Really annoyed that I allowed myself to get sucked into this one and order some boxes. To many filler cards are included and I am trying to decide if I should cut my losses and sell the boxes on.

Should have learned from my decision not to buy a season 6 case as I did rather well in the secondary market.

I got my box today and as predicted, received my Roger Ashton Griffiths autograph and Eugene Simon autograph. The third autograph was Mark Addy so that kinda makes up for it.

quote:
Originally posted by Raven:

So sorry, I called dibs on Eugene Simon first. He's in my box. You can have Roger Ashton-Griffiths though.


LMAO! I kid you not, but I nearly spat my drink out reading that. It was a close thing to suddenly needing a new laptop rather than a lovely Roger Ashton-Griffiths card. Although I think you're being greedy, because there are two different Eugene Simon cards.

If it weren't for bad luck, I would have no luck at all!

Addy is a good one since he only showed up in the first season set and is pretty limited, but the other two are common signers no matter how you dress it up.

At least you didn't wind up getting a fake coin or pin. I would rather have anybody's autograph over a manufactured relic, but that may be just me, which is why I know I'm going to find one in my box. Just say you don't want something.

I had two boxes...gullible sucker that I am.

And...
LMAO I got a Eugene Simon(Gold) autograph. I do apologise as he seems to have modified his signature, instead of a small "ES" wiggle, we get a huge spiky "ES" instead.

And...
I got the Night King pin! *groan* I'd rather have had a Roger Aston-Griffiths autograph instead of that.

Highlight...
I got the Kit Harington & Rose Leslie dual. VERY VERY happy with that!

A note of caution to people just buying packs. The box that had the Night King pin had 4 packs instead of 3. That's because the pin card had a pack to itself as it's so thick, therefore one of the other packs only had 3 cards with no hits. It would be pretty horrid to buy a pack expecting a hit and get that one.

Overall feeling:
Not worth the premium tag and certainly not worth the premium price tag that goes with it. The set is too diluted with lower-end autographs. A lot of the hits are a bit 'meh'. The metal cards are OK, but 100 of them?? Plus parallels? They weigh a LOT and don't really look that great.
As I've said to one or two people, all that cheap Chinese metal on the world market seems to have been bought up by RA to make these cards.

This should have been a regular release and none of the stupid metal cards(unless a small 9-18 card inserts set) or any of the other gimmicks. There was certainly enough autograph cards for a regular set.

And it's not really that limited. There are 8,000 boxes.
Another point...the boxes are massive in size, just for 3 packs. It somehow makes the contents even more disappointing. A little like those boxed cakes at the supermarket, and when you get it home you find it's all box and the actual cake is the size of a large bun.

But I'll take my Kit & Rose dual, and look after it well. AND hope that RA don't do many more of these sets. The sales will tell them it sells well...because us GoT fans are gullible, but it's just not worth the premium or 'special' title it's been given.

quote:

Originally posted by Hedgehog Witch:
I got the Kit Harington & Rose Leslie dual. VERY VERY happy with that!

But I'll take my Kit & Rose dual, and look after it well. AND hope that RA don't do many more of these sets. The sales will tell them it sells well...because us GoT fans are gullible, but it's just not worth the premium or 'special' title it's been given.

Congrats on the pull, I think it would be agreed that the dual of Kit and his girlfriend will probably be the most sought after card in this set. I like Tyrone and Jaime myself.

As to being gullible, well you and I are both big GoT fans and you got two boxes and I ordered two boxes. If we both bought two cases, we would be gullible. We didn't. I'm not even planning on picking up any of these autograph cards unless someone offers them up at prices comparable to the prior sets.

However RA views it, the fact is, the bigger a GoT card fan you are, the less you are likely to need anything in Valyrian Steel. There are no new signers, or another Clarke or anything guaranteed that seems radically different from what we already have in our binders. Even the dual autographs and gold signatures have been done before. The Momoa cut relic is a new design, but its not great looking and its limited.

So the draw then is metal cards, in a 100 card set, that most people will never be able to complete through box buying alone. Will they go to the secondary market for single cards? Maybe, but not me.

Will they try to pick up autographs as single cards? I'm sure they will, but for myself I have no intention of ever paying a premium for any signer in this set that is above the normal cost of their autographs in other GoT sets.

If a common autograph card like Simon is going for $9 previously, does it mean that his Valyrian Steel autograph is automatically worth $20 because the box cost more? Some would say yes, but I don't because I am going by the value of autograph, not the card its on. All depends how you look at it, but I really don't believe that seasoned collectors will be overly gullible here. They will sample it and wait for the breaks on the secondary market for good deals.

