TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) – She’s a young icon who’s captivated generations of tween and teen fans without the bad or tarty behavior some of today’s popular “it” girls are known for.

Nancy Drew, the demure, quick-witted detective of the popular mystery book series, turns 80 this year.

To celebrate, Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe will host a birthday party Monday with Nancy Drew researcher and author Jennifer Fisher. It will include cupcakes, a scavenger hunt for kids and a retrospective on Nancy’s history and her look over the years.

“Nancy was such a fun, energetic, independent, bold character,” says Fisher, a Queen Creek resident at work on her second book about the Nancy Drew brand.

As a child, Fisher, 37, read the books written by a parade of ghostwriters under the single pseudonym Carolyn Keene about the confident, motherless young sleuth with a passion for unraveling tough cases. But Fisher fell out of their spell in college. Years later, she came across a vintage Drew novel and took up collecting the books. Now her collection of Nancy Drew memorabilia includes more than 4,000 books, collectibles, advertisements and ephemera.

“Most people remember ‘classic’ Nancy – the first 56 books published between 1930 and 1979,” said Fisher, who worked as a consultant on the 2008 Nancy Drew movie starring Emma Roberts. “But she’s still going. The classics still sell well, and they’re still being printed. Since 1930, there have been more than 500 Nancy Drew books published.”

Add to that several films, two television series, a handful of computer or video games, merchandise and the current line of Nancy Drew paperbacks, Simon & Schuster’s updated series Nancy Drew: Girl Detective, for 8- to 12-year-olds, and Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew for younger readers.

“They’re not quite as spooky or suspenseful, and they’ve started writing them in the first person,” Fisher said. “They’re definitely slicker, more modern. Everyone’s got cell phones, and Nancy drives a hybrid car now. Her friend, George, is a computer whiz.”

But while Nancy remains a beloved household name for many adult readers, she’s not exactly the mainstream sensation among youngsters that she once was.

“She was immensely popular and widely read up until the 1980s, and since then it’s been kind of hit or miss,” said Fisher. “You’ll find kids who adore her right along with kids who have never heard of her. Part of her popularity has a lot to do with moms and grandmas; the ones who really loved the books when they were young tend to pass them on.”

Fisher said that after the mania over modern series such as Harry Potter and Twilight, today’s kids may also be looking for more than the current books offer.

“They may be almost too modern and too short. Those more suspenseful, gothic elements from the classics have given way to a more modern style, and there’s not a whole lot of character development,” Fisher said. “The other thing is, Nancy’s very wholesome. There’s not a lot of romance, and you don’t have sex, drugs and all that stuff in there. Parents like her for that, because she’s a good role model, but in some ways, maybe that’s a little hokey to kids today.”

Whether youngsters perceive Nancy as a goody two-shoes or not, Fisher said there’s a reason she’s been a steady best seller for decades.

“Nobody wants to turn Nancy into Paris Hilton,” she said. “You can’t drastically change her, and maybe you don’t have to. Some people may find the classics a little old-fashioned, but the mysteries still hold up and really grip readers.”

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Information from: East Valley Tribune, http://www.eastvalleytribune.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-11-06-10 0301EDT

 

BALTIMORE (AP) – A rare baseball card that was bequeathed to an order of Roman Catholic nuns has sold at auction for $262,000.

The Baltimore-based School Sisters of Notre Dame put the Honus Wagner card up for sale after inheriting it from the brother of a deceased nun. The sale price exceeded the expectations of auctioneers at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries.

The nuns will receive $220,000 from the sale. The total sale price includes a 19.5 percent buyer’s premium. Sister Virginia Muller, who was entrusted with the card, says the proceeds will go to the order’s ministries in more than 30 countries around the world.

Collector and card shop owner Doug Walton of Knoxville, Tennessee, bought the card.

About 60 of the T206 Honus Wagner cards, produced between 1909 and 1911, are known to exist.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-11-05-10 1121EDT

DALLAS – The School Sisters of Notre Dame in Baltimore are about to receive a little divine love from the Holy Grail of baseball cards. A newly discovered T206 Honus Wagner card, left to the convent by the brother of a member of the order when he passed away, will be auctioned on Nov. 4 at Heritage Auctions’ Dallas gallery.

