I do think Premium Packs will help the hobby through the tough economy. It is cheaper to produce a product when you haven't got to spend a fortune mass producing base cards and the foil wrap is also quite expensive. We did consider whether to put Night of the Living Dead out as a boxed product, but to retail a product for say £19.99 ($35) as opposed to say £34.99 ($55) for a box with a guarentee of a sketch and auto in every pack surely it's better??

Okay we're doing 2000 packs with 6 base cards per pack (35 to collect) so 12000 base cards in circulation. if we did 2000 boxes (30 packs with 5 base cards in each ) that's 300,000 base cards so we might help save a tree with the Premium Packs!!

As a manufacturer I'm just keen to see what collectors think of Premium Packs or Factory Sets and I think Breygent have set a very good example in trying out new ideas to sell products.

I love premium packs. . .

I'm not ask keen on the factory set with chase concept simply because I don't want stacks of sets around. I can understand why dealers prefer the set/chase route, but really even with a set like Treasure Chests and Booty -- I've seen sets available for as cheap as about $5, and only 1000 sets were made.

I'm actually buying new sealed product again because of premium packs. . . especially at shows, they are a great impulse buy.

Jon

I won't say I love them, but I do like premium packs more than I expected. However the one big criticism I have for my situation is that there is no guarantee that I can find them unless I make a presale order. And it doesn't make sense to place a presale order on one pack, so now I have to buy more product at one time when I would normally try to space the cost out.

Also I would contend that there really are no base cards in a premium pack format, they are all inserts. The example given with NOTLD is 6 base cards per pack with 35 cards in the set. With perfect collation, which you won't find when buying random packs, it would take a minimum of 6 packs to get a base set. For those collectors who might want to complete this type of set, it is almost impossible unless you buy or trade for the missing base cards you need.

I'm not saying limited product is bad, but it doesn't come out cheaper. Premium pack products cost more if you are trying to finish the set.

Just spotted my typo, should be 36 base cards. We're going for 2000 packs on this one so hopefully shouldn't be too difficult to complete sets.

Maybe it begs the question, can the hobby support ANOTHER Star Trek set?

The premium pack format does allow additional sets. It also adds variety (although these cards look familiar, just a different photo).

Like any product, collectors can vote for their preference with what they buy. I'm sure many will appreciate the relatively decent odds on a Kirk or Spock autograph.

Too $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ for me.

quote:

Originally posted by Kennywood:
It's been said that the purpose of premium packs is that it allows cards to get made for licenses that won't support the traditional box/case release.

If that's true, then how can this be explained:

I'm not Steve, and don't pretend to speak for him...

But if it were my company this would be a way to turn autographs that were sitting around waiting for the next movie set into a product that will bring in much needed revenue.

We all know the stories of how Steve has autographs in the vault for years. That has to be expensive when they are Nimoy and Shatner autographs.

Plus, what exactly was there to do with the "Movies" line anyway? We've had "Complete", "In Motion", and "Quotable." I guess "Dangerous Liaisons" or a full "Heroes and Villains" set, but really the Movies have been mined of all there is. But, there are autographs left in that format. Mix them in a future set? Or make a product that makes us money now? I know what I would vote for if it were my company.

Sales of Trek sets have slid of late, mostly due to plain old overload of the system. Too much too fast. So a set that does not have 7000 cases of base set cards is welcome in this corner of the universe.

But then again, I don't speak for Steve so I may be way off base again...

Ed

quote:

As a manufacturer I'm just keen to see what collectors think of Premium Packs or Factory Sets and I think Breygent have set a very good example in trying out new ideas to sell products.

I've said it elsewhere but I'm always happy to repeat myself. In principle, I think premium packs are okay for products that wouldn't be viable otherwise. However, I think the number of base cards is insufficient. It should be possible to get a full base set with (assuming perfect collation) of 3-4 packs.

That way there are enough base sets to provide a secondary market for base set collectors because people who put together a master set will have 1 or 2 (rather than 10+) spare base sets.

Also, people who buy 1 pack will need to buy some of the chase sets or whatever but will have trade fodder to cross trade base/chase/autos and may be able to make up at least some of their needs with their spares. I know I'd be happy to trade my common autos for a few base/chase cards if there was value in base sets. I'd also be happy to trade some of my base/chase cards for autos I wanted.