I agree. I think the people, like us, whom have bought previous GoT trading cards probably won't be investing too much into this set, especially going by the average break in boxes. I'll be more interested in any cards that drop in price later, which they're sure to if people can't move them, and even then I'd be picky.

It should be noted that a lot of the signers signatures have got decidedly worse since their previous cards, and it's the young actors at fault rather than older shaky hands. Sean Bean is back to 'SB'.

As to this set it raises the questions as with other title sets recently, whether this has really been a 'dealers set', with the attractive few sketches and Dany costume cards being the prize for breaking lots of cases.
Unless people have very deep pockets I don't think many can afford to put together a base set, let alone the gold parallel which there can only ever be 100 sets of.

Most sets are going to be beneficial to the dealer opening cases, but the balance has seemed to dip even more to dealers and maybe even to only big dealers who can actually make anything of the set with the higher price for boxes etc.

Yeah I was very happy with the Kit & Rose dual. The best one there alongside the Nikolaj Coster-Waldau & Peter Dinklage. I wouldn't have minded a Robert & Ned dual, but I won't be greedy, because without the dual I did get, it was very slim pickings, with all other autograph cards being in the 'limited' range.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Hedgehog Witch:
It should be noted that a lot of the signers signatures have got decidedly worse since their previous cards, and it's the young actors at fault rather than older shaky hands. Sean Bean is back to 'SB'.

As to this set it raises the questions as with other title sets recently, whether this has really been a 'dealers set', with the attractive few sketches and Dany costume cards being the prize for breaking lots of cases./QUOTE]

As usual, some spot on observations.

So I looked at the new listings for Valyrian autographs and you are quite right. They are a motley crew of signatures, not helped by the card designs.

I have said this before, the RA Gold signatures do not work well. Whether it is the gold ink, or the card design, or the way signers hold the pens, the autographs have a variety of defects, usually starting with thin, streaky lines and light signatures. Seeing this new lot, its just more of the same. I realize they look a little better in person, but blue or black ink on a white background is always the best choice.

Now all card designs, Gold and Valyrian, are vertical cards, only the duals are horizontal. Here again you have to like vertical cards, which look much different in binders. The big positive is that there should be more room to sign big. However most signers are abbreviating or initialing, so extra space is extra blank space.

Finally to your point about another dealer set, I think I would disagree. If it is dealer's set, and I'm not sure it was supposed to be, it seems like a mistake. This set is too big and took too much effort and resources to create. It's not like the Buffy product that is only 3 or 4 autographs, a handful of filler cards and anchored by the incentive sketch for multiple sales to dealers. That is small enough to discount the autographs and make money on the sketch.

Valyrian Steel has thousands of boxes to bust or sell. Discounts seem well below SRP on boxes already. The common autograph prices are not coming out with much premium right now. Its a lot of product to move with the main profit relying on the sketch and the full set of metal base cards. Sure those other six character sketches will hit big, but that's only if you are one of the six to pull them.

So I think that if Valyrian Steel was made just to sell to dealers, it was a bad call. It would be helpful if we could ever get a real assessment of these products after the fact from a dealer, but we never seem to have that information. We may hear that certain products sold well and we may hear that some flopped, but we never know because then someone says the opposite is true. It would be nice if these threads didn't die shortly after the cards released and we could compare the pre-release expectations to the actual market activity. How about it dealers, don't let us collectors keep guessing.

I noticed from these new cards that Finn Jones' signature has changed from about 5 years ago when he signed the Season 1 cards. There's not as much to it as there used to be. In his defense, his iron fist could make it more difficult to do execute all those loops while signing...

Just started the box break thread for Valyrian. Broke one box, will hold on to the next till Christmas.

I was good with each autograph in the 3 packs. No one really big, but an EL, VL and L. And I missed out on Simon. He must be in the next one.

Save the best till last.

Yeah...Art Parkinsons autograph is more scribble now.

Bought 3 of these cards cheap from the bay, so thought I would share some thoughts on them.

Base card Doreah:

I like the feel of the cards but the pictures are not great. 2 cards stuck together doesnt look great and mine has a scratch on the rear.
Will pick up cheap ones of my favorite characters.

Laser Cut Daenerys:

Its a card with holes in, dont see the point. Wont be buying any more.

3-D Lenticular Cards Born from the ashes:

A moving 3d dragon! I like these cards and will look to collect the set.

There are 20 Rittenhouse Rewards points per wrapper.