I'm REALLY disappointed in Cryptozoic's FRINGE release. I have no idea what has been posted on this board about their other releases(I think BBT had some complaints, not sure). My complaint is that out of the 6 possible great autographs you could want, i.e. the main cast, they're all difficult to obtain, with the big three being next to impossible. I'll NEVER be able to complete or come close to completing the set. I don't expect them to have Torv/Jackson/Noble signing 800 autograph cards a piece, but I think it stinks that Reddick, Nicole and Brown are really hard to get.
Am I justified in my annoyance at this release?

Yes.

Sadly a friend I talked into buying a box got no autograph, two pieceworks, and was 25 cards short of a base set. I was hoping to use this as a way to get him to start in our hobby now he is just mad at the waste of money.

It seems to me there's 2-3 main cast autos per case. That's reasonable if not fabulous odds. However, since they all pretty much signed, the consequence is that it's hard to get the whole lot. This makes it frustrating but I don't think the odds are really low, just the cast is too big. If only 3 of them signed and each case had 1 from each, I don't think the odds would be an issue.

My problem with Fringe (and to a lesser extent BBT) is the truly awful collation. There's no excuse for boxes without a base set and an auto.

I don't understand the complaint. This is how all of CZE releases have been. The set looks great together. If you want to complete it you may just have to break down and buy the cards you need.

Sure I was a little disappointed with the collation again (my three cases had 1:4 boxes missing autos, and I ended up shorted 5 autos), but I prefer the way they've been doing it as compared to Rittenhouse (although I like Rittenhouse too). Take a look at how much the master sets for CZE releases go for and compare them to Rittenhouse's releases. CZE sets also appear to be keeping their value better.

quote:

Originally posted by jane:
My complaint is that out of the 6 possible great autographs you could want, i.e. the main cast, they're all difficult to obtain, with the big three being next to impossible. I'll NEVER be able to complete or come close to completing the set. I don't expect them to have Torv/Jackson/Noble signing 800 autograph cards a piece, but I think it stinks that Reddick, Nicole and Brown are really hard to get.
Am I justified in my annoyance at this release?

Well YES and NO.

YES you are justified in that you really wanted Fringe cards, you were happy someone got the license and now you are disappointed because you find you can't complete the set at a reasonable cost.

And NO you are not justified because you should have expected it from Cryptozoic. Fringe was manufactured with the same box/case formula as Vampire Diaries, BBT and likely everything else on their plate. The main stars are all rare and even case buyers will get only one or two per case. The online prices for those rare cards are too high for an average buyer, therefore the cost of a master set is not affordable for the average collector.

I opened 5 boxes of BBT before the box price went up. I didn't get one autograph from any of the top 5 stars. The box prices have now jumped about 50% and all you will get is doubles of the short list of common signatures anyway.

It would offend me to purchase any of those missing signatures at the current online prices, I mean I can't even convince myself that they are worth it. So this BBT autograph subset will go uncompleted, even though I really wanted the cards. However I can tell you that I won't be buying 5 boxes of the next BBT series or any other product assembled in this manner. That's what happens when I get annoyed.

I have come to the conclusion that Cryptozoics releases are not for the average collector (ie, me), only those who have a very high disposable income and can afford to shell out a couple of grand every few months can hope to have master sets by picking them up as soon as possible. I don't understand the hype to be honest, The Vampire Diaries release didn't have the crazy prices straight away upon first being released, to me it's seems what the Big Bang Theory release did to the market was get everyone hyped up into thinking that every Cryptozoic set is going to have autos that will go for outrageous amounts of money, or some sellers hope they will. Then that sets a standard and everyone else follows.

And I don't understand why the prices for Cryptozoics sets sky rocket so much so quickly, I love Fringe, it has been one of my staples that I keep watching when so many other shows disappoint, but you cannot tell me that it is more popular than Game of Thrones. The prices of Game of Thrones are slowly increasing, but they are steady, so it makes it easier to have the chance of picking things up that I need before it gets too expensive. I'm sorry but I'll never believe that the Anna Torv auto is worth more than a Lena Headey autograph.

Is it that Crypto gets less autos signed by the main actors than Rittenhouse? Because GoT only had 3-5 main character autos in each case and those aren't going for the money the Fringe main cast are.

I'm really starting to miss Inkworks because it's starting to look like Crypto is not going to be filling their shoes any time soon, and they have still to bring out a set without quality and collation issues.

quote:

Originally posted by Juelle Lou:

Is it that Crypto gets less autos signed by the main actors than Rittenhouse? Because GoT only had 3-5 main character autos in each case and those aren't going for the money the Fringe main cast are.

I'm really starting to miss Inkworks because it's starting to look like Crypto is not going to be filling their shoes any time soon, and they have still to bring out a set without quality and collation issues.

