don't think a company with so little financial means for a proper card design could be bothered to purchase their ''authentic clothing'' from renowned auctions (Sotherbys?) and instead am leaning towards some garage sale in Dayton, Ohio or a shady Ebay seller with a lower-than ''5'' rating...

Kurt Russel Swatch Card

It seems Kurt Russell's career is intimately linked to Elvis Presley's. Indeed, Russel's first film part was in the King's It Happened At The World's Fair, and he actually played him in the eponymous 1979 film Elvis, as well as voiced him in Forrest Gump. Not just that, but he also played an Elvis impersonator with alleged ties to the King in the under-appreciated 3000 Miles To Graceland.

He has other themes throughout his career, like playing in Disney movies, from 1969's The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes to 1972's Now You See Him, Now You Don't to 1975's The Strongest Man In the World to the really good hockey-themed Miracle, the 2004 film about Team USA's so-called Miracle On Ice.

Another recurrent theme is his frequent collaborations with director John Carpenter, notably in 1981's Escape From New York, 1982's The Thing, 1986's Big Trouble In Little China and 1996's Escape From L.A.

Other notable films of his include Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof (2007), Ron Howard's Backdraft (1991), and Mike Nichols' Silkwood (1983).

I got this swatch card of his in a pack of Donruss' 2008 Ameriana (card #106 in the set, the swatch card variant is numbered 73/500 and is considered to be of the Stars Materials sub-set).

Henry Fonda Swatch Card

Sometimes a story and an actor are a perfect match, and for terrific actors, it can happen more than once. In Henry Fonda's case, there may have been more than a half dozen such cases, the most renowned possibly being The Grapes Of Wrath, 12 Angry Men and Once Upon A Time In The West.

The Grapes Of Wrath is probably the one that struck me the most, seeing as John Steinbeck's book is a classic in itself, with a ton of amazing quotes that still ring true today:

Seems like the government's got more interest in a dead man than a live one.

That's why when I saw this card on Ebay going for just about the same amount as the stamp that's on it (ok, fine, a dollar), I just had to take it. It's from Panini's 2010 Century Collection (card #6, Hollywood Materials sub-set, numbered 57/250) in Donruss Americana packs. It contains a swatch of what could be a jacket, pants, or maybe a couch, I'm really not sure - but it's thick, hard, and rough.

In addition to acting up a storm on the screen and on Broadway, he also upped the gene pool by fathering Peter Fonda and Jane Fonda, also film legends.

Erik Estrada Material Swatch Card

I heard the cries: ''someone call the cops because Martin Brodeur just stole himself another Vezina nomination!''

Well, here he is, and not just any cop - a member of TV's CHiPs (which was the acronym for ''California Highway Patrol'', by the way), Officer Francis ("Frank") "Ponch" Poncherello, or as he is known in real life, Erik Estrada.

CHiPs was really Estrada's biggest role, and he played in all six seasons of the show's run, although a contractual dispute kept him off the first seven episodes of the fifth season. His regular partner, Larry Wilcox (Officer Jonathan A. Baker) played in the first five seasons. Estrada didn't know how to ride motorcycles before getting the gig, so he had to enter an extensive eight-week program to learn before shooting started; most of the time, Wilcox and Estrada actually rode the bikes themselves and performed the smaller stunts. And throughout the course of the series, they never took their handguns out.

After CHiPs, Estrada worked mainly in Spanish telenovelas (those cheap Spanish-language soap operas) and appeared in many a Reality TV show; he also does voice work in cartoons, namely Sealab 2021. He can also be seen in videos for Bad Religion, Eminem and Butthole Surfers.

In addition to all that, he is always involved in charitable work, as can attest this segment of his Wikipedia page.


This card (#TS-EE), from the 2008 Donruss Americana II set, by the company now known as Donruss Playoff LP (TV Stars materials sub-set) features a square swatch of material guaranteed to have been worn by Mr. Estrada. Look at it, look at its colour: it's pretty obvious it's from a CHiPs uniform, too. It is numbered 467/500.