Agree with everything you wrote, Raven.
Of course companies want the biggest profit for the smallest investment/overheads, it makes the world go round. But the way pricing is going they won't be able to sell the product at all, or not sell out, at least.

I seem to remember a few years ago, that RA occasionally put random incentive cards into boxes. I think it happened in the first couple of seasons of GoT and other titles. They could still be the definite 6-case incentives etc, but also a chance they could be in a box too.

I got 3 boxes £200 and got autos I could have purchased for £60 (and wouldn't have bothered with). I think the next set I will just buy 3 or 4 autos I really want and the base and chase separately

Hammer,

Sorry to hear that - it is why I have passed on both seasons 6 & 7 cases albeit I got drawn in to wasting money on 5 boxes of Valyrian Steel.

If RA do not continue to make the profit viable for dealers then the franchise as a card product line will die very quickly and that is why RA need to re-think season 8 before it withers on the vine due to large amounts of indifference.

So RA just announced that there will be a new GoT set released in Spring 2019 when the show comes back.

This won't be for Season 8, but likely a recap or expansion or more Valyerian or something else. Another bridge set, no doubt to help deplete the backlog of autographs still on hand. Good news, bad news. More cards, less demand.

Yeah, noticed that. Again I will work off the secondary market for collecting anything new with GOT. This will be another rinse and repeat set from them probably in the style of ST Heroes & Villains.

That is the problem with ongoing series. There is only so much you can do each season and keep it new. All of the main cast members have signed and/or continue to sign so the only new adds can be lesser characters. The thing that killed Season 7 IMO was not having a sketch guaranteed per case.

They need to come out with Season 8 to finish the series and then wait a year and put out a compilation set. Valyrian Steel would have been perfect if it came out after Season 8.

At least it isn't Topps with this license. There would be 6 sets a year!

Personally, I could never care less for the sketch cards, yet I always got one in my cases, when I'd much have preferred the relic cards from those sets instead.

If it's another Valyrian Steel-type addition, I'll only pick and mix. Please NO MORE awful metal cards. Or laser cut ones that look like granny's lace napkins.

Due to the bigger gap between seasons I've noticed that a lot of GoT items are running out of images to use. I usually get a GoT calendar(one of the two that get released each year) but there are repeat pictures for the 2019 one and nothing that hasn't been used before...which is a bit pathetic when you consider there's 7 seasons of images(obviously getting the rights to other images is probably more expensive, even for older pics).
With that in mind I fear any fill-the-gap set will ultimately be disappointing. I'll go in for Season 8 to complete my seasons collections, but anything else I'll only dabble with.

I'll take full bleed autographs from anyone who has previously only had another kind released, or another shot at some of the bigger names whose first full bleed is too difficult/expensive to get. That'll be all.

So I didn't want to start a short lived thread, but I did want to warn GoT card collectors about something I just noticed.

I keep all my GoT base sets, parallel and insert cards in those plastic boxes that come in various sizes. I don't really go back to them often, but I had occasion to do a sort and much to my surprise some of the cards were sticking together pretty good. The base cards were worst than the parallels and inserts.

I was surprised because I didn't think the gloss was that heavy and I thought this problem was more or less resolved since the old days of Fleer Ultras becoming solid bricks. Anyway I did have to pull some cards apart individually, especially those in Season 1. Now I'm going to keep an eye on it, but if you have GoT cards boxed or stacked anywhere you might want to take a look at them just in case.