You’re the first to know . . .

[Kevin]

You’re the first to know . . .

The following info will appear in a Press Release on Monday or Tuesday, June 11 or 12, 2007, but I thought I’d give you loyal Murmur watchers the inside scoop before everyone else.

Robotech RPG

It's not "officially" a done deal until contracts are signed and a check is in the mail, but it looks like the Robotech RPG license is a lock for Palladium. We expect to hash out the last details on Tuesday and then it should only be 1-3 weeks before we have a signed contract!

That means, barring any last minute problems or unexpected delays, you can expect the new Robotech RPGs and sourcebooks to start hitting the store selves by this Fall – probably November and December.

Harmony Gold seems anxious to have Palladium Books doing product again, and we can hardly wait ourselves! Good stuff for sure.

Palladium Fantasy sourcebooks coming soon

I hope to review Mysteries of Magic over the next week and start planning its production for a late Summer or Fall release. Magic and Monsters (or is it Monsters and Magic or did Randi call it Treasure and Magic?) . . . er, anyway . . . Randi Cartier turned in her manuscript earlier this afternoon. I'm confident both manuscripts are packed with fun, new source material that will get Palladium Fantasy fans drooling.

Btw, Palladium Fantasy RPG sales have taken a sudden jump over the last three weeks. We’ve gotten numerous online and mail order purchases (a dozen or more) for fantasy products, and in many cases, orders for 3-5 books at a time. I'm not sure what to attribute the sudden interest, but I’m glad to see it. Traditionally, Heroes Unlimited and Palladium Fantasy are locked in a battle of switching places in the Number Two slot for best selling game line after Rifts®. It has been HU2 for most of the last year or two, but maybe fantasy is starting to flourish again. That means the new releases should only increase interest. Cool.

Palladium Collectibles Auction -- June 15

Cash Flow issues inspires Palladium to auction collectibles. A number of recent and upcoming product releases, including the John Zeleznik art book (gorgeous), have drained Palladium’s cash reserves to painfully low levels. Many of these projects have required money to be paid upon delivery or in advance. So over the last 6 weeks, we’ve paid out something in the neighborhood of $42,000! The “royalty advance” for Robotech will be another five digit outlay that will temporarily drain Palladium’s cash even further.

To alleviate this problem, I, Kevin Siembieda, have been rummaging through the warehouse and Palladium’s archives as well as my personal collection, to sell rare collectibles in an E-Bay auction.

Half the auction will be signed Palladium Books and related products, and the other half will be artwork and animation cels.

Since we expect to be moving to a new location in April 2008, this will help us reduce some of what we have to move to the new place too.

Items will include:

- Uncut sheets of the Rifts CCG cards (super rare):
A set of uncut CCG sheets suitable for framing. Six sheets in a set. One sheet signed by more than a dozen Palladium creators, including John Zeleznik. A full set is “seven” sheets, but it turns out we had fewer complete sets than we realized! We thought we had a dozen, turns out we only had seven and two complete sets have been sold over the years, with one in Australia!. A third sold at the 2007 Open House in auction for nearly $300, and probably would have gone for more if we knew there were even fewer than we thought. This makes those sets more rare and valuable than we believed (we think the full sets are worth $600 to $1000.00) and that the “Six sheet sets” to be sold on the online auction are worth $275-$500 each.
- Rifts CCG poster and unfolded picture flyer.
- Various sets of signed Posters worth $20-50 per each set; some folded some flat. All signed.
- Kevin Siembieda prints (various sets)
- Kevin Siembieda artwork (various)
- Kevin Long artwork
- Kevin Long limited edition prints
- Kevin Long Robotech Painting to Southern Cross
- Kevin Long Robotech art
- Vince Martin art
- John Zeleznik Riftswork-Z portfolio
- Larry Elmore print
- A sheet of old Palladium Stationary
- Black and white Palladium artwork
- Nightspawn, the 1972 “fanzine!”
- Sector 57 a, 1980, Erick Wujcik adventure sourcebook illustrated by me
- Palladium Crimson; signed
- Rifts Gold Ultimate Edition; signed
- Justice Machine; signed
- A set of TMNT sourcebooks
- Rifter #34 (four copies were found stuffed away in Wayne Smith’s office)
- Early Rifters (sorry no #4 or #8 ).
- A dozen Proofreader copies of manuscripts, signed and sold separately.

- Comic book art
- Newspaper comic art
- Prince Valiant sunday page -- drawn and painted by artist, John Cullen Murphy -- super rare (I've NEVER, ever heard of one let alone seen one; rare and worth $5000-8,000).
- Robotech Animation cels
- Other Japanese animation cels
- Color artwork and paintings
– Frank Frazetta posters

The auction will raise money to help make sure Palladium doesn’t stall in its recovery. Case in point, we don’t have he $10,000 to print 30,000 copies of our new Summer Catalog nor a dozen books scheduled for reprint (and yes, we do need that many catalogs, our mailing list is 18,000 all by itself, then there are giveaways for mail order, conventions, trade shows, retailers and distributors).

We are unearthing so many collectibles to sell, we may have to break it into 2-4 different auctions. We’ll see.

The first Palladium Collectibles and Art auction will start sometime around June 14 or 15, 2007.

Please spread the word and take a peek to see if there are some items you might want to scoop up for yourself.

Online sales remain up and down

One day or two, sales are way, way up, the next day or two sales are way down, the next day they are normal. The yo-yo effect is driving me to distraction. Hopefully, Summer sales go up and stay up on a consistent basis. We have a lot of great product in the pipeline for this year.

That’s it for now. Keep the faith and game on!

Kevin Siembieda
Publisher, Writer, Artist and Auctioneer
© Copyright June 9, 2007