The card is estimated to bring in excess of $100,000.

“The proceeds from the sale of this card will go to benefit the work of the School Sisters of Notre Dame all over the world, in about 35 countries,” said Sister Virginia Muller, treasurer for the Baltimore convent. “Wherever the need is, we will share it.”

New T206 Wagner cards turn up about as often as bottles of 1921 Dom Perignon, Action Comics #1 or a diamond the size of a fist. Nonetheless, this example turned up in mid-summer 2010 when the card, which belonged to the blood brother of a member of the order, was left to the convent upon his passing earlier this year.

While the condition is not great – far below the most famous of T206 examples, which sold for $2,000,000 – it is still quite valuable, has caught the attention of collectors everywhere and represents a remarkable find in the world of high-end cardboard. It arrived to the auction house wrapped in plastic, with a note that read: “Although damaged, the value of this baseball card should increase exponentially throughout the 21th century!”

“For the first time ever, this copy of this coveted rarity is being placed on the auction block,” said Chris Ivy, director of Heritage Sports Collectibles, “adding one to the tally of genuine representations, generally agreed to hover right around fifty.”

It was Wagner himself who pulled the plug on the use of his image on the card, creating history’s most famous baseball card, though the reason is a subject of good-spirited debate among aficionados everywhere.

“The most popular story is that Wagner wanted no role in the promotion of tobacco use to kids,” said Ivy. “Another theory argues that it was nothing more than a failure to agree on money that led the American Tobacco Company to end production of Wagner’s card soon after it started.”

“I had no idea who Honus Wagner was before we saw this baseball card,” said Sister Virginia, “but I’ve certainly tried read everything I can about him now.”

Either way, the boon to the School Sisters of Notre Dame is obvious, and the potential good work done as a result of the sale of this card will only add to Wagner’s legend.

#   #   #

 

MANKATO, Minn. (AP) – A Minnesota man has paid more than $8,000 for a piece of sports history.

A baseball autographed by Babe Ruth in 1929 was discovered among the belongings of an elderly Wisconsin woman whose possessions were given to relatives in Janesville, Wisconsin.

Margaret Rudowsky says her late husband caught a home run ball hit by Ruth at a game in Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1929. Her husband had Ruth sign the ball.

A man who wants to remain anonymous outbid about 20 others at a weekend auction in Mankato.

Auctioneer Willa Dailey says the Mankato man paid $7,250 for the ball, and with tax and auction fees ended up with a bill of about $8,300. The Free Press of Mankato says a California company certified the signature as authentic before the auction.

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Information from: The Free Press, http://www.mankatofreepress.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-10-19-10 0907EDT

 

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) – Jack Nicholson’s second-grade report card. Susan Sarandon’s Edison High School cheering jacket. An original Les Paul guitar. Those items and more will be on display when the New Jersey Hall of Fame opens its first exhibit on the boardwalk in Asbury Park this week.

The display, at 1200 Ocean Ave. in the 5th Avenue Pavilion, will be on view yearlong until the hall can move into permanent exhibition space at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton.

Until now, the 3-year-old Hall has honored inductees, including Albert Einstein, Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen, but its exhibition space has been restricted to the Web.

Superbowl champion Bart Oates will cut the ribbon for the new exhibit Wednesday.

“The Hall of Fame brings out Jersey pride in everybody,” said spokesman Don Jay Smith.

The exhibit includes 30 large-scale photographs of famous New Jerseyans in the arts and entertainment industry, drawn from the works of celebrity photographer Timothy White. An early Thomas Edison phonograph is on loan to the hall for display.

Also, the hall is still collecting items. For example, Jon Bon Jovi is shipping a denim jacket and Frankie Valli has promised to lend memorabilia from his long music career.

Thus far, the hall has elected three classes of inductees from the fields of sports, entertainment, and the arts and sciences. The public helps elect inductees through online voting. Smith said teachers have been using the hall’s voting process to teach children about elections and civic duty.

In May, Springsteen performed with actors Danny DeVito and Nicholson at an induction ceremony at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-10-11-10 1459EDT

 

CAMPBELL, Neb. (AP) – As some collect baseball cards or stamps, Doug Zuellner, 87, of Campbell has gathered items from his farming past.

