We see another regular release during the great trading card boom. Recent releases seem to immediately shoot up in price. People are going to retail outlet and clearing the shelves to resell blaster boxes at three times the normal price online. Will that continue with Archives? That’s not clear, yet, but I suspect not. While Archives may contain some of the new rookies, the hits are primarily focused on retired players from years gone by.
It’s early, but so far, this release doesn’t seem to have the same bump. Is the bubble starting to slow down a bit? Or is this a one-off because it’s not rookie focused? Time will tell. It’s still difficult to find at retail, but that is often the case during the first week or release. Some people claim that no product being available is a great sign for the hobby, but I don’t think so. If you spend a few minutes online, it’s very clear that product is selling out because people are trying to resell it for an inflated price, rather than actually collect the product. That’s anything but good for the hobby. If product is not available, people are going to end up not buying any. After a few releases where someone can’t find any product to buy, why would they want to keep looking?
After about a two month delay due to the world wide pandemic, Topps brings us the second series of The Rise of Skywalker. There is quite the backup of releases right now, and it seems Topps is pushing to clear that backlog quickly. Unfortunately, that has led to some quality issues.
There have been reports of poor collation and missing hits. We didn’t see that here, but it seems to be a common complaint right now. We did see pack sizes vary between 18 cards and 3 in some cases in non-hit packs. Given the quality issues for recent releases like Topps Total, these seem entirely plausible.
This series features a 100 card base set, with a number of parallels, as well as inserts also coming in parallel versions. The box contains 24 packs with 8 cards per pack. A box advertises two hits per box, including one guaranteed autograph.
This entry level product returns for another year, after a bit of a delay due to the global pandemic. It’s the same basic card set, but this time the complete base set has been reduced to 300 cards. The configuration of the box has also changed a bit. Instead of the standard 24 packs per box from years past, this year we see 18 packs of 10 cards. The price seems to have dropped a similar amount, so all is not lost.
There are possible hits in this product, but that’s not really what drives it. A hobby box does not contain any hits, but it does come with a few parallels and insert cards. Overall, it’s a fun little set to collect that won’t set you back nearly as much as most of the other regular releases.
This is an interesting release. There was a lot of confusion regarding this release. and the released checklists don’t really seem to address the questions very well. The box mentions 237 stickers to collect, and that’s true, but also a bit misleading.
The majority of stickers are full card sized, with a player card on the back. Some, such as those featuring trophies, have two stickers on one card, while the mascot stickers are one quarter of the size of the card. The original checklist also has four numbers not listed. It turns out these four stickers are included in the sticker album, and not available in packs. There are no hits or other inserts in this set. It’s a basic level set, that can be collected for the stickers in the album or for the cards on the back. It appears that a given sticker always has the same card back, but the numbers do not match.
A box advertises 50 packs with 4 stickers per pack. If they’re going to advertise the set as 237 stickers, that is pretty misleading. A pack contains 4 cards with up to 4 stickers on each card.
The global pandemic has delayed a lot of things, including many trading card releases. For me, this release wasn’t delayed, but the local store was shut down preventing me from picking it up. So this will be a little bit late, but the release looks worth the wait!
This wasn’t a surprising release from Topps, given their success with WWE Women’s Division cards, but it’s something new for Star Wars. I initially wondered how they were going to fill out a set, not realizing the cartoons were included so there was a very wide range of characters available.
The release features a 100 card base set, along with a few insert sets. Each has its own array of parallels. A box contains 7 packs with 8 cards per pack. One autograph is guaranteed per box, with possible sketch cards being an addition to these. It’s a fun release and can provide a lot of hits you don’t often find in other products.