Here is a quote from Steve on RA's website that includes a reason for why they opted to do premium cards:

"
If you study the contents of this collection, and what it is likely to cost you to collect it, I think you will find that it is actually a lot less expensive to collect this series than if we had made it in a tradition, foil-pack format. Typically, you would be lucky to find a Shatner or Nimoy autograph in every 3 to 5 cases of a traditional series of cards, and a traditional case sells for much more than a box of the premium packs. With this new Star Trek set, you still have what amounts to a very substantial "base" set, with 54 cards, plus other bonus cards, all of which are far more limited (scarcer) than what you would typically find in traditional boxes of cards. I will share with you that at least part of the motivation for issuing this new series in premium pack format is the fact that there simply are not enough new autograph signers to create a traditional series of cards. We have about 20 signers for this new collection, and while Shatner, Nimoy and Nichols have obviously signed for us in the past, these new autograph cards depict them in their newer, more modern uniforms. All of the other signers are first-time movie card signers with us, including Christian Slater, Donna Murphy and Anthony Zerbe. Building a roster of 30 to 40 autograph signers for yet another Star Trek movie card set was highly unlikely, and if we did, it would have meant several repeat signers, which I don't believe would be appealing. It was never my intention to create a 4th classic movie card set, but then we suddenly found ourselves with a small, but solid grouping of new signers, as well as an enormous assortment of all-new, extremely hi-res photos that have never before appeared on cards. The 54 Heroes & Villains character cards will simply blow you away. The quality of the photos of these cards surpasses anything you've seen before. We've made very high quality cards for a very affordable price. And we've taken the unprecedented step of guaranteeing a Shatner or Nimoy autograph in every box! If that's not a "fascinating", if not extremely "logical" selling point, I don't know what is. Plus, we have added the 2 patch card box toppers that continue what we started with the last series of movie cards, and we all know that these patch cards have been highly desirable and valuable to collectors. We're only making 375 boxes of this collection, which also makes it the most limited series of Star Trek cards we've made to date. Rest assured that we have every intention to continue creating more Star Trek cards in the traditional format that all of us have come to love. Our next full series of Star Trek cards will be The Complete Star Trek: The Next Generation Series 2 (1991-1994) in early 2012, and that will be in the traditional format. We are also working on other new Star Trek card sets in traditional format, including one based on the first J.J. Abrams' Star Trek movie from 2009 -- we've already had a new signing with Chris Pine (Captain Kirk), along with several other actors who were not part of the 2009 movie card set. I can't promise that we won't use the premium pack format for Star Trek again, but it will only be done selectively."

As to Mr. E's comment about too much $$$. I don't get this, I really don't. As an example, it's looking like two boxes (IE cases) will get you a complete set. 4 boxes (IE cases) to guaranteed you the mutli-case incentive). For CTNG, the rarest card in the cases (not including the Gene R card) took me 4 or 5 cases (IE boxes) and 6 Cases (IE boxes) to get the highest incentive. This makes this set 2 times easier to get the a full set if not looking at the incentive card and about 1/3 easier to get if you do look at the incentive card. Either way, NOT more $$$$$$$$.

Edited cause I can't do math....

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

As to whether or not the market can support another Trek product, time will tell. THere's no question, there's been some *downgrading* of collectors and collecting with the econmy and I'd of been ok with only the two sets we already had, but I received a good resposne from my collecto's group when I sent out my email about it.

I was plesently surprised by my one premium pack purchase, Vampirella. I knew I only wanted one set and would have only purchase one box of packs for this release. On the same day I got a box of Harry Potter auto seriwes. It was fun opening those with my son. Each format has their own merits and here is an idea for certain sets produce both.

When I buy a box of cards my primary interest is in the autograph cards. The more autographs seeded, the more I am inclined to get the product regardless of the subject. But I am a box buyer, not a case buyer. If you took a survey right now I doubt that you would find many collectors that can afford cases. With the premium pack products, a box is the equivalent of a case. To say that the "case/box" is somehow cheaper in a premium format is not really relevant to people who never buy traditional cases because of the cost.

Premium packs make the base cards as limited or even more limited than the "hits", which increases their value for anyone trying to complete the base set. I have said this before in several threads, in my opinion you can't argue that the cost of premium packs is the same or less than a comparable traditional box. You have to buy a lot more packs than you would normally buy boxes to achieve the full production run of cards. That makes the cards more expensive, just as the word premium would imply.

I'm not going negative on this new ST release, in fact I like it because I don't need the set. I will get a couple of packs, if I can find them, and I will be happy if I pull a decent autograph. I don't need to complete anything here because I'm not a big ST fan, which is a good thing since I couldn't afford it if I was.

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

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
I've just finished some research of my data base and, I am open to correction on this, but the first auto card was that of Chuck Jones from Comic Ball Ser.1 which was issued in 1990. Prior to that I do not record one.

The "Grande Illusions" set from Imagine in 1988 had a Tom Savini autograph.