You can see that with Crypto that the bigger autos are rarer than the Rittenhouse bigger autos by how few of them show up on eBay. I've only seen 3 Felicia Day as Codex autos pop up. They are definitely rarer.

I do agree about CZE's quality control issues. They have been horrible. I really thought Vampire Diaries probably had the best image quality. Fringe's base set is sub par printing quality wise. Even some of Inkworks first earliest releases had better quality of printing.

Collation has been horrible on all the releases except for The Guild, and The Walking Dead wasn't too bad, but otherwise terrible.

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:
You can see that with Crypto that the bigger autos are rarer than the Rittenhouse bigger autos by how few of them show up on eBay. I've only seen 3 Felicia Day as Codex autos pop up. They are definitely rarer.

I think they do that on purpose really. Cryptozoic seem to love their limited to #25 oversize pieceworks cards, so I think their aim must be to sell to the high-end collectors, not the average joe.

I feel that with the Fringe set, only Torv, Jackson and Noble are the main characters and it should have been closer to one of them per case. As great as Astrid, Nina, Lee and Broyles are, to me they are still only secondary characters and shouldn't of been classed as 'Rare'. It's not as if the actors are famous for anything else and I can't imagine why they would want to sign any less than the uncommon signers, it seems to me like a way to spread out less of the main 3 actors autos while still saying you get more than one 'Rare' in a case. The only thing I really surprised about in a good way is that I'm amazed that they got Jackson to sign, I never watched Dawson's Creek(not my sort of thing) but I grew up watching the Mighty Ducks and it's sequels so I hope to one day have his autograph in my collection.

With printing issues, I found the 'Vampire Diaries' set to be terrible, with poorly cut, bent, scratched and all sort of weird markings on them. I threw out so many base cards and even some chase as well. I haven't opened up nearly as much as alot of other people on here, but I've not had any problems with Inkworks, Rittenhouse, Breygent or others like with Cryptozoic. I don't think any of my Vampire Diaries autos are in as good a condition as my GoT autos, and even most of my Firefly, Serenity and Buffy autos are in better condition. Some of the corners and edges are pretty bad, and that was straight out of the wrapper and into penny sleeves

I always thought that Inkwork's Buffy sets have some of the worst image quality on cards I've ever seen, some of them are so blurry you would think that they took photos of the TV show with their camera or something But that isn't what bothers me too much, it's the condition of the cards when pulled from the wrappers that concerns me, that and collation.

And I think people do have to complain, especially on forums, how else are they going to know that people aren't happy with their products?

I've always been a huge Smallville fan, and I have master sets of everything that Inkworks did. Unfortunately, much to my disappointment, I had to pass on the recent Crypto Smallville set, just because of the autographs issue.

The same dealer who did master sets for me on the Inkworks sets, years ago, told me that he couldn't get me a master set on the new one, even though he broke 3 or 4 cases. He was short 4 or 5 of the autos. Thus, not only would I have had to pay him TWICE as much as what I paid him for an Inkworks master set, I'd still have to pay an EXTRA $500 on my own to get the missing autos !

I also don't understand how anyone can complain about CZE releases when Upper Deck's Avengers Assemble set is substantially harder to put together than any of CZEs sets. That set has a costume card selling for $300+, and the half of the autos sell for $200+ (and two others of the 8 in the set sell for $150+). Just to put together the 8 card auto set costs over $1500 (Hemsworth - $250, Smulders - $225, Dennings - $200, Alexander - $300, Elba - $200, Renner - $175, Feore - $100, Ricci - $70). Heck...and these autos are sticker autos to boot...no on card autos.

Boxes are at about $150 each too so going that route is hard too.

Looks like the prices on Smallville master sets may be dropping. I see one "you know where" for a mere $ 1400, without the one card that's limited to 25. But you get all of the other cards, autos and costumes.

Maybe Fringe will drop in price, also

I didn't mean to turn this into a bash Cryptozoic topic, but it's clear some folks aren't happy with some aspects of their releases. My main complaint was that it would cost me $xxxx to complete the Fringe set.

I think they should have been a little more generous with the choice autographs.

I didn't open much of The Vampire Diaries. I put that set together virtually by piecing it together card by card (I did put a base set together from one of the 6 boxes I opened). I bought both insert sets as well as all the autos. I did pull an auto from each of my boxes, but it was always a dup...same with the costume cards I pulled. Image/printing wise I thought it was the best set, but I did read about the cutting issues.

All I know is that of the sets release this year 3 of my top five would be CZE releases (The Vampire Diaries, The Guild, and Fringe). The other two would be GoT from Rittenhouse and Avengers Assemble from Upper Deck. I understand that their sets are difficult and expensive to put together, but I think you have to accept that going in.

