All signs point towards Topps releasing Preacher cards IMMINENTLY.

http://www.beckett.com/news/20...cheer-trading-cards/

Once it's made official, episode's cards will be available for 24 hours only, like Topps Now Baseball and several of the political GPK releases of late.

How many episodes is the season?

Because at $20 a set of 5 cards for each episode, that becomes one expensive base set.

Will limited production make it valuable, who knows if Preacher turns out to be the next Walking Dead.

Good to see Topps trying something new though.

Now to decide... $20 for 5 cards... Oh yeah, FREE shipping.

Ed

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Scifi Cards,

I think I'm in on this. The only other cards I planned on buying all year were a few Game of Thrones 5 and Fear the Walking Dead autographs so it will be nice to get something else for the collection.

I appreciate Topps trying something new. The non-sports collector base seems resistant to new things (*cough* premium packs *cough*) so I am interested to see how this goes for them.

Edit: ordered set #1. Make sure to choose Smart Post as your shipping option or you won't get the free shipping.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Jason00,

Just goes to show how the card hobby continues to evolve and I don't think that's a bad thing at all, but I do wonder at some of the decisions and outcomes.

What you have here with a basically custom printed set is something similar to a Kickstarter campaign without the time or fund levels. I like the idea of keeping it in real time, but a 24 hour window seems too small. Also there was very little warning of this, which leads me to the only big issue I have with it.

Preacher is just about as thin a title as you can get. When I say thin, I mean its fan base from the comic is highly niche. You could say that Walking Dead was in the same category prior to the show, but I wouldn't put them in the same place. WD had zombies and that was the selling point that brought in the immediate audience, not the more introspective aspects. Once it had a big audience, some turned to novels afterwards. Then came the card sets.

Preacher is not a great title to test out this type of card production because it has not had a chance to find a larger audience, if that should happen, and it doesn't have enough fans now. It's a good experiment, but unless any number of orders will be deemed a success, I'm not sure what it is supposed to prove in terms of creating a viable alternative in trading card manufacturing and distribution.

I think the Topps Now baseball operation has them set up to do this on the cheap. The baseball cards are $10 each, so these cards at $4 apiece (with a free wrapper!) are a relative "bargain", and it'll be fun to predict what scenes from the episode will make the cut, just like it is to jaw about which baseball player deserves the next Topps Now card.

Still, a 50 card set for $200 is pretty steep. Hopefully the cards have matching serial numbers or something like that. What would be great is if Topps already has sticker autos from some of the cast in-house and they slap them on a few of the cards to be placed in packs as a random surprise.

On the baseball cards, the popularity of them is highly subjective based on the player/team/event depicted, but on some of these cards, there has been less than 300 made, so I don't think the plateau for success is super high. With the attendant publicity on the various boards and throughout the many tubes of the internets, I would imagine they'll sell a few thousand of this first Preacher pack, but the beauty of Topps Now is that we'll know exactly how many....

The images of the card fronts and backs are actually posted on the Topps website now. Nice design, great photography, but not the "moments" I'd have gone with. They're more like character cards, but that's OK for this first set since that's how most non-sport sets start anyway.

They have a discount option on 3 sets for $50, so if you know two other people interested in them, one person could order the 3 sets all 10 times, and then at the end, mail the complete set to the other two people. The actual buyer's cost would be $166 for the set and the other two buyers costs would be around $175 for the set, with them kicking in the extra $9 to cover shipping the set and the paypal fees on their payment for it.

People set up to flip could also get the three sets for themselves at $166 per and assuming they could be sold for say, $220, allowing a profit of about $35 per set, the buyer would then be left with their own set that cost a little under $100. They could keep that for their collection or else sell it with anything over $100 being a profit at that point. Something to think about...

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:


Preacher is not a great title to test out this type of card production because it has not had a chance to find a larger audience, if that should happen, and it doesn't have enough fans now. It's a good experiment, but unless any number of orders will be deemed a success, I'm not sure what it is supposed to prove in terms of creating a viable alternative in trading card manufacturing and distribution.

I think it's a solid choice to start with. The concept is new for this type of thing and still new over in sports where they're less than 100 cards in. Wouldn't you want to work out the kinks on something that might be a bit before doing it on a bigger scale?

