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Ever wondered about the folks who work at NSU? Well here's
your chance to get to know them a little better.
| NSU Staff |
Biography |
Roxanne Toser
Publisher |
Roxanne did not throw away the cards belonging to her three sons.
In fact, she encouraged them to collect both sport and
non-sport cards. Through her sons, she became very involved
in card collecting. Beginning
in the mid-1970s, she became a mail-order dealer and was
one of
the few women in the field. As both a collector and dealer,
she became very well known. The time seemed right for publishing
a glossy non-sport magazine
in 1990 and she became the Publisher of Non-Sport
Update — the
first magazine of its kind. She published the first comprehensive
booklet on Wacky Packages and paved the way for others to follow suit. Besides the
family-owned huge collection of sports and non-sport cards,
Roxanne collects nodders and/or
bobbing head dolls — of course, non-sport related. In her spare
time, she attends bead shows and makes jewelry. |
Alan Biegel
Editor-In-Chief |
Alan Biegel began collecting non-sports
in 1990, with the acquisition of a Mars Attacks reprint set he chanced upon at a local antiques
fair. Since that time, he has amassed a respectable collection that
spans six decades. Specializing in cards from the 1950s & 1960s, he feels that no
set is truly complete without a wrapper to go with it. Alan began writing
for Non-Sport Update with Volume 10, Number 1 (1999) and has had at least
one article published in every issue since. In April 2002, he was featured
as the subject of a Philly Non-Sports Show promo card. Alan assumed
the position of NSU's Editor-In-Chief with Volume 13, Number 6 (2002).
|
Marlin
M. Toser
Managing Editor |
Marlin
Toser — otherwise known as Roxanne's husband — has been involved with trading cards for over 60 years. His parents owned a neighborhood
grocery store, while he was growing up, and he began collecting
sports (sorry!) cards at an early age. Due to chewing the gum, he now has
bad teeth or no teeth. Forty-seven years ago, he married Roxanne who eventually
became one of the foremost non-sport card collectors in the field.
Together, they have traveled the country doing numerous shows. In 1990, Non-Sport
Update came into existence and Roxanne gave Marlin the title of Managing
Editor. His accomplishments are too numerous to mention since he has none. |
Harris D. Toser
Production Manager |
Harris D. Toser began collecting non-sport
cards in the mid-1970s. He helped
start the Toser family-run non-sport mail order
business with the
release of the first Star Wars card series. He has been
a full time
Non-Sport Update employee since 1991 and has been the administrator
of
Non-Sport Update's online forum, Card
Talk, since 2000. |
Bill
DeFranzo
Pricing Specialist |
Bill DeFranzo has been actively collecting non-sport cards since 1980 when he rediscovered his complete sets of Robin Hood, Zorro and Davy Crockett, both orange and green back, hidden away since childhood. His specialty is promo card collecting and over the years, he has amassed an amazing collection of well over 7,500 promo cards associated with various non-sport trading card series. Double that if you include his sports promos. Bill began writing the Promo Column for Non-Sport Update in 1998 and has also submitted several feature articles during his tenure. Bill's objective is to collect every promo card in existence in spite of his mortality. Bill has been Non-Sport Update's Pricing Specialist since 1997. Bill also has an impressive collection of regular trading cards from the 1950s and 1960s. |
| Writers |
Biography |
Arnold Bailey |
Arnold
Bailey has been collecting both non-sport and sports
cards - and also memorabilia in both categories - since the
early 1970s, and also had a thoughtful mother who saved all
of his cards from his childhood in the 1950s. In the non-sport
area, he specializes in entertainment (movies and TV) cards,
plus cereal and other premiums, especially pinback buttons.
