It's my half-birthday today. Just 6 more months till the big 4-O.
[This was originally a rambling post, somewhat drunkily written.. Sort of a "state of the life address" bitching about various shit. But it was a little, um, too much for a card blog post, so I deleted those paragraphs. Not that my Star Wars-centric posts get much traffic anyways.]
When I heard about Topps coming out with a Star Wars 40 set, I thought that would be perfect. I'd buy a hobby box of that stuff, and desensitize myself to the number forty. If Star Wars can be cool at 40, then there's hope for me. And however old I am, at least I'll always be a few month younger than Star Wars. haha
So yeah, when I pre-ordered my 2 boxes of 2017 Topps Archives a few months ago, I also threw in a hobby box of Star Wars 40th Anniversary to help get me passed the free-shipping threshold for my order. While I love Star Wars, I don't recall ever buying/ripping any SW cards before.
It's a celebration of 40! Let's rip 'er open and see what we got!
Looks like it's a 200 card base set. The first 100 cards have various color parallels, with green and blue apparently being the most common. This first half of the set seems to be focused on film release dates and notable scenes.
The second half of the base set is really cool. It focuses on old school artwork, such as from promotional posters and production illustrations.
The box netted me 82.5% of the base set, 165/200. I think I'd like to go ahead and complete the set, so if you can help, here are the cards I'm needing (I don't care if they're parallels or not):
8, 15, 23, 29, 37, 42, 46, 49, 53, 57, 58, 61, 67, 69, 80, 84, 90, 97, 108, 115, 129, 142, 148, 153, 157, 158, 161, 167, 169, 180, 182, 184, 190, 191, 197
I got one serial numbered parallel. Not too exciting.
Each box contains a stamped buyback. I landed a pretty solid one featuring Luke in action.
The box promises 2 hits. As I ripped through the box, I got down to the last 2 packs without pulling either hit up to that point, so I started getting worried. But thankfully those two packs did indeed have the hits.
My promised auto was a dud. Some fucking extra.. I don't even know what movie this character is from. Force Awakens, probably? I don't think you could do worse than this. Maybe a key grip auto. Craft services auto?
Thankfully my second hit was solid and helped ease the pain of the weak auto pull...
It's a really nice looking sketchcard of Obi-Wan Kenobi. I know the artists don't get paid a whole lot per card, so a lot of times they rush through resulting in some lackluster sketches. But this one is pretty impressive.
I checked with the cardsphere's resident sketchcard aficionado, Raz, and he was able to identify the artist for me as Ashleigh Popplewell. Cool. She does nice work.
So anyways, there was that box. Wish the auto was better, but otherwise a fun box.
Thanks for stopping by!
Those weren't the hits you were looking for.
ReplyDeleteThat sketch is better than most Star Wars sketches. Most are black and white. I'm a little too put off by what they are doing under the Disney era but I would like to get the set represented in my collection. I'll probably nab a pre-disney single on COMC at some point, probably whatever is cheapest, lol. If they issued it to retail I might pick up a pack that way.
ReplyDeleteYou really pulled a wonderful sketch card, Ashleigh does some nice work. The buyback is cool too, many of the early Star Wars cards were off center and it seems like many of the base cards didn't stand up well over time so you have a double winner there.
ReplyDeleteThat Obi-Wan is fantastic and Ashleigh is a pretty cool cat.
ReplyDeleteCool stuff and that's one great sketch!
ReplyDeleteLife begins at 40! Lots of cool shit to do over the next 40 or so years (give or take).
ReplyDeletea buyback! what a cool idea! 40 was great for me - and the 13 years since haven't been too bad either!
ReplyDelete