Also, I think it's most effective when the show is new. I'm a completist and wouldn't think quite as highly of the format for a Walking Dead or Game of Thrones set if it jumped in in the middle of the run.

But being new, it comes with risks but you'd think it'd be a lot less so with the on-demand feature. It's both a selling point and a safety net as there aren't any leftovers to get rid of.

The real gamble is whether the show will be a big hit or not. If it is, more people will be interested in collectibles from it as time goes by, as with "Walking Dead".

At that point, the print runs of the Topps Now cards could increase, leading to nice demand for the earlier, lower printed packs. On the other hand, not being able to find those earlier packs may blunt the number of people jumping in late.

On the upside, there is usually a gap between the production of pilot and the episodes proper after the pick-up and in that span, a lot of fine tuning is done.

Basically, this means that if you already liked the pilot, the show will probably be getting even better for you.
If you didn't, though, it might never get good enough in your eyes to warrant this expenditure, and might get worse if the fine tuning adds more of what you disliked about it.

I'm fluctuating between one and three sets currently, but there's no way I won't get at least one.
The offer ends at noon Tuesday, by the way, if I'm reading it right, so there's time to think about it still.

I'm Takin' a Shot at it. I got 15 sets.

Having Tom Cruise Die in the Pilot was Great!

I Like the Limited Nature of It. Worth a Risk.

Thanks for putting those spoilers in bold so that nobody misses them.

haha, I KNEW I was doing that wrong...

quote:

Originally posted by Ryan Cracknell:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:


Preacher is not a great title to test out this type of card production because it has not had a chance to find a larger audience, if that should happen, and it doesn't have enough fans now. It's a good experiment, but unless any number of orders will be deemed a success, I'm not sure what it is supposed to prove in terms of creating a viable alternative in trading card manufacturing and distribution.

I think it's a solid choice to start with. The concept is new for this type of thing and still new over in sports where they're less than 100 cards in. Wouldn't you want to work out the kinks on something that might be a bit before doing it on a bigger scale?

Also, I think it's most effective when the show is new. I'm a completist and wouldn't think quite as highly of the format for a Walking Dead or Game of Thrones set if it jumped in in the middle of the run.

But being new, it comes with risks but you'd think it'd be a lot less so with the on-demand feature. It's both a selling point and a safety net as there aren't any leftovers to get rid of.

Well that's where we disagree. I think the new concept is worthwhile, but you are trying it out on a very narrow title. If you don't get a lot of orders, is it because card collectors don't go for the idea? Or is it because they don't go for the title?

How can you tell which it is? It could be a great concept with the wrong title, or a great title with the wrong concept.

My thought is that you need the comparison with a subject you know works and that takes that particular part of the risk equation out of the analysis.

A real time set on say the next WD season would be very interesting.

And I didn't even know that Cruise had a part in Preacher.

With today's lightning fast design and printing techniques, they probably thought of this for Preacher only a few days ago.
No matter what happens here, I can't imagine they won't do it with Walking Dead, and man, if they parallel number those or put random autographs in them, look out, print runs could be mammoth for WD. People sure love their zombies...

quote:

Originally posted by Ryan Cracknell:
Thanks for putting those spoilers in bold so that nobody misses them.

he died off screen...Not a Spoiler.... Just Damn Amusing! it was a throw away line a lot of people would miss easily.

You are a loser

quote:

Originally posted by Kryten67:

he died off screen...Not a Spoiler.... Just Damn Amusing! it was a throw away line a lot of people would miss easily.

Not many jokes are funny the second time around. Obviously it left an impression for you to spoil it for others in nice bold letters who might not have had a chance to watch yet.

Hey! My first need to use the ignore list on Card Talk -- yay!

quote:

Originally posted by webjon:
Hey! My first need to use the ignore list on Card Talk -- yay!

Such a feature exists? Huh.

Just click on the person's name (while you are logged in) and it's the second one down. I don't think I've ever used it on this site, but I know I came close to it once, a long, long time ago.
If you use it, I think when that person posts, you'll see a little "post is from a person on your ignore list. Read anyway?" note so you can then click it to see what gem you've missed, haha. If you're not logged in, you'll always see every post, even if they are on your list.