I was discussing this with my eldest son before and i thought it would make a good topic for the members??im mid 30's from England so im sure older members who started collecting when they were young and depending where they are from will have a different take on this and it will be interesting to find out other peoples thoughts on this??but i decided on.

1st Rittenhouse and Star Trek(TOS)
2nd Topps and The Fellowship of the Ring
3rd Breygent and The Wizard of Oz

Please feel free to throw in your 'wisdom' on this one.

It's an interesting question, I have trouble thinking in terms of companies as I usually go for the card set regardless of what company they come from..

1) Rittenhouse because of Battlestar Galatacia, James Bond and Star Trek
2) FPG for all sets, but mainly the Joe Jusko : Edgar Rice Burroughs collections
3) And Finally Topps for all the old stuff, like Buck Rogers and The black Hole.

Special mention to Breygent for the Vampirella/Red Sonja and Warlord of Mars sets.. they are excellent but I have more sets from the others.

I haven´t been long around here but heres my list:

1) Cryptozoic - Walking Dead/Tarzan
2) Topps - SW30th
3) Breygent - Warlord of Mars

There are tons of great sets out there, but these are some of my personal favorites.

5FINITY: Mandy
Sadlittles: Damsels and Dinosaurs
Razor: Ink Vault

I don't have a top three but would just like to mention one that was the most memorable from my days at school:

Brooke Bond PG Tips

Every year they had a different card set given away in their packets of tea with subjects ranging from Space Travel, through Dinosaurs, Tudor History and Wild Birds and Butterflies. All the kids at school looked forward to swapping and trading in the playground every time a new set came out. I also think this had something to do with my lifetime addiction to tea I still have several in my collection(s) over 40 years later.

quote:

Originally posted by Kevin F:
I don't have a top three but would just like to mention one that was the most memorable from my days at school:

Brooke Bond PG Tips

Every year they had a different card set given away in their packets of tea with subjects ranging from Space Travel, through Dinosaurs, Tudor History and Wild Birds and Butterflies. All the kids at school looked forward to swapping and trading in the playground every time a new set came out. I also think this had something to do with my lifetime addiction to tea I still have several in my collection(s) over 40 years later.

I have a number of these sets also. I have picked these up over recent years as like everything I collected as a youngster just got thrown out.

My favourites are;
1st Breygent Vintage Sci-fi.
2nd Rittenhouse Stargate.
3rd SkyBox Trek.

1st Breygent Vintage Sci-fi, Tudors
2nd Rittenhouse Stargate SG1
3rd Topps Mars Attacks/LOTR

Rittenhouse - Stargate / Warehouse 13 - great auto runs + high quality everything else
My second and third choices are both recent entries for specific releases:
Perna Studios - Classic Mythology
Cryptozoic - DC New 52

Inkworks - BUFFY and all related Buffy sets
Rittenhouse - Bond and Star Trek
Comic Images - Boris (Olivia, etc.)

Inkworks: X-Files / Buffy and the Serenity set was fantastic (the only negative was that the lower chase sets were all the same)
Rittenhouse: BSG / Stargate / Farscape. Mostly for the variety of lower level chase cards (except "quotables" were over done)
Cryptozoic has potential but we need to see better Autograph ratios and more interesting chase cards. (keep the sketches rare, it means there's less ****)

I'm going to keep it current, not because I don't go back awhile, but because recent non-sport sets just have so much more packed in them than past products.

1. Rittenhouse - Game of Thrones
2. Breygent - Dexter
3. Press Pass - Elvis

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

I don't think some people are being specific enough!

One that always stood out in my mind was Topps LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring. Nice base, chase, promos, previews, binder and every major cast member signed. That was a very impressive set.

X-Men: The Movie by Topps was another great product with lots of chase sets and the full cast signing (bar Halle Berry).

Bond is an obvious favourite of mine and I think two of the very best products Rittenhouse Archives did were The Women of Bond in Motion and The Complete James Bond.
Women in Motion had a nice lenticular base set, classy binder, lots of great looking chase levels and the auto run (at a now small number of 15) were all top calibre signers from the Bond movies, an absolutely solid lineup.
Complete Bond was another fantastic set with a base set made up of movie poster puzzles, a series not over or under produced, arguably the strongest auto line-up of any Bond set with pretty much all top names, and the first to introduce some seriously good prop cards with decent sized swatches. This set was the peak of quality Bond cards IMO.

