Chesspieceface, it is a great idea. If an american is willing to buy a binder and send it to me, I will gladly cover any expenses. Email is in my profile. Thanks in advance.

Any USAers have extra base singles to trade?
Three cards shy of a set...257,301,317...help!
Need more for another set. Check out post on trading thread.

I had the reverse problem with some of the LOTR binders from Topps. They were only available in the UK. I had to resort to eBay. It would be nice if Topps could support both markets.

quote:

Originally posted by Szym:
Chesspieceface, it is a great idea. If an american is willing to buy a binder and send it to me, I will gladly cover any expenses. Email is in my profile. Thanks in advance.

I goes without saying - I would appreciate any help in getting the binder. Thank you in advance

http://www.toppsonlinestore.co...pps-Star-Wars/Detail

Just received an email from Topps stating the Star Wars Galactic Files printer plates are on sale for $499. Not sure if they were already available or not. Noticed binders binders were also available. I tried ordering a binder for myself at $19.99 but when the shipping charge came up at $12.95 I passed. It seemed rather high, maybe the postage calculator on the Topps site was wrong?

Unfortunately the postage calculator was working just as they programmed it. I decided to pass on the binder too because of the shipping cost.


Also in the email from Topps about the Plate set it says: "A special congratulations to our Galactic Files contest winner! Thank you to everyone who participated." Anyone know who won?


And if the "enter a quantity until it tells you you have exceeded the amount in stock" method is accurate, there are 299 of the Plate sets left. Not exactly a barn burner.


EDIT: Post 666! WOOHOO!

Did they ever come out with that expansion set on this, the ones you had to buy a $ 400 Topps product to get ? How hard are they to find now ?

The printing plate set with the 24 card expansion set is still for sale for $499.99 at Topps online store.


283 of the 350 still available

Anyone have a scan of what the 24 cards look like ? Are they #351-374 ?

Here's a look at the set from the Rebel Scum website.
http://www.rebelscum.com/Topps..._Print_Plate_Set.asp

The expansion cards are great. I finally broke down and ordered one, which I'll have tomorrow.

There was a 10% off offer when Topps launched their new site a couple of weeks back, so I got it for $450, still a huge amount, despite the discount. I really doubt I'll be keeping the plates, so hopefully they're good ones. If it's the title card plates, I'd keep them, but there are only a handful of other cards that would tempt me.

I also justified the purchase, since in selling the sketches and patches from the 2 cases I bought, I made a huge amount of the money I spent on them back. I would've actually profited if I were willing to sell the Carrie Fisher autograph I have, but if that's the case, I wouldn't have bought so many of the cards in the first place. I wanted the autograph cards and lucked out in getting no duplicates from between the two cases.

The upside of so many of the Plate sets remaining unsold, it means there are only the small of amount of the expansion sets from those few that were sold sets circulating out there. I remember one set of 24 cards sold for around $400 by itself a couple of month ago.
I would imagine that if someone really just wanted a plate set, you could buy one, and the the expansion cards as singles, if not a set, on Ebay. With 24 auctions, and allowing people to pick up the singles from the set they really want (Han, Luke, Leia in particular), one might be able to get their money back that way, and keep the plates for their work.

This is the basic strategy I've used over the years to build a collection that I just never realistically could have otherwise. So far, so good.

I'll post what plates I get here in a couple days, or else in the breakdown section.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:

The expansion cards are great. I finally broke down and ordered one, which I'll have tomorrow.

There was a 10% off offer when Topps launched their new site a couple of weeks back, so I got it for $450, still a huge amount, despite the discount. I really doubt I'll be keeping the plates, so hopefully they're good ones. If it's the title card plates, I'd keep them, but there are only a handful of other cards that would tempt me.

The upside of so many of the Plate sets remaining unsold, it means there are only the small of amount of the expansion sets from those few that were sold sets circulating out there. I remember one set of 24 cards sold for around $400 by itself a couple of month ago.
I would imagine that if someone really just wanted a plate set, you could buy one, and the the expansion cards as singles, if not a set, on Ebay. With 24 auctions, and allowing people to pick up the singles from the set they really want (Han, Luke, Leia in particular), one might be able to get their money back that way, and keep the plates for their work.

I had to read your post a couple of times to get it, as I didn't buy any of this product at all. If 283 of the 350 plate sets are still available as Dewman quoted, I don't understand how that is good for the expansion sets that are combined with the offer.

The way I figure it, at some point Topps is going to drop the plate set price if they don't sell. The expansion set may drop with it or Topps may even decide to sell those cards separately. Right now there may well be very few expansion set cards in circulation, but unless Topps plans to destroy the unsold product which I seriously doubt, that's not going to last.

Whatever prices are current now will start decreasing as soon as these remaining 283 sets make their way into the market, however Topps decides to get them out, and the supply surpasses the demand.

With only 350 sets of a Star Wars card set, particularly a high profile one like Galactic Files, supply can never really exceed demand, there are too many Star Wars collectors worldwide for that. Now certainly, the high price can have a chilling effect on demand, but the $500 Topps is selling these for isn't so much for the cards, but rather for the plates. It's a good thing, they made the additional cards, though, or they might have sold even less of these than what they have so far.

The way I figure it, even if the 24 card expansion set dropped to being worth only $100 by itself (highly unlikely one will ever be sold that low), the 4 plates are basically "worth" the other $350 to me, but would obviously be worth somewhat less to my theoretical Ebay buyers if its a meh subject, but potentially more if the plates depict a sought after character.

