This set is a stinker - worst Potter ever!

[Guest]

[Harbottle]

Hi All. Sorry to start the year with bad news. Collation on this set is a stinker. Bought three cases. All three had the same inserts. Costumes, props, film cards. Someone found this out on another thread. I shall no longer collect Harry Potter cards. We all expect repeat cards in cases but not case for case. This is offically the worst Potter set ever ( at least the Wizards of the Coast set was cheap!). Hope everyone else has better luck. But with all the crud autos and inserts it probably isn't worth it if you get different cards anyway. Why were so many of the autos dropped at such short notice anyway? Because the conman had our money by then. Got loads of swaps if anyone is interested. WARNING - do not buy cases of this product!!!!!!!!

[beatles99]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience with the cases....seems to me that you still defied the odds greatly to get the matching cases
You forgot to mention the quality of the cards on allot of inserts...they look like they played with them at the factory before they packaged them

[Tower]

I don't think, you chose an adequate topic title. It's not the set, the set has many great cards. It's the way, the set was packed. So you can criticise the cases and the collation, also the card quality (i expect mint quality out of packs too) and so on, but not the set itself. 

[Roz]

This really doesn't bode well Steven, because I trust your judgement and I haven't had mine yet.

Will you actually sell your old cards or just stick where you are because honestly I can see a real blood bath over some of your cards

[Tower]

Maybe it would have been better for avoiding duplicate cases if they would have thrown all the props and costumes in one large box and pulled them out again when filling the packs ...
What do you say? They must have down exactly this when you see the corners of the cards? Good point! 

[5594mike]

are some of your cards really that bad towers, me and sam are so  =excited too recieving our two cases. i've come to terms that we'll get duplicates of some of the common costume card in our cases

C3 Professor Lockhart Brown Jacket x/640
C4 Harry Potter Striped Red Shirt x/540
C5 Ron Weasley Red Checkered Shirt x/490
C7 Argus Flich Brown Overcoat x/665
C8 Lucius Malfoy Black Overcoat x/640
C12 Harry Potter Red Sweater x/540
C14 Rubeus Hagrid Brown Jacket x/515
Bonnie Wright/Ginny Weasley (redemption)

im just looking forward to the 6 prop and other 4 autos we'll get
sofar the breakdown pulls look varied/well mixed especialy the mix up with the extra floo powder prop in one case, that was cool
but this chaps dispointment with his cases is worrying :'( :'(
it would help if you posted your breakdowns

[bush360]

I agree with Mike, yes the Auto changes were very disapointing but the absence of a stupidly rare Auto should make this set better for collecters to gain a complete master set for a change. Also have you seen the costumes and props the variations are just fantastic. Also not all collectors are about buying cases most will buy a couple of boxes and will be happy and the collation from this point of view is great. Also dont forget POAU were we had too many DUD boxes which ruined some large dealers and the chances of pulling the big cards were stupid for collectors.
I can see how these clusters in whole cases would be frustrating and I had the same problem with GOFU I had the same autos and props in 4 of the 6 cases I opened, fortunately I fell lucky and had quite a few Fleur and Crouch Jr Autos which saved me now I simply open less cases, to save for other sets. Any duplicates can be sold or traded to get the cards you really want variants etc... 

[allender]

Sorry to hear about your bad experience with the cases....seems to me that you still defied the odds greatly to get the matching cases.

Or, possibly Artbox didn't work hard enough to mix up the cases. If they came from different places, it would be much against the odds: if it truly were random, and if there were about 6 "case clusters" like in GOFU and MM, the odds of getting three of the same would be about 1 in 216.

But if all three cases came from the same place, I suspect that one of Artbox' packaging plants didn't do their job of mixing things up, and we might see more of this. If I got three cases all the same, I would send a polite but unhappy email to Artbox and expect them to find a way to level things out through swaps of their "overruns" (extras made for damaged items and replacements). COS costume numbers add up to an 11% overrun, props 22%, and cels 20% (9x240=2160 with only 1800 in packs). Or maybe somebody here will report a different set of duped cases and we can engineer a really significant trade. Or maybe the problem will happen with only one case type, and a few people will corner the market on the less-common inserts, raising their sale value.

After opening only 2 boxes from my case, I predicted that it was the same as Tower's Case #1, and I hadn't even pulled an auto yet.  I've opened two more since then and it looks like I was right. I haven't eyeballed the entire set yet, but I don't have chipped edges on prop and costume cards and I've only trashed three base cards. (Though the two "colors" for base cards are easily noticed, probably from different batches of UV coating. It's almost like one card back is glossy and the other near-matte.)

I note that you could shake a pack and know whether it has Floo Powder inside ... which I guess is why Inkworks made their sand cards redemptions.

