quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
$5 Saw packs are an amazing deal.

quote:

Originally posted by Logan:

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
$5 Saw packs are an amazing deal.

Well that deal got even better. I received a Fright-Rags postcard ad in the mail with a 20% off discount code last weekend. And right now they're having their "Winter Break Blowout Sale" and all their trading cards are on sale. Saw packs were down to $4. I kept adding them to my cart to see how many they had left in stock and the total was 89. So I decided to buy them all. At $4 a pack and then my 20% code + tax & shipping the grand total came to $317.79. That's for 89 18-card base & 2-card sticker sets plus around 15 of the autographs give or take - as the stated odds are 1 in 6 packs. Not a bad deal at all I say.

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
That's an interesting gamble assuming you're planning on moving the extra sets and autographs with the selling point that the company sold out and you're the source now. You can sell for $5/set and make money. Any autographs you don't want would be the gravy. I did something like that years ago in another hobby and came out ahead.

Good luck,

Jess

quote:

Originally posted by Logan:

quote:

Originally posted by catskilleagle:
That's an interesting gamble assuming you're planning on moving the extra sets and autographs with the selling point that the company sold out and you're the source now. You can sell for $5/set and make money. Any autographs you don't want would be the gravy. I did something like that years ago in another hobby and came out ahead.

Good luck,

Jess

Thanks. I plan on keeping them unopened for as long as I can, while I figure out a game plan. I honestly want to keep all the autographs and a few mini-master sets, but all the other base/sticker sets I would like to move, once I decide to open them. I also have 14 sealed wax boxes of their Halloween cards which are now sold out also, and they're all still unopened. If and when I do sit down and open everything I want to be prepared for the large amount of base sets I will have to deal with, and right now I'm not (prepared). I would need plenty of snap cases or small card boxes and then mailers or shipping boxes on top of that, and I don't have it in me to figure all that out at the moment. So sealed is where everything will stay, for now.

quote:

Originally posted by Logan:
Day of the Dead wax boxes and individual packs are now sold out. Took about a week. With the vast majority of Fright-Rags' sets selling so well so quickly it makes me wonder why more card companies don't try to go after the iconic horror licenses. They seem to sell very well and have had a built-in fan base for decades. Seems like a no-brainer to me instead of going after these modern TV shows that fizzle out as soon as the sets are released.

quote:

Originally posted by Logan:
Day of the Dead wax boxes and individual packs are now sold out. Took about a week. With the vast majority of Fright-Rags' sets selling so well so quickly it makes me wonder why more card companies don't try to go after the iconic horror licenses. They seem to sell very well and have had a built-in fan base for decades. Seems like a no-brainer to me instead of going after these modern TV shows that fizzle out as soon as the sets are released.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by Logan:
Day of the Dead wax boxes and individual packs are now sold out. Took about a week. With the vast majority of Fright-Rags' sets selling so well so quickly it makes me wonder why more card companies don't try to go after the iconic horror licenses. They seem to sell very well and have had a built-in fan base for decades. Seems like a no-brainer to me instead of going after these modern TV shows that fizzle out as soon as the sets are released.

It a hard thing for card makers to pick properties. If you are doing a really short print run it's pretty easy to sell out, but how much money did you really make? On the other hand, to sell out 6000 boxes, you need a popular in demand title, not some niche/cult old franchise. This product sold through because it was kept small enough not to overstep demand.

The other aspect to it is the cost of the license. Like many of the Kickstarter cards, they could be open sourced or in the public domain. They don't require a license for someone to make cards, but with those iconic horror monsters, many titles would still be copyrighted by someone even if they are old.

No idea how Fright Rags is putting out these titles, if they are paying for licensing or not, but the fan base seems in tune with the production. If they were to try to expand on production to match the potential of a new TV series or a current movie franchise, they may have an opposite outcome. Sometimes staying small is the way to go if its profitable enough.

quote:

Originally posted by Ben - Fright-Rags:
Thanks for the kind words on the cards! To answer some questions posted here, yes all the cards are officially licensed. Given that, many titles are extremely limited when it comes to rights. We've done sets where we've had the least restrictions with regards to approved images. For example, with Day of the Dead we were allowed use of any image from the film, we had access to behind the scenes photos, as well as access to some of the actors for the autographs. However, in the case of a movie like JAWS, we technically have "trading card rights" but we cannot use any likeness on the cards at all, so it would literally only be a set featuring images of the shark. To obtain those rights we would have to get approval from each estate (other companies like NECA have done that for figures), but it would add on to the approval process, cost, etc. and complicate the entire project. We were able to add that category to our bulk deal with other titles which allowed us to do the Chucky set; but again, because all the cards featured Chucky, not principal actors. Many titles are restricted like that, otherwise we'd be pumping out more sets. It's possible larger companies that focus only on cards have some way of getting around that with their licensing deal, but we spend a lot of money on licensing per year and I've tried hard to get rights to be able to do certain things to no avail.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

quote:

Originally posted by Ben - Fright-Rags:
Thanks for the kind words on the cards! To answer some questions posted here, yes all the cards are officially licensed. Given that, many titles are extremely limited when it comes to rights. We've done sets where we've had the least restrictions with regards to approved images. For example, with Day of the Dead we were allowed use of any image from the film, we had access to behind the scenes photos, as well as access to some of the actors for the autographs. However, in the case of a movie like JAWS, we technically have "trading card rights" but we cannot use any likeness on the cards at all, so it would literally only be a set featuring images of the shark. To obtain those rights we would have to get approval from each estate (other companies like NECA have done that for figures), but it would add on to the approval process, cost, etc. and complicate the entire project. We were able to add that category to our bulk deal with other titles which allowed us to do the Chucky set; but again, because all the cards featured Chucky, not principal actors. Many titles are restricted like that, otherwise we'd be pumping out more sets. It's possible larger companies that focus only on cards have some way of getting around that with their licensing deal, but we spend a lot of money on licensing per year and I've tried hard to get rights to be able to do certain things to no avail.

quote:

Originally posted by Ben - Fright-Rags:
However, in the case of a movie like JAWS, we technically have "trading card rights" but we cannot use any likeness on the cards at all, so it would literally only be a set featuring images of the shark. To obtain those rights we would have to get approval from each estate (other companies like NECA have done that for figures), but it would add on to the approval process, cost, etc. and complicate the entire project.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

quote:

Originally posted by Ben - Fright-Rags:
However, in the case of a movie like JAWS, we technically have "trading card rights" but we cannot use any likeness on the cards at all, so it would literally only be a set featuring images of the shark. To obtain those rights we would have to get approval from each estate (other companies like NECA have done that for figures), but it would add on to the approval process, cost, etc. and complicate the entire project.

Thanks for the great response Ben. I also missed the announcement for DotD release so I can only hope to catch an autograph card or two on the secondary market.

Of course a decent JAWS set has always been a hope for me as a collector. Out of curiosity, does the rights to a likeness change if the set was art based instead of actual images from the film? I have seen other art based sets with the assumption that this was a way to get around certain license restrictions.

Is this true or am I way off base?