Someday, he hopes to corner the market on Kellogg's Pep
pins and cards and Roy Rogers pinback buttons. In sports, his
focus is on Ted Williams and Bobby Orr cards and memorabilia
and vintage Bowman baseball and football cards. He has written
the weekly "Collectors Corner" column for The
Providence Journal for close to 14 years, and also has
written for Sports Collectors Digest
(including its non-sport sections), Baseball
Card News, Baseball Cards,
Today's Collector, Toy
Cards & Vehicles, Gridiron Greats
and other hobby publications. He began writing for NSU
in 2001. In real life, he is the senior vice president at a
college in Boston. |
Ryan Cracknell |
Barely tall enough to reach the counter, Ryan Cracknell began his card collection with E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Little did he know at the time his grandmother's collecting gene had been passed on to him. Soon his card collecting expanded to dealing contraband Garbage Pail Kids to his friends at school. After being distracted by sports cards for a number of years, Ryan got back into the fun of the non-sport end of the hobby again a few years ago. Living in Canada, he found it hard to find people to trade with so Ryan began trading over the Internet in order to focus and expand his collection, which encompasses a little bit of everything from older TV shows and movies to new releases. When he's not sorting his collection, Ryan is a junior high language arts and social studies teacher. He also writes a baseball column for Canadian Sports Collector Magazine. |
Jon Doyle |
The first cards in Jon
Doyle's collection were plucked from packs of Topps'
Return of the Jedi. The days of
cards and gum in wax wrappers are gone, and Jon's card tastes
have progressed with the times. These days, he is just as happy
to get his hands on a rare autograph or sketch card, as he was
the day he was able to get card number 88 to complete that Return
of the Jedi set. Jon's writing career started in the
mid-1990s with a story entered in a science fiction writing
contest. Since then, his work has been published on numerous
websites and in each issue of Non-Sport
Update since Volume 14, #1. Currently Jon maintains www.webjon.com,
a non-sport card resource featuring show reviews, box breakdowns
and much more. |
Don Norton |
Don
Norton began collecting cards at an early age, his first
non-sport set being Davy Crockett.
He continued to collect cards into the early 1960s including
the classic sets of Mars Attacks
and Civil War News. After being
out of the hobby for almost three decades, he became interested
in cards again with the release of the Desert Storm sets. He
quickly began collecting comic, art, history, and entertainment
related cards and now has a collection consisting of hundreds
of sets from the 1950's to today. His strongest interests are
James Bond, Buffy
The Vampire Slayer, and Lord of
the Rings. Don began writing for Non-Sport Update in
2002, and you can often find him posting on Card
Talk. |
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Charlie Novinskie
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Charlie Novinskie began
his collecting career growing up in the anthracite coal region
of North-Central Pennsylvania back in the mid 1960s. He broke
into the comic field by having over 300 letters printed in letter
columns of Marvel Comics. One thing let to another and he landed
a position as an editor and sales and promotions manager for
Topps Comics--yes, that Topps, as in the most esteemed card
company of all time. Charlie has amassed a collection of over
20,000 comics and just as many, if not more non-sport trading
cards. A contributor to Non-Sport Update
magazine for over 10 years, Novinskie was responsible for writing
the "missing" Mars Attacks cards
that appeared in the 1993 reprint set. Charlie continues to
write trading cards for a variety of companies from his home
in Grand Junction, CO. He also volunteers his time as a Board
Member for A Commitment To Our Roots (ACTOR)--a
non-profit group devoted to helping comic book creators in need. |
Rudy Panucci |
Rudy
Panucci discovered non-sport trading cards before he
could read, when his older brother was in the midst of a hunt
for a complete set of 1966 Topps Batman
cards. Rudy remembers one of his first purchases being
a Topps Monkees flip-movie book.
A lifelong collector of way too many things, he continued collecting
such card sets as Wacky Packages,
Garbage Pail Kids, and any card
with a Superhero. He's been contributing to Non-Sport
Update since 1996. Rudy is also the Animation Critic
for the Charleston Gazette (WV),
and covers the action figure and die cast car scenes for Master
Collector Online. This is all part of his grand scheme
to make a living writing about stuff that he collects. |
Scott Thomas |
The
first cards of any kind Scott Thomas
collected were the Norman Saunders-illustrated Batman
sets Topps issued in 1966. Though primarily engaged in baseball
and hockey card collecting as a youth, his interest in the 1960's
NASA space program dovetailed into acquiring a healthy stack
of Man on the Moon cards as a second-grader.
His most remarkable non-sport memory dates to the spring of
1973 when his North Side Chicago elementary school -- both boys
and girls -- became infected with Wacky
Packages fever. As an adult, Thomas submitted short features
for The Wrapper starting in 1981.
He became a staff writer for NSU in 1992. And in January 2002,
he launched TradingCardHobbyist.com,
an Internet source for news and feature stories on our pastime. |
Dave Thompson |
Dave Thompson wrote his first novel at the age of 12. Having just turned 50, he desperately hopes there's another one inside of him (since by all accounts the first one was utter crap). His "Non-Sport University" columns are for the beginning collector to help de-mystify the process, and get more out of their hobby. Dave writes from a perspective of someone who has had many collections, beginning with bottle caps, then plastic drink straws, then the 1966 Topps Batman cards not already owned by Roxanne Toser, Scott Thomas or Rudy Panucci's brother. He also houses large collections of comics and CD's. His studies in music and a career in marketing and radio broadcasting have taken him across the country, from Bakersfield CA to Manahawkin NJ, and such exotic locales along the way as Des Moines IA and Muncie IN. All the while dragging a thousand white collectors boxes behind him in a U-Haul. |
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