Monday, Nov. 2, 2015 Recap

Card Trader Illustrated: Saga. Art work by Tsuneo Sanda. I’m starting to really appreciate this set as something more than just Star Wars cards. I just wish they would give the artists who did this work more credit, even with just a byline in the back. Thank goodness for the amazing community at reddit otherwise we may never know who did this art. The best part is you don’t even need to purchase the packs to enjoy the art. You can just pull it up in “all cards” view.

Journey to Star Wars: the Force Awakens: Day 3 – Green variants released today: #6 – Assassination: Failed, #7 – The mystery of Kamino.

Pack Inserts: Badges of War. Ah, I’m sure there are some that would like to forget this set. At first this was a very popular set. The art work was good, contained all major characters, and had odds and card counts that were accessible to all levels. There was no award announced for this set but, everyone assumed there would be one. Then, Topps announced that there would be a shelf award and 10,000 credits for a four parallel, 11 card set but no Award card. No bueno. People were up in arms and the value of the set plummeted as people traded them away only to find out a couple days later, never mind, Topps will release an Award card. Relive the glory. Also, the pack odds dropped and card count increased for this set from the last one from 1:1000 and 1000 to  1:30 and 3000. If you spent a lot of credits hoarding this one and didn’t read the transmission carefully, oops you may get burned again.

Mint Press: Mint press has returned in basically the same format as Series 1 except with one notable exception. The Black variant is count 100 vs 50. I think that’s a pretty noticeable jump in card count. It’s a 10k credit pack so there’s the slightest hint of it being geared toward elite players but still trying to keep it accessible to everyone. The question now is will the elite players still chase a 100 count card. I’d say probably yes. It will be less than most Blue and Green CT Illustrateds and a little more than the Purple. With that said, that probably makes the Silver card basically a throwaway to those players so you should be able to pick them up for not a lot. Series one was moderately popular with pretty mid-level characters if Series 2 can include some mains it should remain popular in the near term.

Spectrum Base Variant: Mace Windu. The Spectrum and thus Black variants have made a comeback today as well. If you don’t remember, this works like green and orange, except the odds are usually better to find a spectrum (and 1 in 6 for black) and are available for 12 hours vs 30 minutes to an hour.