For the last 60 years, Zuellner has collected about 300 cast-iron implement seats, like the one on a hay rig his father owned. He also has gathered other antique items, such as an apple press, pedal jigsaw and cement brick maker.

“I just enjoyed old stuff, I guess,” he said. “Everything I’ve collected I’ve either used or grew up with or seen used.” When talking about his seat collection, one of the first things he usually has to clarify is how the seats were used.

“Everyone sees one and calls them tractor seats, and they’re not tractor seats,” he said. “They’re implement seats from old horse-drawn machinery. There were only a very few made that were ever put on a tractor, maybe some of the old steam engines, but otherwise it was all on horse-drawn machinery.”

Each seat in Zuellner’s collection were cast by pouring molten metal into a mold and allowing it to solidify. As technology developed, seats could more easily be pressed out of steel, and the cast-iron seats went out of production in the early 1900s.

Born four miles north of Campbell in southern Nebraska, Zuellner grew up farming. He went to a country school before heading off to Campbell High School.

Zuellner went to welding school and joined the Marine Corps. After leaving military service, Zuellner returned to Campbell and continued farming. He went to several auctions where cast-iron seats were sold.

“I didn’t know much about them, but they looked nice, so I started picking up a few,” he said. “Then, there was a book printed on cast-iron seats. The named seats are all numbered and classified as to their rating.” The ratings are based on the scarcity of each seat, up to a 10.5, which is the rarest.

Zuellner found others who collected the seats and joined a worldwide club with more than 500 collectors. One of his rarest seats is a green Western Land Roller, one of two types of seats made in Nebraska.

Zuellner’s cast-iron seats had hung in rows along the inside of his machine building. Some of the seats were a dull gray, but others had been painted with bright colors. They have since been packed up as he prepares to sell the collection, along with other items he has gathered over the years, at an auction.

“There comes a time in life when material things don’t mean that much,” he said. “I’ve got five children, and I thought I didn’t want to leave them with the headache of disposing of them when I’m gone.”

Zuellner said he and his wife, Rosella, plan to stay in their home as long as they can, but they wanted to clean out some of the excess items.

He liked piecing together his collection from a variety of auctions over the years, but is ready to let go.

“I just like things out of the past,” he said. “I’ve enjoyed it for 60 years, and I think it’d be interesting to sit there and see some of my friends buy some of the stuff.”

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Information from: Hastings Tribune,

http://www.hastingstribune.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

AP-CS-10-09-10 0104EDT

 

WASHINGTON (AP) – Good grief, Charlie Brown. The world has certainly changed since the Peanuts were born.

In 60 years, the U.S. sent a man to the moon, survived the Cold War and now has one of the worst economic funks in decades. All that time, Charles Schulz’s imaginary gang has been a fixture of newspaper funny pages and grainy holiday TV specials.

Now, his family is working to keep Snoopy, Lucy and the rest alive for generations to come. A handful of new projects is in the works. The first new animated film in five years is set for release next spring called Happiness is a Warm Blanket, Charlie Brown. ABC just signed on for five more years of airing Charlie Brown holiday specials. A new social media game began on Facebook and Twitter last month to Countdown to the Great Pumpkin, and the comic strip has made its way to a popular gaming website for millions of children.

The enduring appeal is no surprise, said Lee Mendelson, who produced the Peanuts films with Schulz for more than 40 years.

Schulz had said “there’s always going to be a market for innocence in this country,” Mendelson said Friday as a photograph of Schulz at his drawing board was hung at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in recognition of his impact on the nation. Schulz died in 2000.

“The innocence and the humor that he brought, I think, helped us as a nation through many bad times,” Mendelson said.

Peanuts comics, which first appeared in 1950 in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, still appear in 2,200 newspapers in 75 different countries. Newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps Co. sold the licensing unit that controls Peanuts and other comics in April to Iconix Brand Group Inc. – a licensing company partially owned by the Schulz family – for $175 million.

Jeannie Schulz, the cartoonist’s widow, said she often hears from people at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in Santa Rosa, Calif., about how well the characters reflect their own feelings. That may be a key to the Peanuts’ longevity, she said.

“Reading Peanuts got people through really tough times in their childhoods,” she said. “I think it’s mirroring their feelings that life is tough, knowing somebody else is in the same boat as they – and yet having hope.”

