Just to add to the conversation...

I see on ebay that a 1993 Marvel Universe sample foil of one of the villains, Fearmaster, recently sold for $ 35.00 plus shipping

15-20 years ago, these could be obtained for $10 or less, so I agree with promoking that alot of 1990s promos have gone up in value

This is part of a 9 card sample set, one for each of the regular chase cards. In the "old days", the villains' samples weren't that tough to find.

However, you rarely (if ever) saw the sample on Spider Man 2099. 3-4 years ago, I finally saw one sell on ebay for around $ 100

To date, 26 years later, I have never seen the one for Punisher 2099, but I'm sure it exists, as I have the other 8 samples.

Hi David,

I went to a flea market today and found the dealer that had some oddball promos late last summer. He and his wife are retiring and unloading whatever's left: sports/non-sports sets, singles, promos, magazines, and comics for 75% off already discounted prices. Today, I got a Shaq-Fu promo, Phantom Menace 3D promo, and a small lot of X-Men movie promos for a total of $3.

Anyway, they had mostly 90's sets, singles, and chase. You could get sets of chase for around $10 before the discount. I saw 10-12 of those Marvel Universe chase foils and flipped them all over to make sure there wasn't a sample version. The odds were against me by this time. They were all just the chase foils.

As a side note regarding the trading card business, the husband mentioned that they were doing well as dealers back in the 80's, 90's and early 2000's, but over the past 15 or so years, sales dropped off (even before the drop in the economy). They were never the kind to sell at top dollar. They were always friendly and willing to make a deal so it wasn't because they ever were tough to deal with but did okay because they always had what you wanted. Another customer added that the business had changed with card companies charging more money but inserting less value in the boxes.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by David R:
Just to add to the conversation...

I see on ebay that a 1993 Marvel Universe sample foil of one of the villains, Fearmaster, recently sold for $ 35.00 plus shipping

15-20 years ago, these could be obtained for $10 or less, so I agree with promoking that alot of 1990s promos have gone up in value

This is part of a 9 card sample set, one for each of the regular chase cards. In the "old days", the villains' samples weren't that tough to find.

However, you rarely (if ever) saw the sample on Spider Man 2099. 3-4 years ago, I finally saw one sell on ebay for around $ 100

To date, 26 years later, I have never seen the one for Punisher 2099, but I'm sure it exists, as I have the other 8 samples.

I was looking at Completed auctions on "the bay" yesterday and noticed two surprising winning bids. The first one was a Dragonball unnumbered holofoil promo (Bird Studio, 1995). It sold for $45.95 - just one bid. Though it is certainly an uncommon card, it's more of a $5 card unless I'm way off on that one or unaware of some increased Dragonball collector interest in recent years outside of promo collectors. It could also be just one of those outlier sales to someone who just had to have it at that moment and didn't know the market.

The second was the other end of the spectrum: a card that went for too little relative to the market and the title was well-worded. It was a Gone with the Wind #3 promo (Duo Cards, 1995). Collectors know that the #1 and #3 promos are the rare ones in the set because the decision maker(s) at Duo Cards had most of the run destroyed because the print quality wasn't sharp. What not everyone might recall and what was reported in an article in Collect! magazine (September 1996 issue) was that 50-60 copies of #1 and #3 did get released before the word came down to destroy them. Once it became known how rare the cards were (or just that they were rare), collectors scrambled to find them. The value peaked around $75, but once other things became became the hot thing, the value slid to as low as $10 by the time of the publication of the 2008 Promo Card Encyclopedia.

Anyway, the #3 promo sold last month for only $5. To me with the recent increased interest in promos and rebounding values of at least some established rarities, the card should have sold in that $10-20 range at least. However, "Gone with the Wind" is the kind of movie that has been losing fans over the years even if it's still considered a classic film. Cards once locked up in collections have reappeared on the market after some collectors cashed out or passed away in the time since the recession. Some hot items of the past still get bids and some things that didn't go for much back then are in-demand now but there are fewer people than there used to be buying things mostly because they're rare - fewer collectors who want one of everything.

Jess

Edit: I see that another Dragonball unnumbered holofoil promo went for $89.99 (1 bid) in September and a third was at $149.99 and sold with a Best Offer (price didn't come up). What is going on with that card? I got one for less than a buck as part of a lot at a flea market last year. It appears that may have been my best flea market buy ever.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: catskilleagle,

The Dragonball card must be rarer than we thought, as sellers that are selling it describe it as rare, but there are not that many coming onto the market.
One went last week for $ 45.00 wich also surprised me.
I think that the dealer just gave me my copy.
Are we not supposed to learn something new every day?

Hi Piko,

There are tons of Dragonball cards for sale online. I wonder if gaming collectors are going back looking for the older non-gaming promos as well and not finding them. I remember that 1995 holofoil wasn't common. It might have been the kind of thing that dealers received only one of - cards sent to hobby stores with some ending up in the garbage.

There was at least one Dragonball promo given out at the 2001 San Diego Comic-Con in a cello-pack with another card. Is that going up in value too? I think I still have one of the packs.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
The Dragonball card must be rarer than we thought, as sellers that are selling it describe it as rare, but there are not that many coming onto the market.
One went last week for $ 45.00 wich also surprised me.
I think that the dealer just gave me my copy.
Are we not supposed to learn something new every day?

Perhaps what I always suspected would happen to promo collecting has begun. For the first ten years after I started collecting them, I categorically refused to pay more than $5.00 for any one card. Then one day at the 1998 Philly Show I ran into Glenn Leonard, an advanced collector at the time, who had bought one of the Babylon 5 Canadian test foil promos for $20.00. I thought he was crazy and I told him so. He laughed and said it was a good price.

fast forward 10 years and take a look at the 2008 PCE, page 15 for what one of those was worth 12 years ago.
What Glenn knew, he told me later, and I didn't was that only 10 of each card design had been produced under legitimate licence. So, knowledge is the key and I am constantly learning new, useful information about my collecting area. I even print for future reference, descriptions given by sellers on Ebay, concerning promos I either have not heard of or ones I know of but about which the seller has specialized knowledge.

