Although I have a pretty sizeable promo collection, I have never seen the Babylon 5 cards that SkyBox inserted in the VHS video tapes back in the 1990s

How many different ones are there ? I thought someone once said 30. Anyone have a checklist of the cards and which videos they came in ?

Are these now tough to find ? Anyone have singles or a set they'd be willing to part with ?

I just ran a search on Feebay for "Babylon 5 VHS trading" and came up with 4 results including one labeled "#1 of 4". $7 each.

I did a search, as well. Saw a 4 card set with SkyBox logos on the back.

Saw another guy with a 17 card set plus 1 unnumbered card

Another guy, who says there is a 9 card set. Yet another with 32 card sets (2 different)

Are ALL of these by SkyBox ? It is so confusing

THIS MAY HELP,

http://nslists.com/bab5vid.htm

Thanks. That list helps a bit. It says there is a 4 card set, a 17 card set, and 6 unnumbered cards.

But I see some auctions for a 9 card set and a 32 card set. The numbers don't add up. Maybe some of these were not by SkyBox, and were UK cards ? The sellers are in the UK

Hi david
There are at least 2 sets of 32 video cards oversized in uk by hmv
And 2 sets of oversized by our price-a music outlet.
As far as i know all the standard card size were usa issued and skybox!
Problem when i remember buying some in usa stores is they were randomly packed
With little or no information on packaging!
Hope this may help

Thanks, Paul.

I saw both (but not all) of the SkyBox cards AND the HMV cards on the auction sites. Sellers are asking for alot of money (hundreds of $$$) for each. On the SkyBox cards, I see the 4 card set and the 17 card set, but not the 6 unnumbered cards

One seller wants $ 160 for the set of the 4 SkyBox cards, and another guy has 2 of them for a mere $ 7.00 each. Big difference !

Here is what I know: 1 of 4 through 4 of 4 were in season #1 VHS boxes. Some (nn) were included with mailorder from (not sure who) and some were given out at video stores.
Ace.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Ace of Hearts,

The "99 Cent" store had Babylon 5 VHS tapes about 5-6 years ago, and luckily for me, someone had opened one and took the tape out and laying right beside it was one of the trading cards, so at that point, I bought one of every different tape they had, and there were at least 10 different, including a 3 video box set.

I only ever opened the first one to look at the card, but there's really no reason to not open the others, so I shall, and post the results here. I can at least tell everyone which cards come in which tapes. Then, those interested could likely find the B5 videos on Ebay (or elsewhere) cheaply given the limited demand for videos these days, and as long as they were sealed, the cards could be collected fairly inexpensively that way, I would think.

I checked Jeff Allender's site and he (naturally) has a fantastic list of the cards and the videos that hold them.

These are the ones in the videos I bought at the 99cent store a few years back, and I can confirm the contents of the following, having just opened them

4 Secrets Of the Soul Vol 5.5
5 Day of the Dead Vol 5.6
6 Phoenix Rising Vol 5.7

13 Points Of Departure Vol 2.0
14 The Geometry of Shadows Vol 2.1
15 The Long Dark Vol 2.2

2 of 4 The Babylon 5 Station Vol 1.1

The three videos from volume 2 were shrinkwrapped in a slipcase, so just 99 cents for those, not bad. The other 4 volumes were sold separately, so altogether I spent 5 bucks, and got some pretty excellent SciFi TV to boot.

All of the boxes, even the slipcase, had a round blue sticker on the outside, indicating that 2 collectible cards are included. The second card in all of my videos, except one, was the commonly seen unnumbered promo card which on the back basically says, there's more to the world of B5 than just video, check out the cards from Skybox.

But one of the videos (in the slipcase) had a different unnumbered promo card, and strangely enough, there were 4 of them inside along with other promo card it was supposed to hold, so there were actually 5 cards in all inside that video. This different promo is perhaps a bit thinner than the others, so maybe that's why they stuck together?

