Hi folks
Well, for those of you who have seen the Cards Inc promo set you will have noticed that not only is there no foil on the cards and the backs are porus/paper/non glossy. I was not expecting much which is why I splashed out on one single pack at lunch time at WH Smiths. I have been pleasantly surprised; the cards are glossy front and back which gives them a much improved feel on the promo versions, it was a good move by Cards Inc to go for the glossy on the reverse of the cards. I am unsure as to why they didn't go for glossy in the first instance but it makes the cards feel much better quality. If they had all been matt/paper on the back I would have expected a stick of gum with my cards
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The pack is nicely re-designed from a Hobby pack just to add the new Cards Inc specific information;
and the backs:
The info (which hopefully you can read) explains that there are 6 cards in every pack, 5 from the base set and one foil card and that they have been manufactured by Cards Inc . I believe the foil set is the same as the Hobby set but with 8 extra foils which I believe must include some of the character set as I received a Sirius foil in my single pack.
There are 72 cards in the base set and 17 foils; which looking at my base set probably means that all the 'character cards' are foils in this set and the rest of the set follows the Artbox base set. (for those of you with sharp minds you will ask (but 17+72 makes 89 not 90 like the Artbox base set. I expect that either the first card of the Artbox set is gone which would be a shame or that awful checklist card #90 from the artbox set is gone - I'll keep my fingers crossed that it's card #90).
Here's a close up one one card; the left one here is the Artbox and the right is the Cards Inc
And the back:
Overall I am very pleased with this set the character foils look great, actually better than the hobby foils in my opinion. Though I do have to wonder why the UK always gets sets with no foil though (e.g. FOTR from Topps/Merlin) - surely it would be possible for us to have could have gold foil and the US sets silver, or we could have the nice red foils like the promo - or perhaps the manufacturing marvels which apply the foil to the cards have not made it here to the UK yet
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The set will be available from WH Smith, Woolworths, Martins, TM Group, Ottakers, Borders, Toys R Us, Asda
and for a short while on the cover of the Beano
(sorry about the Moiree - it's an old scanner!!! And I'm not much good with these things)
