Miss lizzy, if you don't keep the Lord Mesa, Let me know.

Some really nice sketches, when I could afford a case about 50-60% of the sketches were top notch but odds are too low to consider a single box purchase.

I finished opening my case last night. Still sorting through it all but here are scans of my of my sketch and auto pulls. I ended up getting an extra autograph card out of the case.

Here are my patch pulls from the case.

Picked up 9 retail packs...

16 cards per jumbo pack
135 commons (117 singles, 18 dupes, 0 variations)
9 chase (1 per pack)
(4 BF, 2 CL, 1 DF, 1 GM, & 1 HB)
0 sketch
Autos & patches not available in retail.

Overall grade C
Pros: Quality stock. GM & HB chase.
Cons: Price & quantity, most of the chase cards can easily get lost among the commons. No retail exclusives?

Opened first hobby box...
1 Darth Vader sketch
1 Naboo Starfighter patch
1 GOLD parallel 1/1 #21 Yoda!!!
2 Red parallels
9 blue parallels
and the usual HB,CL,DF, BF, & GM chase.

OPENED 1 box
my pull

JEREMY SCOTT

Not a bad sketch, I kinda like it.

BTW I purchased a pack at Target yesterday for $3.19. Nothing special, mainly base cards.

Here's my break, I bought 3 boxes:

I was shorted an Auto or Patch Card so I hope Topps will fix it.

I pulled 4 Red Foils and 29 Blue foils and one of the 3 variant cards.

I missing tons of base cards for a set too. I'm not sure how many as i quit after realizing i'm missing 15 cards in the 1st group of 50 cards.

quote:

Originally posted by WandringRebel:
I finished opening my case last night. Still sorting through it all but here are scans of my of my sketch and auto pulls. I ended up getting an extra autograph card out of the case.

Let me know if that Bob Stevlic Trooper is for Trade really interested in it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Quaint1,

Sprung for one box and wouldn't you know it, I got a patch card and no sketch. Called Topps customer service and mailed everything away this morning, barcode, box top, receipt and wrappers.

Told that it would take 4 weeks to get a replacement. Will let you know what I get back. I didn't think this would be an issue in this product, but I'll reserve judgement until what happens next. At least I liked the other cards, if that matters without a sketch.

Noticed at Target today that 9 card retail packs are available in a gravity box.
Picked up 3 packs. Each had 8 base and 1 chase.
Odds are the same as the 16 card jumbo packs. Sketches are available, but NO autos or patch cards.

Above is one case of the "hits".
The base set is superb and the regular inserts, too, especially the silver foil photos set.
Collation over the entire case was very good to excellent.
Eight of the mammoth 350 card base sets are possible from a case and I got very nearly 7 full sets with the 8th being about 50 cards short. There were around 200 leftover extras, so that could've been a little better, but it's still excellent, at least a B+ grade, maybe A- for collation.
Parallels wise, the 1 of 1 Gold IG-88 is shown and there were 11 Reds (#d to 35) and 119 of the Blues (#d to 350), so about 1/3 of the set of those, definite keepers. (The reds I'll let go because there's no way for me to ever realistically make that set, so best to pass them on to people who are trying to, bless them. Same for the Gold, as cool as it is.)

Regular insert collation was outstanding with pretty much all possible sets made, but a decent stack of doubles left over of those, so they maybe could've tweaked the insertion rates a bit, to have the sets build more evenly.

Sketches were good, a lot of color to be had with an out and out masterpiece by Gary Kezele. The Snowspeeder painting that I totally lucked into, and really all of his other cards, each painted in the same hyper detailed style, could have easily been made base cards in this set. (There's always Galaxy 8. Gary should be hired to do some base cards for that).

One box had 2 sketches as the hits, a pair of the black and whites, so a nice combo in that way. The final box had only a sketch, the Camie by Howard Shum. Not disliking Howard's work nearly as much as some others on this board (fully within their rights, and understandably), I wasn't too bothered by the sketch, it's an usual character at least, but I was hoping for an autograph in the box along with it, since I'd only got 5 in my case overall at that point (general odds would be 6 per case) and some other hit was due, but nope, just that sketch in th end, so hopefully Topps will take care of me on that, the missing hit I mean.