A new book out later this month called The Peanuts Collection will trace the comic strip’s history and how it evolved over time.

Jeannie Schulz said the genius came from her husband’s commonsense, Midwest upbringing as the son of a barber in Minnesota who learned to tell stories in his own way. Schulz taught Sunday school and was proud to be a dad. He had an introverted take on the world, and yet was observant of everything around him, she said.

“Until people change. Until they take a pill to become perfect people and all have perfectly balanced personalities … I think he’s given them a touchstone,” she said. “He’s given them something to let them know that they’re all right.”

Fantagraphics Books Inc. is producing a series of volumes – each with two years worth of Peanuts comics – to let fans read the strip every day. On Oct. 14, the Peanuts cast also will launch a new Great Pumpkin Island on Poptropica, a popular game website for millions of tweens who may be less familiar with Charlie Brown and his friends. And the Peanuts gang has come to life online with Flash-animated comics.

Next year’s film will feature new animations created by a team involving Charles Schulz’s son, Craig, and Pearls Before Swine cartoonist Stephan Pastis. Even with the more modern trappings, though, the animations have maintained their simplistic roots. Jeannie Schulz has said in the past that computer-generated Peanuts characters just wouldn’t quite look right.

Before establishing a permanent place in Washington with the portrait unveiled last week, Schulz brought his characters to the Smithsonian in 1985 for a visit for a TV series called This is America, Charlie Brown. Lucy marveled at seeing a comic strip with their names on a museum wall, and Charlie Brown found his name and Snoopy’s on the Apollo 10 capsules at the space museum.

Schulz was a history buff and considered himself an Eisenhower Republican, but he mostly stayed away from politics in his cartoons. He included timely issues, though, such as the environment, race, bullying and other themes. But if he visited Washington today, Mendelson said, Schulz would be taken aback by the bitter political tone.

“I think he would be appalled,” Mendelson said, “and I think he would have poked fun at it in the comic strip.”

___

Online: Peanuts Inc.: http://peanuts.com

National Portrait Gallery: http://www.npg.si.edu

Great Pumpkin Countdown Game: http://greatpumpkincountdown.com

Click here to pre-order The Peanuts Collection on amazon.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-10-05-10 0558EDT

 

SAN DIEGO (AP) – San Diego will remain home to Comic-Con for the next five years.

San Diego city officials and the company that puts on the huge pop-culture event will announce a five-year contract Friday morning.

The San Diego Union Tribune reports the contracts that Comic-Con negotiated for discounted hotel rates through 2015 were key to the decision.

Other cities that tried to woo the company with offers of cheap hotel rooms and convention space included Anaheim and Los Angeles.

“It’s never been a secret we’d hoped to stay here, but the real challenge was that those who want to attend the event can afford to attend, in terms of size and space and cost,” said Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer.

Comic-Con started in San Diego in 1970. The event showcasing upcoming movies, TV shows and video games – along with toys, collectibles, costumes and comic books – now draws about 130,000 fans and delivers an estimated $163 million to the city each year.

Rival cities tried to capitalize on convention organizers’ concerns that they had outgrown San Diego’s smaller convention center. San Diego countered by offering organizers $100,000 per year in hotel tax revenue.

The city’s Tourism Marketing District said worldwide publicity from the event helps market San Diego as a tourist destination.

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Information from: The San Diego Union-Tribune, http://www.signonsandiego.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-10-01-10 0445EDT

 

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – For generations of people living in Oklahoma City, or those just passing through on old U.S. Highway 66, the neon sign outside 66 Bowl has served as a landmark.

The sign – designed to look like a bowling ball hitting a bowling pin – harkened back to the heyday of The Mother Road in the 1950s and 1960s, when it wasn’t at all uncommon for weary travelers who had stopped for the night to join locals in bowling a few frames.

“It’s one of the most photographed signs on Route 66, anywhere,” said the bowling alley’s longtime proprietor, 78-year-old Jim Haynes. “It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. There’s always someone out there taking pictures of it.”

Now the sign, and everything else at 66 Bowl, is for sale. Haynes sold the building decorated with memorabilia from the famous highway for $1.4 million earlier this month and an auction of its contents is set for Friday. The building soon will become an Indian grocery store and restaurant.