And I'll give a nod to James Bond Mission Logs from RA, simply because it finally gave me the Pierce Brosnan autograph card I had spent all my collecting years dreaming would come to fruition! Forget your band-aid Harrison Ford autos limited to 8 or whatever, any set with 100+ on-card autos of Brosnan as Bond gets my thumbs up.

I will go with:

#1. Inkworks and Serenity- one of the few non-sport sets to feature the entire starring cast signing autographs in the same set. It was actually impossible to get a bad box for the set since 9 out of 10 of the autos were main cast members. I pulled four Nathan Fillion cards buying packs and boxes...(which have since been either traded, etc. except for the one I kept and the one I gave to my roommate)

#2. Rittenhouse and Women of Star Trek 2010- the only Trek set I have ever tried to master- the autograph lineup is solid and features just about every important woman associated with the various Star Trek TV series. (bar Enterprise.) Uhura, Dr. Crusher, Troi, Tasha Yar, Yeoman Rand, Jadzia Dax, Kira, Janeway, Kes, Seven of Nine- all there with autograph cards. The set design was great, the costumes and chase cards were awesome and the autograph cards themselves were gorgeous. This would have been number one if we had seen autograph cards from Roxann Dawson and Nicole deBoer included, but that is a very minor nitpick.

#3. Inkworks- Angel Season 2- Awesome set that was one of the first non-sports sets to draw me back into the hobby after I abandoned it in the early 90s with DC Cosmic Teams as my last set until this one. I wouldn't really go full throttle with Angel cards until the 3rd season set came out and I pulled my first ever autograph card- Amy Acker, but this set has a solid lineup of autographs- of course headlined by Charisma Carpenter as Cordelia, but you also get Gunn, Darla and Drusilla in single and dual varieties, Lilah and the late Andy Hallett as Lorne are the highlights of the 9 card autograph set. This could have been the number one set for me but the Serenity set was just killer.

Val

I visited the US for work in 1995 or 96 and went to a WalMart where they had some cheap boxes of STNG Inaugural Edition which I purchased and it started me collecting!

So

1. Impel/Skybox/RA - STNG
2. Breygent - Dexter/Tudors
3. Inkworks - 4400/Alias
4. RA - Farscape

I know it's more than 4 and I could add a few others

Can't limit it to three, that's just impossible, but I could get it down to four, at least.

Inkworks - Simpsons Mania
Rittenhouse - Twilight Zone Premiere Edition
Topps - Star Wars Series 1 (Blue) 1977
Fleer/Skybox - Marvel Silver Age 1998

and a couple of honorable mentions:

Breygent - Celebrity Movie Posters (among the greatest base sets ever issued by anyone)
Duocards - Happy Days (more magic from Tom Breyer)
Comic Images - Godzilla (hats off to Tom, yet again!)

I have not been around for very long either, but my choices are

#1 Rittenhouse - Game of Thrones
#2 Cryptozoic - Walking Dead
#3 Breygent - The Tudors I, II, III

I'm going to have to go with what a few other have said.

1. Inkworks - My Serenity and Firefly, Buffy 1-7 and 10th Anniversary sets are my all time favourites. I love it when a company keeps the same design for the auto throughout the whole of the series.

2. Rittenhouse - Farscape/Game of Thrones. I'm having trouble deciding which I like better, but I'm leaning towards Farscape for the simple fact that I love that it only has one design for all the autos and it includes costume cards.

3. Breygent - Tudors, I adore what they did with that license. They are beautiful looking cards and the designs for the autos and costumes are gorgeous.

1. Inkworks - Buffy 10th was the first box purchase I had ever made and got me back into the hobby in 2007 after an 11 year absence. Love the sets for Supernatural, LOST, The X-Files and Alias.

2. Rittenhouse - Battlestar Galactica is my favourite release from RA. Fantastic auto line ups throughout all sets, plenty of costumes and different chase sets. Also love Farscape, Warehouse 13 and Game of Thrones.

3. Breygent - Dexter, love this show and have enjoyed all the releases so far. Just need to get around to getting all the cards I want for these sets.

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

Call me old school, but I think the following releases really brought a lot of new collectors into the hobby when they first came out...

Gum, Inc: Horrors of War
Topps: Mars Attacks
Topps: Wacky Packs

For my part, Topps Dinosaurs Attack was another classic that had a big impact on me, but it didn't catch on like the other three mentioned above did.