I'd like to talk about the early 90's comic sets from Impel and something I've noticed.

Three years ago I'd look on eBay and see sealed boxes of DC Cosmic Cards and Cosmic Teams for around $10-13 each. Cosmic Cards tended to be the cheaper of the two, despite the fact they were a year older. Also around that time, I remember you could still easily find Impel's Marvel Universe series 1 and 2 boxes for reasonable prices. Now I've seen that Marvel Universe series 1 boxes are harder to find, and I just saw one recently sell for over $60 and that was an auction. I also saw a Marvel Universe series 2 box auction recently close at $52 after shipping.

Perhaps this explains why I've seen the DC Cosmic Cards and Teams boxes start to creep up. Now a mere three years later, instead of $12 per box, $20 per box after shipping seems to be standard and there are less of them on eBay in general. Of course $20 is still really cheap, but probably this is going to keep going up considering the following -

1. DC Cosmic boxes were way undervalued to begin with. It's a vintage product over 20 years old despite that it's selling for much less than retail when it first came out.

2. There's no damaging UV gloss on these cards, I've opened several packs and they've all been preserved perfectly. I also love that smell they have, the non-UV card smell, especially the cards from wax packs.

3. The holograms are really nice especially the DC Cosmic Teams holograms which were more 3d than most of the other hologram sets Impel did including the ones for the Marvel Universe sets.

4. The supply of Marvel Universe boxes getting scarce and going up in price is causing people to buy DC Cosmic boxes instead.

What do you guys think of my theory and the future value of DC Cosmic Cards/Teams boxes?

Also I've noticed that for DC Cosmic Teams there are 2 types of packs, wax and foil. Does anyone know ho wto tell which types of packs are in a box without opening it?

I am lucky enough to have a hobby store near me. Early this year the store put out boxes and boxes of old Marvel and DC product. They blew out at $15 - $20 per box. I didn't ask where they came from at the time because I wasn't interested until OTB day when I picked one up for $15 just to have something.

I think the reasons are:

1 - Someone had a lot of these products tucked away and is now distributing.

2 - These are comic characters that are still popular, so the twenty years doesn't matter.

3 - A $20 box is a major bargain compared to today's prices. An open box has $1 packs. This stuff will move.

Wow, I wish I had been there. What did the Marvel Universe boxes sell for, was it like eBay where the MU boxes were much higher priced?

About three years ago is when I bought an entire case of DC Cosmic Cards boxes from Krukcards on eBay. At the time these boxes were selling individually on eBay for around $12 after shipping. Purchasing them in a case, I got them for $8 per box after shipping.

Looking on ebay recently I not only see the boxes are going for $20 after shipping now but more people are watching the auctions and I saw this too http://offer.ebay.com/ws/eBayI...rksid=p2047675.l2564

This seller has sold 9 base sets of cosmic cards without the holograms for $18 each all within the past 3 months.

Recently I bought 5 boxes of Cosmic Teams too after seeing these are going up.

Will be fun to check in periodically on DC Cosmic Cards/Teams over the next decade and see how much they've increased. I've always thought both sets were woefully undervalued.

It was all early 90's Skybox product that they got in and it did not include the year that is most sought after. I bought a Skybox Star Trek NG box because by OTB day they had already gone through all the Marvel boxes. They said that they were looking for more because it sold so well, but I don't think they could get it again.

Some of the Star Trek sets have very nice holograms too I've read.

Do early Skybox sets have UV coating? I'm considering buying some Marvel Universe series III and IV since the first two sets have gotten so high in price, but I don't know of III and IV would be without UV coating like I and II are.

Also again, does anyone know how to tell if a DC Cosmic Teams box has wax or foil packs without opening it? Or even have any info on number of wax boxes produced vs foil boxes? I love those wax packs.

I can only tell you about that one Star Trek NG box that I found and opened. I wasn't buying those ST products when they came out and know little about them.

The 20 year plus Skybox cards I opened had UV coating on both sides. Not as heavy as Fleer Ultra, but enough to have some cards sticking together and it took longer to sort because I had to be careful separating the ones that were a bit stuck. They were not tacky and I don't think there was any damage, but yes the coating could cause problems the longer they lay around, at least in the set I had. It was SNG The Episode Collection, Season One.

