Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015 Recap – Green Gamorrean Guard, Widevision is Back, Kylo Ren Topps Classic, SD Exclusive Captain Phasma’s Chrome Helmet, Yoda Modernography, More ESB #41-45, New Locations Set: Yavin IV, SD Exclusive Chewbacca Variant

Busy, busy day and I missed a lot of it. It started out pretty early in the morning (on the West coast) with the Green variant of the Classic Art 2 Gamorrean Guard. Card counts back to normal to what we were seeing before Klaatu.

The next Widevision since the break last week is a good one, “Death of Jango.” This makes us 8 weeks in with 2 more to go until the end of Wave 3 and the marathon.

The Kylo Ren Topps Classic dropped today. I’ve got to say, I like these cards, mostly because you get a pretty good look at the characters in these. Interestingly though, so far we just have costumed characters (and a droid). I can’t wait to see the first human in one of these.

Topps had hinted at something to do with helmets and TK and Smuggler’s Den and they finally announced what it was today. By turning in the 4 White Helmet inserts (including Award) the TK-27 card (the most popular and hardest to get Series 2 TK) and—surprise—75 Metal Resources (actually, 3 25x Metal cards). They just revealed that Resources will be used for more than just Schematic cards. All of a sudden, hoarding Resource cards has gotten a lot more interesting and valuable. It was nearly impossible to trade for Metal cards after the chase was announced. Sort of like what happened with Gold and Yellows after the SD Exclusive variants came out.

We just hit the 15th Modernography card! If you’ve stuck with it thus far, amazing and congratulations, we’re nearing the end. Today is Yoda. Hmm, what is Yoda, exactly and are there any more like him? Even the Wookieepedia is slim on the details of Yoda’s history.

The next 5 Empire Strikes Back – Illustrated Red, Green, and Blue variants were released today. We’ve definitely seen a drop off especially as the Resources and Schematics have taken off. Still this is a very collectible set because of the brilliantly designed illustration. I plan on trading for it for sure after the set wraps up.

A new Locations set dropped today, Yavin IV with the first card featuring the Millennium Falcon. Card counts and odds for this set have changed from Mos Eisley. It is slightly easier to find the more rare cards. There are 20% fewer mid-tier cards and double the amount of the lowest count cards.

Chewbacca (Rebel Leader) became the next Smuggler’s Den Exclusive Variant. I didn’t realize until I was looking to see if I owned this Gold card that there are four versions of the Chewbacca base card.

Finally, a little interesting tidbit, @ToppsJer tweeted this tonight:

https://twitter.com/ToppsJer/status/647993815593193472

I’m glad I’ve been saving credits. Personally, I’m not as crazy about the die cut format on these digital cards. I mean, your phone’s screen shape doesn’t change so you’re basically just getting a fancy border with less image, kind of like the windowing they do with the Locations card, which I never really liked.

Here’s a screencap of a die cut card I have in Topps Huddle. Yeah, not really that exciting, but I guess that’s just me. A LOT of people are really excited about these cards coming out for SWCT.