Frankly, I collect promos for the pleasure of the hunt. I love the fact that until recently, manufacturers never released info on promo print runs and most information was anecdotal. I scour Ebay often enough to know that if a listing catches my attention and I've never seen that card for sale or I missed it the last time it came up, I am going to be willing to spend A LOT MORE than $5.00 to acquire it. I think the hardcore collectors of their respective genres are discovering that the promo may not be the most expensive card from the set but sometimes one of the hardest to find and are now willing to pay up to get one.

I am told that many people that collect CCG are fanatics about their collecting habits. Perhaps it is this group that is the first to recognize the scarcity of certain promos and are establishing the pattern to come. As I've said before, this "uptrend" is already noticeable with Marvel card collectors spending considerable sums to acquire elusive promos. scarce promos are becoming more desirable, their prices are reflecting that.

Two Biosphere promos (#45 and 145) sold for only $5 each recently.

Last month, a set of Duocards Gone with the Wind promos, including the quite rare #1 and #3, sold for only $5.95.

quote:

Originally posted by promoking:
Perhaps what I always suspected would happen to promo collecting has begun. For the first ten years after I started collecting them, I categorically refused to pay more than $5.00 for any one card. Then one day at the 1998 Philly Show I ran into Glenn Leonard, an advanced collector at the time, who had bought one of the Babylon 5 Canadian test foil promos for $20.00. I thought he was crazy and I told him so. He laughed and said it was a good price.

fast forward 10 years and take a look at the 2008 PCE, page 15 for what one of those was worth 12 years ago.
What Glenn knew, he told me later, and I didn't was that only 10 of each card design had been produced under legitimate licence. So, knowledge is the key and I am constantly learning new, useful information about my collecting area. I even print for future reference, descriptions given by sellers on Ebay, concerning promos I either have not heard of or ones I know of but about which the seller has specialized knowledge.

Frankly, I collect promos for the pleasure of the hunt. I love the fact that until recently, manufacturers never released info on promo print runs and most information was anecdotal. I scour Ebay often enough to know that if a listing catches my attention and I've never seen that card for sale or I missed it the last time it came up, I am going to be willing to spend A LOT MORE than $5.00 to acquire it. I think the hardcore collectors of their respective genres are discovering that the promo may not be the most expensive card from the set but sometimes one of the hardest to find and are now willing to pay up to get one.

I am told that many people that collect CCG are fanatics about their collecting habits. Perhaps it is this group that is the first to recognize the scarcity of certain promos and are establishing the pattern to come. As I've said before, this "uptrend" is already noticeable with Marvel card collectors spending considerable sums to acquire elusive promos. scarce promos are becoming more desirable, their prices are reflecting that.

Hi Piko,

I see another three of those 1995 Dragonball promos sold for $62 and $74.99, and $75 in the past few months. I asked a seller about these higher-than-expected sales and he said there's a lot of interest in Europe.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
The Dragonball card must be rarer than we thought, as sellers that are selling it describe it as rare, but there are not that many coming onto the market.
One went last week for $ 45.00 wich also surprised me.
I think that the dealer just gave me my copy.
Are we not supposed to learn something new every day?

All this talk of promos has got me looking at mine.
!THIS! card (P2), is rare???

It's at least somewhat rare because it was the one that was in the official binder. I don't know how many binders were made but assume it was less than 250 (maybe as few as 100?).

Jess

In late March a DC vs. Marvel Mirage promo sold for $194.50 with 27 bids.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
It's at least somewhat rare because it was the one that was in the official binder. I don't know how many binders were made but assume it was less than 250 (maybe as few as 100?).

Jess

This assumes that the binder promo was only included in the binder.

That's true but even if the card is released in some other way, it's still limited. The Monkees #0 promo was inserted with the official binder but it was also included in some membership packets sent out to new members of the Inside Trader club by Cornerstone. That's how I got one.

I know some dealers have sold the binder and the binder card separately so it can appear the binder card had a separate distribution.

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
It's at least somewhat rare because it was the one that was in the official binder. I don't know how many binders were made but assume it was less than 250 (maybe as few as 100?).

Jess

This assumes that the binder promo was only included in the binder.

I don't think Rittenhouse said the promo was Exclusive to the binder just that it came with the binder but i could be mistaken there.

Interestingly the binder is not mentioned in the archived checklist although Allender mentions it in his checklist.

Someone got a good buy
A Serenity 2004 SDCC card #ssd2004 was purchased for $5.00 last week
This card is supposed to be very rare
Win some Miss some

quote:

Originally posted by piko:
Someone got a good buy
A Serenity 2004 SDCC card #ssd2004 was purchased for $5.00 last week
This card is supposed to be very rare
Win some Miss some

I have this on my eBay watch list and it didn't show up!

Yes I have the seller on my list it also never showed up i check quiet often
My internet was down on the day it sold and he never had it up a couple of days earlier although I do have a copy two would of been better ,
If i had seen it i would of had a go at it

I looked at it. The title and the description don't match! I'm not sure which promo card the buyer got, so maybe not such a great deal.

Promoking
I see your point in the numbering you could be right .
But the pictures and numbering are the same as the card that i have so i presume that it was the card sold .
As the 2005 front and 2004 back could of confused the seller.
This is the only one i have seen for sale privately the two others have been through a UK auction site and he still has another advertised so he could have a lot of them.