ill tell you, it feels great to be collecting a set of marvel cards again. and for me, it lives up to my expectations as a long time collector. at any rate, heres the rundown for those interested:

90 card base set
90 card parallel foil set (1 foil per pack)
90 card parallel gold set (5-6 per box)
9 card spiderman chase set
9 card spiderman foil chase set
9 card xmen chase set
9 card xmen foil chase set
"splash pages" 9 card chase set featuring ross, adams, struzan
"ash can" box toppers 3 card ross set, case toppers 3 card adams set

personally i have almost six base set completed. done my non foil spiderman and xmen chase sets. missing one of the adams splash. about 10 cards short of the foil set. five cards shy of the xmen/spiderman foil sets. ive got my three box toppers but need the three case toppers. and thanks to an ebay auction, only 6 cards short of the gold set.

I heard about these and was interested, but never saw them. Oh well.

thats because most places didnt get them, and now its very difficult to do so. ive run the few places in my town dry (which was only 5 boxes in a city with 20ish comic and card stores) and now it seems ebay is the only place ill find them.

are there plans for a 2008 set? if so I'll ask my LCS about them.

i hear there might be plans for a reprint of this set. it sold really well. though i havent heard about a 2008 set, but it would be odd not to do one in light of the 07's success.

sudo-reveiw:

the set as a whole (meaning anything thats not the parallel) i think is great. now ive been told that some of the artwork is a couple years old, but to me that doesnt mean much. unless it was a comic cover or from a different set of cards, its new to me. so i still thoroughly enjoy it. i think they could have done better with the chase cards (though the splash pages i loved) because they just didnt feel like chase cards.. if you get my meaning. i suppose im just used to the holograms/foil/canvas/ect. chase cards weve had in the past. and i think they went overboard with the second parallel set (gold bordered 1-90. approx 25+ boxes to complete) but the first parallel (foil) i think is great. and honestly if i were a normal person, i would go on ebay and just buy the 1-90 foil set. because it impressed me the most and im sure you can find it for 29-35 bucks (just looked). but im not normal so ive spent a vast amount of money completing the master set which is everything i listed in the first post. im only a few cards shy at this point, and theyre ones that arent expensive at all. so the hard work is done.

as for the sketch cards, ive pulled five of my own from packs, and ive got a couple on the way from ebay(ill throw a pic up once i get them all). i think it was a great idea. id say the chance of pulling a decent sketch card is about 40%. there are some crappy ones out there for sure. some are just lines of an unidentifiable character or artist. but theres also some phenominal ones too. there are some that are almost little paintings themselves. really impressive especially for their size.

so thats my reveiw.

set II scheduled for june '08 has been confirmed.

http://previewsworld.com/public/default.as...=65628&ssd=

i havent been able to find what the number of boxes are limited to though. but its a new set boasting sketch cards once again. im slated for six boxes already. i figure june is enough time to save some money.

how much did you pay for each pack? I asked my LCS, and he said he didn't get any because the distributor made it a huge hassel and the cost for him was what he would want the cost for a customer to be.

heh.... "pack". i bought five boxes. each one was roughly 70-80 each. and the normal places were charging about 2-2.50 canadian for a pack. there was one place i went to (the last place on my quest to find any and all boxes in the city) and he was charging double the price. so i told him to eff himself. the people i have dealt with have been rather nice aside from that last one. but your lcs might just be trying to gouge you.

nah, he's good people. he said he didn't order any boxes because he didn't feel he could sell them for a reasonable price.

*shrug*

im not sure how high his distributor was charging. my lcs got theirs for a good price it seems. but the first couple boxes i got were right at the release date. the other were more difficult since no one really caught on right away (neither did i). when they did catch on, they disappeared quite quickly. maybe when your lcs was looking for them, it was when they were becoming scarce.

could be. he said his cost was about $70 a box, and that they were making it hard for other shops to get them.

well like i said, if you have any intrest in the set, a base set with inserts is quite affordable on ebay. and the foil parallel set is also affordable and quite nice. better than trying to get a box at this point anyways. and id talk to your lcs if you want to get in on the next set. it was just solicited so the time is now.

eh, if I got one I'd want the fun of opening it and discovering what I got. Just buying one off eBay would be a hollow victory.

eh. maybe i was just unlucky, but i couldnt put together an entire base set with one box. by that i mean all the non-parallel chase cards. the splash pages arent entirely easy to piece together. two boxes actually and i was still one card shy. perhaps others were luckier though.