Does anyone own or ever clapped eyes on the River Groups 30th anniversary Beatles set?
Jeff's House of Cards lists them as a gold foil sub-set of 30 cards. I have only been searching for them for about 30 years but to the best of my knowledge they have never surfaced on the 'bay (I've got it permanently listed on 'watch')

They were a TV shopping channel exclusive for QVC (Quality Value Channel). It's a home shopping network that was very popular well before the internet was in wide use. I believe they are still in business.

The 30 cards were a special bonus set that came in a "Gift Set" with a two boxes of the regular cards and the binder to hold all of the cards. When there were still fairly new, they could be found on Ebay pretty regularly and for a good price, but it's true, they don't show up too often these days.

Those TV shopping channels sold a lot of cards (mostly sports cards) back in the 1990's and the vast majority of them ended up being worth nowhere near the price they charged for them, but there are a few exceptions, and these Beatles cards are definitely among them. Good luck, and I'm sure you'll find them some day.

The particulars of the QVC package:

The set includes the limited edition "1964" Gold Foil stamped 30 card set with authenticity card as well as one random "#1 Hits" chase card from a series of 10 that were found in regular packs, usually one per box, I think). The gift sets included just one of these cards.
Also included was a specially designed card binder and 2 factory sealed boxes of the 1993 Beatles Collection Trading Cards. These were the regular 36 pack boxes. (There were also Jumbo pack boxes available back then, but those didn't have any of the regular insert cards, but instead came with one "Classic Hits" card per pack, from what was either an 8 card set, exclusive to the Jumbo packs)

I have a picture of the QVC set so you at least know what it looks like:



And the 30 cards themselves, the best I could find:



And time does fly, but not that fast. These cards came out closer to 20 years ago than 30 years ago. Those next 10 years will come and go pretty fast for most of us, I think, so let's not speed it along any more than we have to!

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

Thanks guy. You are always an absolute font of information and one day I will come to America and view your (what must be) mind-boggling collection!
Cheers
Sean

Actually, I don't have any cards at all.
I never saw the point of them.

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
Jeff's House of Cards lists them as a gold foil sub-set of 30 cards.

Last I checked they were listed as a "30th Anniversary QVC Set (sold separately, numbered to 2000)."

It's all there, and with fine attention detail, as usual:

http://nslists.com/beatlerg.htm

Now off to find those promos I'd never seen listed in their entirety before. I have a couple of them, now I know which ones I still need.

What an incredible reference this is.
Thanks again, Jeff!

The River Group and Sportstime Beatles sets were GREAT cards, worthy of the subject, which is the highest praise I can give since I consider the Beatles #1 in music (with numbers #2 and #3 on my list left blank, since no one even comes that close to them).
The endless innovation that abounded on those songs coming up on 50 years old makes them still sound as though they were just recorded, er, yesterday.

quote:

The River Group and Sportstime Beatles sets were GREAT cards, worthy of the subject, which is the highest praise I can give since I consider the Beatles #1 in music (with numbers #2 and #3 on my list left blank, since no one even comes that close to them).
The endless innovation that abounded on those songs coming up on 50 years old makes them still sound as though they were just recorded,/q er, yesterday.

Not only are you a highly respected card collector but your comments on the Beatles are worth bottling. So says one of NZ's biggest fan and memorabilia collector. I own 443 books by the Beatles, every single and album ever recorded (plus bootlegs) and a set of Beatles colour cards that would grade at 8-9 easily. I have been over ten years putting them together. I am now working on the Hard Days night set.

We are or a similar mind on the Beatles then, that's for sure. I still listen to Rubber Soul and Revolver almost every day at work, plus a lot of their other stuff, too. My player automatically arranges the songs by A to Z, so it's cool to hear them in a different order after all these years. When I just play them by artist, I especially like it when it gets to "H" as it plays the songs I have on it in the following order:

Happiness is a Warm Gun
Hello Goodbye
Helter Skelter
Here Comes The Sun
Here, There, and Everywhere
Honey Pie
I Am The Walrus
I Will
I'm Only Sleeping
I'm So Tired
I've Gotta Feeling
In My Life
Lady Madonna
Let it Be
Lovely Rita
Lucy in the Sky
Magical Mystery Tour
Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Mean Mr. Mustard
Michelle
Mother Nature's Son
Norwegian Wood
Nowhere Man
Ob-La-Di
Oh, Darling!
Paperback Writer
Penny Lane
Polythene Pam
Rain
Revolution
Revolution 1
Rocky Raccoon
Sexy Sadie
Sgt. Pepper's LCB

It is hard to believe all of those songs are from the same band, and that's just a little part of what they did, and all these songs come from only about a 5 year span, to boot. How could anyone ever match that kind of quality output again? Those guys were on fire!

quote:

Originally posted by allender:

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:
Jeff's House of Cards lists them as a gold foil sub-set of 30 cards.

Last I checked they were listed as a "30th Anniversary QVC Set (sold separately, numbered to 2000)."

Last time I looked Mr Allender (which was 30 seconds ago) they were listed as I said being a 30 card subset of the River Group set of The Beatles.

quote:

Originally posted by btlfannz:

Last time I looked Mr Allender (which was 30 seconds ago) they were listed as I said being a 30 card subset of the River Group set of The Beatles.

The QVC set is listed correctly at the start but the #1 Hits subset is missing its true title while the mention of the QVC set at the bottom should be demoted to a footnote or eliminated.

I think I'm missing something here. Are we looking at the same page? In the checklist for Beatles River Group, the notes say "A special set of 30 gold-foil cards was available in a QVC special offer, limited to 2000 of the '30th Anniversary' sets" and the list below is titled "30th Anniversary QVC Set (sold separately; numbered to 2000)".

btlfan, are you saying this should be moved to a separate page? It never implies that this was a subset of TRG set, instead it's a "special offer" set and "sold separately". That's how various preview sets, mail-order sets, and binders are shown in many of the lists. Here we have a special offer set by River Group that is associated with the main RG set and includes a card from it in every copy.

Bill, isn't "#1 Hits Double-Sided Foils" the name of the subset in the regular series? That's how it's titled in the Encyclopedia too. I don't see the "reference to the QVC set at the bottom" unless you mean the entire concordance of the set should be deleted?

I'm open to suggestions, but for the moment I'm perplexed. Usually people prefer to have preview sets, mail-ins, and special offers shown on the same page as the primary release.

Thanks!

I updated the list to mention the "gift set" with the two regular RG boxes and album; I hadn't known about that. Thanks chesspieceface!

quote:

Originally posted by allender:

Bill, isn't "#1 Hits Double-Sided Foils" the name of the subset in the regular series? That's how it's titled in the Encyclopedia too. I don't see the "reference to the QVC set at the bottom" unless you mean the entire concordance of the set should be deleted?

Thanks!

Ignore my comment. It's off base.

Bill, I wasn't upset, merely confused. I would have sent my response by PM if the board supported it.

Plus, I don't mind having my chain yanked by anybody who's earned the right, even publicly. I'm sorry if I was looking argumentative.

Let me take this opportunity to invite *anybody* to email me (allender-at-comcast-dot-net) with suggestions on how the lists are set up. Stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time may turn out to be confusing for some. In this case, the problem might be that I tried to avoid huge number of subcategories for a release and settled on base-chase-promos-parallels. TCDB uses external links for subsets and groups promos with pack-inserts. My philosophy was to put everything on one page with dead-stupid text format so that people can download a page and manipulate it with any software they fancy.