I realize this is an old thread, but I thought I would add a related question:

I work with a company that 131 Million nonsport cards ( new old stock - 70's to 90's from a Topps distributor).

We've recently begun marketing a sale of the entire warehouse to some of the major retailers.

My question to the members here:

Is the "semi classic" era of non sports in major decline or is 30-50 demographic still into these?


For every lowly Dinosaurs Attack card, there are unsearched Garbage Pail Kids, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, Nintendo, etc...

From an outsider's view ( me)..it looks like extreme interest in a handful of titles, and almost zero in others...highly fragmented.

For what it's worth, my only interest in the hobby as a kid was Wacky Packs ( I was pretty obsessed with them actually).

It's hard to get a read on this hobby, but I'm guessing the readership here is about as in tune with it as anyone.

Appreciate your insights.

BTW, when the inventory sells I will be happy to let people here know *where* it ends up.
It will be a sizeable injection of cards into the market, which may or may not introduce a bit of volatility into the price action.
Hard to predict, but it might be good info to have

Thanks again.

With most older cards, existing collectors who wanted them, already have them by now, thus the softness in the market for the majority of them, especially any made after 1980. Cards from the 1970's and earlier are much more scarce, but there's not as much interest in them as there perhaps should be simply because many of the subjects are long forgotten.

The reason Star Wars, Wacky Packs, GPK, Mars Attacks, and cards like that remain popular is because new ones are being produced pretty regularly which helps to create new collectors who then want to go back and get the older ones.

One other thing that differentiates non-sports cards from other kinds of collectibles is the varying quality of them from over the years. Comics books, for instance, are largely unchanged since the days of Action Comics #1, they are just a little smaller and printed on better paper. Coins and stamps have pretty much always had high production standards, being government issues where counterfeiting was a consideration.

Cards, however, don't generally have the same pedigree in that they really only took their quantum leap in terms of upgrading the quality of the cardstock and printing processes used, the attention to production design (and even being cut from the sheets properly), to the addition of the all-important chase/insert cards in the last 20 years. To wit, cards since about 1992 or so are pretty much a completely different animal than those made before then. The cards that predate 1990 are practically a different collectible than the cards of today, as a result, and the fan bases of both are small, but especially where the older cards are concerned.

My immediate thought was that your best course of action would be to set fire to the warehouse.

I can't even begin to imagine what dumping this amount of cards on to the market will do to the hobby. I also can't even imagine a warehouse with this many cards in it that hardly anyone knew about, it's Inkworks all over again.

My second thought was that for most of the cards from that era they would cost more to post than you could actually sell them for which brings me back to my first thought.

Heh, good stuff, Wolfie.

Actually, the vast majority of Topps cards from the 1970's through the 1990's are available in such abundance, the market will shrug off even a find like this. Those cards can only go so low. Certainly some of the series would be more valuable as pulp, with the cards themselves not even being worth a penny each.

But the GPK, Star Wars, Wackys, and the like, there's enough of a demand on that even the increased supply on the market will be absorbed and prices would stay steady. I mean, on the original Star Wars cards from 1977, there must already be a million or more of those sets out there, and they still hold their value somehow.

quote:

Originally posted by desertcoast:

I work with a company that 131 Million nonsport cards ( new old stock - 70's to 90's from a Topps distributor).

We've recently begun marketing a sale of the entire warehouse to some of the major retailers.

For every lowly Dinosaurs Attack card, there are unsearched Garbage Pail Kids, Star Wars, Star Trek, Marvel, Nintendo, etc...

Can that number possibly be right, 131 million non-sport cards? These are in sealed boxes and packs? Even given that most non-sport sets from the 70s and 80s are already pretty cheap now, they would have to go lower because the market is not absorbing this supply increase without dropping more.

Just slap a $5 per box price tag on them and leave. Titles with current recognizable names will sell as long as its a bargain. Marvel in particular should do well because comic characters never go out of fashion.

131 million isn't so many, Raven. I just counted mine after reading your post, and I have over 200 million myself.

Wait, that can't be right.

Let me count again.

Without a major influx of newbie hobbyists, titles from the late 1970s and 80s will not see upward movement anytime soon. Another key aspect has been stated above—current active collectors most likely own the releases from this era.

Further, the nostalgia factor might not be as strong vis-a-vis 1980s titles. The exceptions, of course, are Star Wars Empire and Return, Wackys and GPK. Perhaps new generalists might seek out forgotten Topps sets such as Supergirl or Baby, but the guess here is not enough will chase these to make any difference.

The age 30-to-50 demographic is what buys into contemporary television projects. This group knows of Mork and Mindy and Three’s Company, but few within this audience perceive the need to chase the vintage sets because autographs and sketches didn’t exist at the time of publication.