After a few delays these cards direct from Netflix finally showed up.

Based on my basic math skills I picked up 3 boxes looking to pull a complete set.

Each box had 4 packs with 8 cards per pack. I pulled the following:

8 of 9 Lenticular Cards plus 4 dupes (total of 12)

18 of 18 Character cards plus 22 others. A second set of 1 to 13 complete

14 of 14 Butcher Billy Illustration Cards. Pulled 2 sets plus 11 more cards.

5 Parallel cards

#12 Dustin Harrison 222 of 250
#BB5 The Nina Project 175 of 250
#11 Eleven 171 of 199
#14 Robin 87 of 99
#10 Erica 45 of 50

First impression I liked this set but under closer examination it is actually a bit of a mess.

Nothing new or exciting from a design stand point. All very familiar, seen it a hundred times sort of stuff.

Parallel cards are all foil and slight edge damage from manufacture and shipping process is noticeable. The Green Rainbow parallel numbered to 50 looks like a cloudy film that needs to be peeled off.

Lenticular cards really lack in imagery, detail and function some worse than others. Certainly nowhere near the quality results we have seen from other card companies.

I like the character cards but for some reason the Nancy (#5) image is noticeably more faded than the other cards. Also Vecna (#9) breaks the design of the other 17 cards plus it's a really bland card for the character. Maybe intentional, maybe lazy but personally I don't find it a positive flow. Decided to look at these under a light and straight line surface scratches are on many of the cards.

The Art cards are pretty cool. They remind me of the Juan Ortiz cards in the Lost in Space Archives sets. Don't seem to see the same surface damage on these. One of his autograph cards is currently up on ebay.....seller apparently thinks it is worth $3k. I'm willing to bet that is an incorrect assessment.

Being a crossover title from Topps to Zerocool I'm not sure how much hope I have for the future of these cards. There is not much indication what a full release would look like. Netflix is still not sold out of the reported 11,111 boxes but a couple of ebay flippers seem to be cashing in.

For parallel junkies this is a good set with some hope of completing on certain levels

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

Is there a base set on this ? Did you get a complete base set ?

Minus one Lenticular card from a complete set because of duplicates.

Have a friend that opened some and we are trading extras.

If you were to translate the 11,111 boxes into standard 24 pack boxes it would equal to roughly 1852 boxes. About the size of a short Rittenhouse print run.

I'm really confused here. Are these different cards than the Butcher Billy Artist Series marked as 2022 and still being sold on Netflix in blaster boxes? If these are branded from zerocool, is Netflix the sole distributor, or were they/are they sold in other places?

The immediate problem with marketing them, besides not actually knowing what they are now or where they are, is that there didn't seem to be a strong connection with Stranger Things viewers and their trading cards even when the show was hot. The best attraction was always the actor autographs, and if this product has none, many people will pass.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
I'm really confused here. Are these different cards than the Butcher Billy Artist Series marked as 2022 and still being sold on Netflix in blaster boxes?

Uhmmm right! To be honest people using the term blaster box confused me as to imply there were hobby or full boxes. So far all of my searches have funneled down to this single product.

Sold directly through Netflix store at a still high price of $50 a box but much cheaper than ebay flippers on collectors who didn't know where to buy them.

As you say no autographs, it is most likely the reason Netflix isn't sold out of them yet. Maybe too risky for a mass flipper purchase attack.

On a facebook group I am in, people are really angry about this set. Several people have purchased 5 or more boxes (one person said they purchased 11 boxes) and got no parallel cards which seems to be the selling point of this product.

That is difficult to believe if posted numbers are correct. Either another version of the product with no parallels or some REALLY bad collation.

There are roughly 21,000 numbered parallel cards for 11,111 boxes. Which matches the three boxes I cracked as well as the three a friend of mine busted open.

Update...reading the Blowout Forum it sounds like bad collation...even possibly more boxes than what was reported.

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

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
That is difficult to believe if posted numbers are correct. Either another version of the product with no parallels or some REALLY bad collation.

There are roughly 21,000 numbered parallel cards for 11,111 boxes. Which matches the three boxes I cracked as well as the three a friend of mine busted open.

Update...reading the Blowout Forum it sounds like bad collation...even possibly more boxes than what was reported.

It sounds like they were printed in multiple batches, and all the parallels were inserted into the first batch. There appears to be a correlation between later orders and dud boxes.

For all the hype they built with this set at The National, they REALLY dropped the ball with the delayed release.