So it's a gamble, definitely, but in my opinion, the Galactic Files base is easily among the Star Wars cards ever made, so if I take a little hit to get those last 24 cards to truly finish the set (along with my already completed blue parallel set, also limited to 350), that's OK with me.

As for Topps dropping the price on the Plate sets, well, it's certainly possible, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone getting a better deal than me if they can, and would in fact consider getting another set for myself, were it significantly cheaper the next time around.

I'm not really concerned about the value of whatever plates I have dropping should a whole bunch hit on the market at once as a result of a clearance sale, as I doubt I'll still have my plates by the time that happens. I can't imagine Topps wouldn't keep these at the full $500 retail value for at least a year.

And should it just end up that I've overpaid on these, well, it wouldn't be the first time, but overall Star Wars cards have been very good to me, and I'm pretty sure I've made more money from them than I've ever spent, and that's with getting to keep a pretty nice collection of them besides. Were I only interested in money, I could sell off all I have, and make a pretty decent profit, but what's the fun in that? I love Star Wars cards and have since I was a 6 year old kid hoping the liquor store still had some of those 15 cent packs in stock.

This goes back to the Golden rule of collecting: collect only subjects that you enjoy, and you'll never have to worry about what you've acquired becoming worthless, since it'll always have value to you.

Yes, I see that the one expansion set (without the plates) sold on ebay in December 2012 for $455.

In my opinion if Topps are charging $500 for a few cards then it is no surprise that most of them remain unsold.

Where on earth is the value here because i don't see it?

I think they're valuing the plates at $100 each, the expansion set at $25, the deluxe packaging for the lot at $25, with an extra $50 on top for the privilege of getting all four plates from the same card, which has been very tricky to do in past sets, such as the Galaxy sets.

Obviously, the full set is not currently "worth" $500 and for that matter may never be, or they would've sold out of these long ago. Indeed, I'd intended to get one after I bought my first case of the cards, but once I had the $500 in hand for that, I thought, you know, I'd rather just use this towards another case, which I did, since I wanted some more autographs and to finish my blue parallel set.

This time, not tempted for yet another case, I decided to spend the money on a plates set. Luckily, I got a (small) discount on it and have a viable plan to retrieve at least some of the money I spent by selling off the plates. On the other hand, if I get plates for a card I really like, I might keep those and sell the cards, and buy another set for the cards, and then sell those plates.

I can't imagine the next set of expansion cards listed on Ebay will go for anything near $455, but they still have to be fairly valuable, given the cost to get them in the first place, and that they are nice looking cards of some pretty cool characters. Good for the seller of that $455 set, but that price seemed crazy to me at the time and still does. Why wouldn't the buyer (or the runnerup bidder who bid $450) not just kick in the last $50 to get an entire, brand new set? Perhaps those bidders were in an international buyer in a country Topps doesn't ship to.

quote:

Originally posted by wolfie:
In my opinion if Topps are charging $500 for a few cards then it is no surprise that most of them remain unsold.

Where on earth is the value here because i don't see it?

The big problem is that the plate set is of an unknown card. If the four plates display a prominent character it might be worth it to a Star Wars card collector, but what if it doesn't?

As for demand, plates don't get that much love to begin with. They are usually a secondary hit in a product where an autograph or sketch is the primary hit. I'm sure there are people who like to collect plates, but you don't hear from many who have plates as their main focus. I think it's because it's kind of impersonal and doesn't inspire that much passion.

Anyway, the bottom line is that the price is just too high for the market or it wouldn't have less than 20% sold now. At some point the price will be cut to where the demand is or it will be broken up and sold off in pieces.

Here's my plates, not too shabby, the lovely young Miss Portman. The magenta card in the lower right corner is a little creepy. It reminds me of Heath Ledger's Joker with the dark eyes and lips. She looks sort of alien on all of them except for on the black plate in the upper right corner.



The 24 expansion cards are safely tucked away in my binder, a happy addition, and the real reason for my purchasing one of these. The extra cards have some cool characters on them, who frankly, should've been in the regular set. Comprehensive as the base set was, it's still missing quite a few characters. The expansion numbering continues from the 350 where the regular set ended at. Topps probably shouldn't have done that to the regular set buyers given how much you have to shell out to get those last 24 numbers, especially painful if you're not big on printing plates.

If Topps does do another set of Galactic Files, it would be a good idea to issue the additional 24 cards in packs the three foil parallel versions only. That way, collectors could still add the cards to their set without buying a plate set, while allowing the cards from the plates set to remain unique. With the three levels of parallels, there'd be another nearly 400 of each of the 24 expansion cards out there (350 blue, 35 Red, 1 Gold) so almost 10,000 cards in all, meaning they could insert them around one per box in a 10K box run. A gold card would fall one in about every third 12 box case. Reds would be 1 or 2 per case. You get about half of the 24 blues in each case. I do hope there's another set of Galactic Files someday, maybe when the next trilogy is over.

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

Hi,

In this thread, there was discussion of a physical "sell sheet" that would be available for Star Wars Perspectives and handed out at Star Wars Celebrations years ago. I have never seen one, can anyone confirm here that they have seen or personally have one in their collection. Thanks!

This "Star Wars Perspective" thread was for the set that was ultimately released as "Galactic Files", so all the information here is from a good year or so before the actual "Perspective" set was issued.
I'm only able to go to the San Diego comic-con each year and I'm pretty sure no sell sheets for either were ever released there. Indeed, Topps was only back at the comic-con in 2014 after several years of not attending, including the years the two GF's and Perspective sets were released.

Topps distributed Galactic Files sell sheets at Celebration VI in Orlando, but no Chrome Perspectives physical sheets were made.