Last year I purchased four old packs of trading cards. They’ve been aging for over six months now and it’s time to open them and see what’s inside…
Tools released these The Rocketeer cards in 1992 and they’re typical of most of their series from that era. The plastic wrapper had become brittle and disintegrated a bit upon opening.
The pack contained the eight photo cards shown above, and they’re all a bit dark and muddy to my eye. Interestingly I saw this film for the first time last year, didn’t think it was very good, and I would have had zero interest in these cards upon release even were I still buying cards then.
The backs of the cards are a little difficult to read due to lack of ink. All of them were like this; maybe it was a production error? As I’ve said before I prefer the synopsis extracts on the backs of sets like this, although for this film I wonder how many read them?
There was a single (non die-cut) sticker in the pack as well, and it’s this somewhat boring movie poster style art. The adhesive had completely failed after 33 years, and when I peeled it off it wouldn’t stick to anything.
Overall a by-the-books set for a somewhat mundane film. I don’t think too many were enthusiastic for these cards when they released.
I’ve not heard of ‘Star Pics’, the company who released these Alien 3 cards, also in 1992. This was a famously troubled film production, and the result divides fans to this day.
Much like the previous packs (and admittedly the film), the cards are muddy and quite ugly. They’re also thin and flimsy, which indicate a low budget product. The screenshots are a bit blurry, which is unfortunate considering they would have been the feature cards of the set.
The backs are ugly and hard to read, but they tell a first-person account of the events of the film. An interesting approach that I think works well, but I wish the design had been more suitable for the theme.
Like other early 90s sets there’s no chase cards, and the budget feel of the material is probably indicative of the publisher. But this set is notably worse than the original Topps Alien set from over a decade earlier, which shouldn’t have been the case.
From 1996, this is a pack of Independence Day cards from Topps. We’re in the chase card era now, and the wrappers says I have a 1 in 9 chance of a hologram card!
I didn’t get one. The above were the six cards in the pack, and you can see they’re in a 16:9 aspect ratio which Topps used for their ‘Widevision’ cards for several years back then.
This is a very poor set. The screenshots are all blurry and pixilated, which is unforgivable in a set that is focused around displaying the images at a larger size. Some of the cards even look like they were photographs of a screen, rather than taken from film stock. Awful.
Furthermore, every card in the pack had ‘edge wear’ along the bottoms, which was likely caused by the machines that cut them. This is of no matter to me now since they’re going directly into the recycling bin, but imagine paying a premium for these packs 29 years ago and finding all the cards were damaged?
A very disappointing product, and another example of how Topps had fallen by the mid 90s.
I got this 1990 Classic WWF pack for KLS about a year ago and today is Wrestlemania so it seemed a good day to finally open it. She’s got a large collection of wrestling cards but since Topps sets have become overpriced she no longer buys any new ones.
Every card in her pack was A-rank wrestling royalty, which is amazing considering the size of the set (>130 cards)! How are there no forgotten or C-rank guys here?
The answer was poor collation. In her 15 cards she actually got 1-14 (and 136), and since card sets like this usually put the ‘big guys’ at the front, she got all the biggest stars. This is objectively bad collation, but in this case it ended up giving her a dream pack 🙂
The photos and bios are good, and the cards sturdy and well cut. This is a high quality product, and I imagine was quite popular with wrestling fans 35 years ago. I’m curious about the other 120 cards, but considering the steep price of the individual packs these days (I paid $10) I’m sure we’ll never open another.
I’ve still got a few more packs stashed away aging in a closet, and three unopened boxes of 1980s era cards. Over the summer I’m sure I’ll finally open one of them 🙂