“I can assure you that there will be some people there who will be most interested in obtaining that commercial archaeology,” said Michael Wallis, a prominent Route 66 historian from Tulsa who served as the voice of the sheriff of the mythical old highway town of Radiator Springs in the animated movie Cars.

“I call the signs and the signage the language of the highway,” Wallis said. “That’s truly how the highway speaks. It’s those signs, those bands of bright, candy-colored neon and sometimes zany graphics, that help lure people into the establishment.”

The bowling facility opened in March 1959. Haynes and his wife, Peggy, bought 66 Bowl in 1978 from its original owner, Educators Investment Corp., and have run it ever since. The facility has hosted countless parties, tournaments and concerts, including one last year featuring Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Wanda Jackson of Oklahoma City.

Two years after 66 Bowl opened, Jackson and Wendell Goodman had their first date there after she asked him out. Eight months later, they married.

“I’m still married to her 49 years later,” Goodman said. “We have a lot of fond memories of that place.”

Last year, Haynes helped celebrate 66 Bowl’s 50th anniversary. Now, he says, he needs to raise money to pay a debt. He said he couldn’t find a buyer interested in keeping it as a bowling alley.

“It was just one of those things,” Haynes said. “I can’t blame anybody. I’m unhappy about it because I had a lot of loyal bowlers and loyal employees. But that’s life.”

According to Oklahoma County Assessor’s Office records, Spices of Indian LLC bought the 25,636-square-foot building and the sale closed earlier this month. Local real estate agent Indu Singh, who helped broker the sale, said the building’s new owner hopes to open a Spices of India store there by the end of the year.

While the loss of a Route 66 icon is disappointing, Wallis said, he said restoration efforts along the highway will continue.

“We need the old and the new,” he said. “We need to be able to live with change. What we have to do is make sure we don’t lose our best examples from those various incarnations of Route 66. We can’t save it all but we’ve got to save some.”

The sign being sold isn’t the original, Haynes said. Not long after he bought 66 Bowl _ he can’t recall the year but thinks it was in the early 1980s – a fierce storm toppled that sign, he said. He said teary-eyed bowlers persuaded him to “replace it just like it was.”

“When it’s working right, it’s pretty neat,” he said. “The ball goes around the sign electronically and it hits the pins.”

Louis Dakil, whose auction company will conduct the 66 Bowl sale, said bowling alleys across the nation are aware of the event and he expects the bowling equipment should sell. He’s as curious as anyone about how much the sign _ still operational although badly in need of a paint job _ will fetch at the auction. Haynes said the minimum acceptable bid will be $50,000.

The auction will be “very unique because of the nostalgia and collectability, just being a part of Route 66,” Dakil said. “It’s nice to be a part of history, although it is sad in a way.”

Update:

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – The famous neon sign of an old U.S. Highway 66 landmark has been sold at auction for much less than the owner had wanted.

The sign at the 66 Bowl sold for $3,900 Friday to business partners Chuck Clowers and Cameron Eagle, who run Junk Yard Daddies, a restoration business. The owner of 66 Bowl, Jim Haynes, said he had hoped to get as much as $50,000 for the sign, which is designed to look like a bowling ball hitting a bowling pin.

The 78-year-old Haynes says an investment that went bad forced him to sell the building for $1.4 million earlier this month. The building’s new owners plan to turn it into an Indian grocery store and restaurant.

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-WS-09-30-10 0300EDT

 

WASHINGTON (AP) – A group of Washington residents plans to rally for peace, love and a Volkswagen Microbus.

The residents say the Volkswagen, which is decorated with rainbows and peace symbols, is a “public art installation,” but city officials say the van is an abandoned vehicle and must be removed.

The car’s owners, a family in Washington’s Palisades neighborhood, are asking neighbors to come to a 1960s-themed rally Sunday to save what they call the “Peace-Mobile.”

The vehicle, which no longer has an engine, has been sitting in the family’s yard since the spring. After a neighbor complained, city officials said they would remove it by the end of October. Under D.C. law, an inoperable vehicle is considered abandoned if it is left on private property for more than 30 days.

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Information from: TBD, http://www.tbd.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-ES-09-28-10 0845EDT