As it relates to a another lively thread on this board of late ("Worst Sketch Ever" debate), that last box I opened should remind Topps the importance in evenly packing these boxes, especially since they have just climbed to another price plateau. While that box missing the hit was in an otherwise excellent case which pretty well made up for it, imagine if that particular box had instead went to a person only able to get one box, and only then after saving up the $100+ for it, only to get that box with just the 1 hit, a not especially detailed drawing, while the other hit, a patch or autograph is missing. (At that point, it would be a real negative that they are further unable to even get a base set out of the one box.). They probably wouldn't be too happy and rightly so, but those things do and can happen and maybe Topps just loses one customer, but the hobby might lose a collector, and that is worse. Topps should really work to make sure there are any sort of "dud" boxes, and at this new price level, now more than ever, for their own company brand and the good of the hobby.

As for the actual cards, the base set is fantastic, building expertly on the now classic Star Wars 30 set of five years ago with a similar front design, an image bordered in foil, but now with multiple different border colors to differentiate the various subsets, of which where are many. Covering the entire saga of 6 films with encyclopedia type photographs (some are seldom seen images) including multiple cards for the most important characters as they progressed, plus numerous handsomely illustrated cards of the characters of the Clone Wars TV series and the expanded universe heroes and villains of the Star Wars video games, novels, and comics over the years, along with vehicles and factions cards.

General notes: A set of base cards cannot be made from one box. Due to that there will likely ever only be about 7,000 sets of this collated (from hobby boxes anyway, there could be another thousand or two from retail, but less than 10,000 in total certainly), many of which are being sorted and sold now. Due to the strong autograph lineup, this product will sooner rather than later be sold out from dealers. As as single box and small box lots surface here and there in the future, those boxes likely won't yield base sets, so there could be a real premium on this base set someday, especially if additional similar sets to it are made and the cards in this first set are considered Star Wars "Rookie" cards for certain characters.

The Silver Foil chase sets will be hard to assemble for the same reason once the boxes have dried up. They are a large 20 card set, but with only 4 of them found per box.

Autographs wise, I was hoping for one of the biggies, but no luck on that. Still, I'm very happy with the autographs I got, all keepers just like pretty much every other Star Wars autograph card I've ever pulled.

The Patch cards are an excellent idea, very well done, and could be part of a larger series. (There are 30 different in this series, but only 6 per case, so they are scarce, true limited editions.)

Topps did something new for Star Wars cards that they've been doing on their baseball cards for the last few years, and that is created unannounced alternate image versions of three different base cards (76 Vader, 96 Luke, 125 Leia). These are reportedly found as little as one per case and as many as 3 per case. I was glad to find my case had a full set of the three.

OK, Topps, I finally finished sorting these, a few days after I started, so bring on "Galactic Files Update Edition" (but, uh, in around 2014 so I can start saving up for it now!)

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

Now this is what I've been waition for, GREAT review!!

Great break,great pics and a great positive post!!

Great review Chess, and hopefully no e-fighting like on scoundrel lol.

Heh, thanks guys. I actually wouldn't post this detailed a breakdown on Scoundrel, I don't think it would hold too much interest for readers as that's really a sketch card oriented site whereas as NSU is more for cards in general. On Scoundrel, I'd pretty much show the sketches and be done with it.

And Cujo, as for the recent fireworks at Scoundrel, well, I certainly hope to never repeat that here or there, and won't as long as people have good reasons for ripping on things a lot of other people like, especially when they do it regularly. Reasoned arguments contrary to my point own of view, I enthusiastically welcome, but trolls just out to kick up dust for sad fun, well, them's the kind I just got to stomp.

To complete my break, here's the Red parallels since it really was a good group, and it shows off some of the base card images.




And here's the Kezele on its own, really just a thing of beauty. You can even see the pilot in there.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
And here's the Kezele on its own, really just a thing of beauty. You can even see the pilot in there.

That Kezele sketch really is gorgeous!! That's incredible.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Sprung for one box and wouldn't you know it, I got a patch card and no sketch. Called Topps customer service and mailed everything away this morning, barcode, box top, receipt and wrappers.

Told that it would take 4 weeks to get a replacement. Will let you know what I get back. I didn't think this would be an issue in this product, but I'll reserve judgement until what happens next. At least I liked the other cards, if that matters without a sketch.

Well this is pretty amazing, although customer service told me a 4 week turn around time I got the replacement sketch today. I did send it priority and it arrived the same way, but in the same week is unheard of.

Anyway the sketch is a portrait of Queen Amidala I think and it was done by someone who signed BMB or GMB, not familar with most artists. Its color, but not painted in. Happy enough with it and I have to thank Topps for making good so very fast.

Hi Raven,
If you want to trade it, please let me know - I have a TON for trade.

Thanks,
Dave