Topps' website has yet another offer.

A Han Solo card for the new movie, $ 10.

Only available for purchase for 24 hours

Looks to be the first in a new SERIES

Yeah, I saw that earlier. 25 card set at $10 per card = $250 (and that's $10 per card/per day boys and girls)!

That's an easy pass for me, but what in the world is Topps thinking?

That they are cheaply made to order and someone will go for it.

The Star Wars Community really liked the Countdown to the Last Jedi. Maybe Topps thinking is we have a good thing going and a captive audience lets's do it again. I don't think the community is as receptive this time around. If they added a special card it would be more attractive to me.

Well I'm not in the Star Wars Community , but if you look at the sales numbers TOPPS has put up for some of the SW Countdown cards, they are selling in the 400s - 600s range per card. So if a buyer follows through with the complete set, the possible number of full sets made can only be as high as the lowest number card ordered. At least I think that would be the case, if you believe it is all live ordered.

More over, TOPPS has the SW license, so producing as much as possible, as cheaply as possible, without looking like any set is being overproduced is in their best interests. If the NOW cards didn't work, they wouldn't do them. It fills a collector need for immediate gratification and the idea that they have the first edition of whatever. And if collectors, or maybe dealers who think they have collectors, are willing to pay for it, then they are.

Whether the completed NOW sets retain their value is a separate matter TBD.

Back in late 2016, they had those 7 Rogue One mini-sets that were sold 1 set per week

Some of the early sets are impossible to find now. Only about 200 of each set made, and you can't seem to find them anymore, in particular the first few.

Card # 2 of Lando is now available

They are currently selling card #6, but have posted print runs on #1 and #2.

Solo #1 was 536 and Lando #2 was 281.

I don't really get the huge drop off unless people didn't know what they were buying. What can you do with one NOW card, if you are not in for the whole set? Some initial collectors are always expected to ease off, but to lose roughly 48% of buyers between the 2 cards doesn't make sense. Why go in for the #1 at all?

Well set builders should be happy with the low run if nothing else.

One of the more ho-hum cards got down into the 230's, but that'll likely be the low. The print run seems to be hovering around 300.

Will not be buying any of this set, that's for sure, just another lackluster set like the other lackluster sets that we've been seeing! Love the commercial that appeared after the movie showed up, with the woman driving saying to the cute little dog in the back seat, "Relax big guy, I'm on it!" Love that ad, plus the cute dog that looks like Chewbacca, so adorable!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeYR9JdkZjc

Hmmm perhaps there's more to those Topps sale rumours after all with an odd marketing ploy like this.

$10 for an 'exclusive' card is okay if it's an exclusive set - say 4 cards on different days for 1 week only and no more printed.

But 25 cards at that price? No. Not happening. And a lot less exclusive once the markets flooded with these cards particularly as the film has had a very poor return for the studio. Honestly the biggest Star Wars flop in years even worse than the 90's 'Episodes'.

They're not even numbered very low. Are they numbered individually or just #/581 (example)?

quote:

$10 for an 'exclusive' card is okay if it's an exclusive set - say 4 cards on different days for 1 week only and no more printed.

Yeah like real "exclusive" from a company that mass produces cards, what a crock!

I got mine through a buyer's group (as Topps offers quantity discounts) so they were $4 per card, plus a little extra for shipping at the very end once the main buyer has the entire set in hand. (That's still a week or two away).

The cards aren't sequentially numbered, but one of them had orders of only 211 cards, so that's the most complete sets that can ever be made, a pretty small number for any Star Wars set, even for one from the first Star Wars-related movie to not dominate at the box office.

The first card drew a lot of interest and sold over 500, but the rest ranged from 200 to 300, copies, so the print run for all 25 cards averaged out to about 250 (or so) per card. Looking forward to getting my set.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
I got mine through a buyer's group (as Topps offers quantity discounts) so they were $4 per card, plus a little extra for shipping at the very end once the main buyer has the entire set in hand. (That's still a week or two away).

So what you're saying is that this $250 retail set actually wholesaled for $100, plus shipping?

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

So what you're saying is that this $250 retail set actually wholesaled for $100, plus shipping?

There were bulk discounts available right on the Topps site. One card was $9.99. Lots are less. 20 cards are $80 total so way less per card. Most of their online print-on-demand things work this way.

Organize a group and share the cost so it's cheaper for everyone.

This format and the large numbers of parallels in other sets are ideas that have spilled over from the sports card market where they fit better and are much more popular.
They are currently producing a baseball card set called The living Set that is planned to run indefinitely with 3 new cards a week, usually a star, an average player, and a utility player.
The set started out selling about 3,000-4,000 cards with one going as low as 2,600 and has leveled off at around 6,000. The regular players that had the lowest sales the first few weeks now sell in the $100-200 range. It's dropped of some now but Nick Markakis, the lowest selling card, peaked at $300.

Ryan's right!
(but alas, there was no way to get the Royal Wedding on demand set for less than $20. I ordered one. I'm very curious to know the print run on that, which should be announced shortly).

Chris is on the money!
I have one of each of the Living Set cards so far. 27 have been issued, with apparently, infinity more in the pipeline. They are worth the cost. The paintings are so superb, I consider them to be a hybrid sports/non-sports set.

And, since we're shillin' Topps online hard, the 80th Anniversary set is another fun one. The cards depict vintage Topps wax pack wrapper designs from throughout the company's long history. Like the Living sets, it's 3 cards a week for $15 (but presumably just for this single 80th Anniversary year, and not forever, as with the Living Set). If that's the case, it'll be about a 150 card set, with about 40 having been offered so far. It's about 70% non-sports as the rest are vintage sports card wrappers.

Non-Sports wise, they've already done a couple of fan-favorites (GPK, Happy Days, ET, Ghostbusters, King Kong, for example), but they still have Mars Attacks, Wacky Packs, and Star Wars to unveil, and all of those should sell well. Print run is traditionally around 300 per card, but GPK sold nearly 1,000 while King Kong and Cyndi Lauper are two of the "short prints" in the series, with only about 150 copies of each.

Complete sets of this series will be exceedingly rarely seen, especially if it does end up topping out at 150 cards.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
I got mine through a buyer's group (as Topps offers quantity discounts) so they were $4 per card, plus a little extra for shipping at the very end once the main buyer has the entire set in hand. (That's still a week or two away).

So what you're saying is that this $250 retail set actually wholesaled for $100, plus shipping?

Yes, exactly, and the "Countdown to Last Jedi" daily set was available from the same buyer's group, at the same discount. I think he made 20 or 40 sets available to us for that one and for "Solo". Extra sets were offered after the fact for the "Last Jedi" set which had a print run about double the one for "Solo", but the spots for "Solo" were sold out very quickly, likely in part due to the great job and bargain the organizer had provided on the previous set, and also the (correct) belief on buyers' parts that this "Solo" set would be shorter printed than the previous one. The buyer told me that he'd easily sold the extra "Last Jedi" sets, too, and wasn't stuck with anything.

He did a lot of work to get this done, but at least one benefit for him was that he must have racked up some pretty decent Topps Rewards points, which can be used to get discount Topps Now cards, so hopefully, he made a little money that way for his efforts.