[Harbottle]

Hi Guys, thanks for the feedback, always much appreciated. Tower is right, my subject title was a little misleading. I was just so angry with my lot I had to get out there with the emotion of the moment! I spent a lot of hard earned dosh on the cases ( as I'm sure everyone else did / has / is going to!) and am beginning to think getting cases is a really bad idea. Artbox are so predictable with collation that after a few boxes in each case I knew what was happening, and the icy hand of wasted money wretched into my Christmas expanded gut. Allender made me laugh though with his odds of getting three cases the same.Wish I could beat those odds on inserts!!! Seems I'm still paying back the luck I had on the Pear Tree leaves hey Roz!  

[terryweasley]

I know what you mean.  I spent way too much money buying a box of 250 or more Memorable Moments packs.  I had visions of getting so many Costume, Autograph, and Prop cards.  So far, I have only gotten one costume card, and I'm about to the end of the packs.  It was definitely a learning experience.  I hope I don't get too many duplicates with the boxes I ordered.  Happy New Year everyone.

[pinksamstar]

I spent way too much money buying a box of 250 or more Memorable Moments packs.  I had visions of getting so many Costume, Autograph, and Prop cards.  So far, I have only gotten one costume card, and I'm about to the end of the packs.

Hey Terry just out of interest, what do you mean you bought 250 mm packs, did you buy a bunch of single packs not in a sealed box/case?

 

[Tower]

I spent way too much money buying a box of 250 or more Memorable Moments packs.  I had visions of getting so many Costume, Autograph, and Prop cards.  So far, I have only gotten one costume card, and I'm about to the end of the packs. 

If you really bought single packs, you made a big mistake and the seller fooled you. Sold all the packs which were left after finding 2 cards per box. That's not a problem of the set and the packs. I had also about 200 packs from CoS left after pulling the inserts. Opened all the rest yesterday and of course there was no insert in these packs ...

[allender]

If you really bought single packs, you made a big mistake and the seller fooled you.

Almost always. Sometimes you might find somebody selling less than a box lot's worth of packs for people who just want enough cards to trade into a base set, but I haven't seen that recently. If you buy a larger lot of loose packs, it's pretty likely to be the leftovers after the person who opened the box already found the best cards.

Sometimes a seller will say "I didn't search these packs" but they were probably searched by somebody else when part of an opened box, at a show or a shop. And, unfortunately, I saw a very strong pattern in my COS case where the costumes, props, and cel cards were concentrated in a specific part of each box.

Pack searchers don't usually care about the 5/box or similar low inserts, so a large batch of packs is a cheap way to build up a lot of base sets and low-insert sets for stocking stuffers and gifts to people who like the shows but don't generally collect cards.

I bought some boxes from an eBay seller, and he shipped them in a flat-rate Priority Mail box. Since there was extra space in box, he filled it with two other "boxes" ... 36-pack lots of cards in an opened display box. No juicy inserts in the leftover packs after box searching, but I thought it was a rather nice way to pack the box. Maybe even nicer than the seller who used Rittenhouse Rewards wrappers as packing material.

Periodically, in lulls between the releases of new card sets, I buy one of the 40- or 100-pack odd lots to give my pack-opening habit some exercise. This way, I can hope to accumulate enough base sets from (for instance) all of the LOTR sets so that everybody in my extended family can have one. 

[Marlon]

For what it's worth, here's my tuppence worth.

The props cards as a whole are poor.  P1 is very nothing to write home about.  There's some good P2s but the all-purple envelope swatch is boring.  Lots of different P3s but nothing exciting in them.  Some of the P4s are quite pretty but all essentially the same.  P5 seems to be either green or brown, so at least you've got two significant variations to go for, but I couldn't call them exciting.  P6 is rare but they're nearly all plain blue (I've heard of someone getting gold on theirs).  P7 is kind of nice in the basic snakeskin but the ones with letters or pattern variants are the ones to have (I've got K from Lockhart on one of mine).  I haven't seen any variants of P8, has anybody else.  P9, now this, IMHO, is about the nicest card if you get some of the weird writing or pictures.  Finally, P10 has got some good variants.  Now, compare this to the PoA set.  I don't think I need say anymore!

I can't see anyone making any money out of a case.  Maybe if they're lucky enough to get a P6 or a good P4 (but can you see the price on P4s lasting?  I think the only reason it's been fetching over £100 is because so many cases haven't been opened so there's a lot still to come), but would that cover the cost of a case in the US?  I know it wouldn't in the UK, where its over £400 wholesale.

All-in-all, I think Artbox has to improve the quality of the chase cards to make it worth while buying cases of the 3D or OotP cards.

[gimli]

I think the major problem with artbox cards is the quality of the cutting of the chase cards the shear number of damaged corners was unacceptable, this was the worst set for this but It has been a problem in all the sets but it was only occasionally, In this set it's every other card