There was also 3 cards in the Thirdspace VHS video (not in every video, I'm not sure if this was HMV exclusives as well?)

Here are two cards from the videos (1 of 4, and 3 of 4).

Chesspiece,

I thought it was interesting that you got more that the 6 expected cards in the 3-volume slipcase pack. It made me wonder if the company might have been trying to make sure they didn't have any cards left over and decided to further reward any card collectors buying one. Maybe more or all of the 3-volume slipcase packs had extra cards? I already had a few cards from the set, and since Allender provided a list of not only the cards but which tapes had which cards, I could pick the 3-volume pack with cards I didn't have. Even if there weren't any extra cards, I was still getting 3 different cards than I had plus extras of the common cards.

There always seem to be several of the packs for sale so you just have to choose the cheapest one. The best price I've found was one for about $9 including shipping. Some sellers still try to get as much as $30. I bought the 3-pack that had Volume 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 and obtained the three expected cards (unnumbered "Lando Mollari," "Starfury," and "Alfred Bester") with the common cards and I did get an extra unnumbered "Alfred Bester" card - the character played by Walter Koenig. The gamble paid off.

I decided to push my luck and see if it would happen again. I bought the same 3-pack you bought with Volume 2.0, 2.1, and 2.2 and got the expected cards (unnumbered "Points of Departure," "The Geometry of Shadows," and "The Long Dark") with two common cards plus the different one you noted which was slightly stuck to the card on top of it. And yes, I did get an extra - another "The Long Dark" card. I'm two-for-two.

I can't guarantee every 3-pack is going to have an extra card but if you can get the 3-volume pack cheap enough, give it a try. I might do it again too.

As a bonus, I was able to sell the tapes at two bucks per 3-pack at a garage sale last month so I got a little of my money back too.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
I checked Jeff Allender's site and he (naturally) has a fantastic list of the cards and the videos that hold them.

These are the ones in the videos I bought at the 99cent store a few years back, and I can confirm the contents of the following, having just opened them

4 Secrets Of the Soul Vol 5.5
5 Day of the Dead Vol 5.6
6 Phoenix Rising Vol 5.7

13 Points Of Departure Vol 2.0
14 The Geometry of Shadows Vol 2.1
15 The Long Dark Vol 2.2

2 of 4 The Babylon 5 Station Vol 1.1

The three videos from volume 2 were shrinkwrapped in a slipcase, so just 99 cents for those, not bad. The other 4 volumes were sold separately, so altogether I spent 5 bucks, and got some pretty excellent SciFi TV to boot.

All of the boxes, even the slipcase, had a round blue sticker on the outside, indicating that 2 collectible cards are included. The second card in all of my videos, except one, was the commonly seen unnumbered promo card which on the back basically says, there's more to the world of B5 than just video, check out the cards from Skybox.

But one of the videos (in the slipcase) had a different unnumbered promo card, and strangely enough, there were 4 of them inside along with other promo card it was supposed to hold, so there were actually 5 cards in all inside that video. This different promo is perhaps a bit thinner than the others, so maybe that's why they stuck together?

Here's the list of promo cards I have found on these video inserts: Babylon 5 Video Cards (1998): This is a 17 card set. Here are the missing cards. #7 a voice in the wilderness (part 1); #8 a voice in the wilderness (part 2); #9 Chrysalis; #10 Meditations of the abyss; #11 Darkness Ascending; #12 the fall of Centauri prime; #13 points of departure; #14 the geometry shadows; #15 the long dark; #16 n.k; #17 sleeping in light.
These are in addition to those listed in PCE.

Then there are at least 10 others as follows:4 cards numbered 1-4 on the back. A fifth card of Jeffrey Sinclair is unnumbered.
in addition, there are 5 Season 5 unnumbered cards each saying " November 1998" on the back. Of those, 2 have the registered "R" symbol next to the word Skybox on the back and 3 without it.