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:
I also don't understand how anyone can complain about CZE releases when Upper Deck's Avengers Assemble set is substantially harder to put together than any of CZEs sets. That set has a costume card selling for $300+, and the half of the autos sell for $200+ (and two others of the 8 in the set sell for $150+). Just to put together the 8 card auto set costs over $1500 (Hemsworth - $250, Smulders - $225, Dennings - $200, Alexander - $300, Elba - $200, Renner - $175, Feore - $100, Ricci - $70). Heck...and these autos are sticker autos to boot...no on card autos.

Boxes are at about $150 each too so going that route is hard too.

I think that's because people had high hopes for fan loved franchises such as Fringe and Smallville from a new company in the hobby vs what we can expect of Upper Deck. We already experienced their marketing and releases. Like Juelle and Jane, I feel that some more of Jackson and Torv would have helped and indeed Gabel and Brown didn't need to be THAT rare if indeed Cryptozoic had power over this.(Those last 2 have same sold/appearance on ebay than Torv/Jackson). Do the rarity reflects the refusal of all main/secondary actors in signing more or just the interest in the company too keep pretty much all characters of interest really hard to get...Upon entering the hobby, the main Cryptozoic banner was 'Trading Cards made by fans, for fans'
is this creating high hopes? it did in my case

quote:

Originally posted by DavidDeb:
I think that's because people had high hopes for fan loved franchises such as Fringe and Smallville from a new company in the hobby vs what we can expect of Upper Deck. We already experienced their marketing and releases. Like Juelle and Jane, I feel that some more of Jackson and Torv would have helped and indeed Gabel and Brown didn't need to be THAT rare if indeed Cryptozoic had power over this.(Those last 2 have same sold/appearance on ebay than Torv/Jackson). Do the rarity reflects the refusal of all main/secondary actors in signing more or just the interest in the company too keep pretty much all characters of interest really hard to get...Upon entering the hobby, the main Cryptozoic banner was 'Trading Cards made by fans, for fans'
is this creating high hopes? it did in my case

I think you still have to consider that CZE, the non gaming card portion, is still less than a year old. They are still going through growing pains. I still prefer their releases over Rittenhouses even with that being said.

I can tell you that my two cases of GoT were really close to being identical. When I was done opening them I still needed something like 21 autos to complete the auto set. I basically pulled 30 different autos in the two cases and still needed 21 to finish the set. I get the appeal of this set to some though becase only one of the cards sells for $200, and most can be had for $10-$15 (or less). Even the higher end cards for this set have settled to $125-$175 (Clarke and Headey).

I like that the Anna Torv that I purchased is holding its value for the most part. I like that the rarer cards in the CZE sets hold their value. Heck some of the cards have increased in value since the release of the various sets. That's a rarity in this hobby nowadays...

I have been critical of another release whereby the base set (now selling for an average of $50) is too expensive in my view. My view has been critisised. I'd never expect to collect all autos/pw for a set as that would be unrealistic on my budget, but not being able to afford a base set, which to me is a fundamental part of a release, is crazy. Some people seem to think there is nothing wrong with a base set costing $50. I beg to differ!

So I guess those that can pay top dollar or have the rare cards already don't need to worry about prices and think the rest of us are being unreasonable!

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

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:
I like that the Anna Torv that I purchased is holding its value for the most part. I like that the rarer cards in the CZE sets hold their value. Heck some of the cards have increased in value since the release of the various sets. That's a rarity in this hobby nowadays...

My question is, why though, what's your opinion on why the Crypto autos hold there value better considering the quality of the cards are nowhere near as good as Rittenhouse, yet...

quote:

Originally posted by WarriorBabe:
I have been critical of another release whereby the base set (now selling for an average of $50) is too expensive in my view. My view has been critisised. I'd never expect to collect all autos/pw for a set as that would be unrealistic on my budget, but not being able to afford a base set, which to me is a fundamental part of a release, is crazy. Some people seem to think there is nothing wrong with a base set costing $50. I beg to differ!

So I guess those that can pay top dollar or have the rare cards already don't need to worry about prices and think the rest of us are being unreasonable!

Over $50 dollars for a base from a normal box/case release does seem very unreasonable (ie, Inkworks Twilight, I think they are slowly starting to go down in price though finally). I haven't bought any sets though from premium packs yet so I'm not sure what base sets for those go for.

quote:

Originally posted by Juelle Lou:

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Bartowski:
I like that the Anna Torv that I purchased is holding its value for the most part. I like that the rarer cards in the CZE sets hold their value. Heck some of the cards have increased in value since the release of the various sets. That's a rarity in this hobby nowadays...

My question is, why though, what's your opinion on why the Crypto autos hold there value better considering the quality of the cards are nowhere near as good as Rittenhouse, yet...

Well I would say the autographs have been very well done...The Vampire Diaries set especially so I don't think quality is an issue with them.

I think that they have also done a good job of not overproducing any of the sets, and keeping the rare cards actually rare.