Raiding the Avengers Wardrobe

You may remember Luke's post from a while ago about his Black Widow costume collector cards, featuring little snippets of Scarlett Johansson's costumes from Iron Man 2 and The Avengers (probably the bits that touched her butt, but I guess we'll never truly know). I'm sure that you, like me, thought 'Oh, Luke. That's so weird. Why would you want to own something that probably touched ScarJo's butt? Stop being weird Luke. You weirdo'.

As I am a curious beast, I thought I'd have a little look on eBay to see what other costume parts were available (not that I'd buy any of course, because as we've already established, that's WEIRD). It was less than five minutes before I was hitting Buy It Now like a crazy fangirl. A crazy WEIRD fangirl.

I mean, how did I ever live without a card featuring a picture of Jeremy Renner awkwardly grimacing and containing a piece of Hawkeye's uniform? I DON'T KNOW. Sadly, this was the first of many as I quickly spiralled out of control, caught in a memorabilia-buying frenzy. Sigh. Join me after the cut for the rest of my Hall of Shame.

I didn't buy my first card by itself, as the seller had another one that I never knew I needed until it was right there in front of my face.

SON OF COUL. Sadly, it didn't feature any fake blood, so this must have been the business shirt he wore when he was conducting business that didn't involve dying.

The next two I had my eye on were auctions, and while I prefer Buy It Nows 99% of the time, I didn't really have a choice. I won the Steve Rogers, and lost the Avengers Loki, so the obvious snap buying decision was to buy a Loki costume card from Thor.

The Steve card was actually originally intended as a gift, but then when it turned up I, er, decided to keep it. That checked shirt is adorable. C'mon. The Loki card was actually the first to physically turn up in my hands, and is probably my favourite out of all of them. The material feels like Pony Hair (which actually comes from cows, go figure), and it's wonderfully tactile. Not that I touched it that much, of course. Wouldn't want the Essence 'O' Hiddleston to wear off. I did love my Thor-version Loki card, but given that all the others were from the Avengers line, I was still kicking myself over missing out on the earlier Loki auction.

I had bought a Thor card that I was admittedly rather apathetic about, but hey, a piece of his cape would be cool, right? One day, while waiting for it to turn up, I got a notification from eBay to say one of my saved searches had new results. Could it be...? Could it...?

WOOP WOOP! Mine! The fabric is much more utilitarian than the Thor Loki card, but it probably touched Tom Hiddleston just as much, so I can live with it. With my White Whale chased and captured, I was happy to call it a day on my my flurry of ridiculous collecting. That was until the Thor card failed to turn up and the seller issued me a refund. Well, if I was going to be refunded the amount of a costume card, I might as well just buy another one! I looked around for a while, because while my previous card choices were admittedly questionable at best, I didn't want to buy something stupid. Patience paid off, and I found the most un-stupid costume card ever.

Hawkeye AND Loki? On the SAME CARD? What witchcraft is this?? It might as well have my name written on it. I tried to justify it to myself by saying that it was a different section of Loki's costume, but it was a weak argument. At least Renner looks slightly less awkward in this one. Slightly.

Consider this a cautionary tale, friends. It would seem costume cards are like Pringles; you can never stop at just one. Keep thyself away from the Bay of e, lest you find yourself stumbling down the rabbit hole, covered in Pringle crumbs and clutching something that may at some point have come into contact with Chris Hemsworth's ridiculous biceps.

You have been warned.