Marvel 1-4 have no glossy coating.
The 5th and final set, the one issued by Fleer in 1994 has glossy UV on both sides. Those
cards remaining in those sealed packs are likely sticking together in various states of ruination as we speak.

DC Cosmic Teams were never issued in wax packs, they were in plastic poly only, the kind seen on most of today's issues. The print runs on it and the earlier set, DC Cosmic Cards, were massive, many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands. With DC Cosmic Cards, they unfortunately put the 5 holograms you get in a box in the same spot every time, so it was never a good idea to buy from an open box when they were new. They did fix that for DC Cosmic Teams, at least.
While the DC Cards from that era are very plentiful, there was a limited edition factory set for DC Cosmic Cards. Only 4,500 of those were made, and that is rare for the early 1990's. It's in a decorative box and has the base set of 180 plus all 10 Holograms.

Very, very few sets have been issued in wax wrapping after 1990 or so, so essentially none of the modern age superhero sets are in that kind of packaging.

Well I don't believe Cosmic Teams ever came in plastic poly (what I like to think of as "hulk Hogan shirt packs) although every box of Cosmic Cards I've opened has. Cosmic Teams packs are either foil or wax.

The latest boxes of Cosmic Teams I've bought have had foil wrapper packs, but I could have sworn the first several boxes I bought of Cosmic Teams around 4 years ago came in wax packs. Also I've seen an auction on eBay for a Cosmic Teams box that said "wax pack box" in the description. But who knows, maybe these are distorted memories, small details like that can easily be misremembered after several years. I don't know though.

I opened several boxes of Cosmic Cards from my case, at least seven. I did notice that there was a predictable pattern although sometimes it seemed slightly different per box but generally the same.

Thanks for the info about Marvel 1-4 not having glossy coating. I'm for sure going to buy some boxes of series 3 and 4 soon before they go up in price like series 1 and 2 have.

Thanks for the info about the factory set too, I'll be keeping an eye out for that. I think I've seen a few on eBay in the past.

While the DC Cosmic Cards might have had a high print run, there's still gradual attrition over the years. As Raven wrote these comic characters are still popular, even the DC ones, and probably always will be to some extent especially with all the superhero films that keep coming out. I was surprised actually to see that today Cosmic Cards are usually selling for a few dollars more than Cosmic Teams because when I bought most of mine it was the opposite, but the Cosmic Cards boxes are bigger and have more cards per pack too.

Will be interesting to see if these prices keep creeping up. Maybe in a few years their prices on ebay will actually be equal to the retail prices of $36 for when they first came out.

Sorry for any confusion with that. I meant foil on the cosmic cards, but they aren't really foil. They're plastic wrappers. Foil wrappers really are like tin foil. They even stay crumbled up when you ball them up, unlike regular plastic wrappers which return to their original shape, albeit a little wrinkled.

I haven't seen too many actual foil wrappers used on non-sports stuff, the vast majority since 1990 being plastic wrappers. Early Upper Deck used them, mostly on sports, but I do remember they used those foil wrappers on some of their non-sports, like the Valiant comics releases and on their "congo" movie set and Looney Tunes comic ball, all early 1990's stuff.

Hey everyone look, an auction for one box of Cosmic Cards just sold for $26 on eBay

http://www.ebay.com/itm/321802...e=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

That may not seem like much, but that's the highest I've seen in a while.

quote:

What do you guys think of my theory and the future value of DC Cosmic Cards/Teams boxes/
?

I like and prefer to open boxes and packs to build my sets. The value of this boxes is increasing thanks to the fever for comic cards of the '90s. Also the DC Cosmic Cards and DC Teams are those kind of boxes that maybe you get the surprise of missing cards to complete the base set. So you will need a 2nd box.

About both DC sets. DC technically kill the cards before born. Thanks to the stupid idea of selling the Batman Family copyrights. The cards are technically the best guide to the DC Universe.