Updates:
This is a quick run down of a lot of news, because a ton of things have been going on around the card world these last few weeks. First of all whats up with us:
MZF is printing, it should be with me Monday or Tuesday next week fully cut and we will be packing and shipping next week. It’s nearly finished now, 2 months late and moving fast! The canvas chase cards are already here and we have been cutting them down and hand assembling them for the last few weeks.
We have more sets coming! Age of Sorcery is moving well but it’s not going to be out in March, we are looking at May for this set, but a new promo is on the way along with extra chase cards.
In other good news the Dixon’s Vixens set is on it’s way back from the printers as well, and it will be shipping out in April. This set has NOT been put on pre-sale until now. It’s very very limited. We will only be offering 500 sets for sale with the other 500 going directly to Matt. For more information on the set check out the link at the top of the page. It is going to be a great value set, with a retail price of just £9.99! We fully expect to be producing a second set with Matt.
The art of J.D Seeber:
This is another limited factory set due out in the last quarter of 2011, and we are very pleased to be able to bring you a great selection of J.D.’s art. You can see images of the forthcoming promo card on the his page link above!
Pulp Detectives!
We are producing a very limited sketch and base card set taking a fun look at the old style pulp classics, guns, dames, detectives, dames, crime and dames. One thing we will be focusing on is Dames. Follow Dick Biggins P.I. and his trusted assistant “Bouncy” on a look into a world of murder and mystery. Coming in late 2011 As ever expect great art. Eric White won our Twitter competition and produced a very limited promo card for this set which will be available soon.
Rocket Girls
This will be one of our most limited and sought after products. Hand panted canvases, one with every factory set. Pin ups from the best artists in cards. Date TBC
More news to come soon, we are quite advanced in talks on a very very cool license, and I hope to bring more information on this as soon as I can. Needless to say it would be our biggest set to date.
Industry News:
Cryptozoic have entered the non-sport market. They have been in gaming cards for a year now, when they obtained the World Of Warcraft license from Blizzard who stripped it from Upper Deck. (we covered this last year) They are getting a lot of coverage from NSU, and they have a great line-up of licenses including Walking Dead (definitely) and The Big Bang Theory (rumored) to name two. Everything so far indicates that this company is going to do good things, they are bringing a lot of new fans into the non-sport field. They also interact with the fans to a much greater extent than any other company I have seen. Good news if you live outside the USA they also have worldwide rights and WANT to export cards to other markets. Any help we can give these guys we absolutely will. Check them out and have a look at the NSU forums for more information on the new sets.
SketchLife Magazine:
This new card sized magazine is a lot of fun. Produced by Jack Redd, and aided by a host of talented illustrators and creators he has brought something new and innovative to the market. Issue Zero (available now) comes in two formats, standard and Deluxe, the deluxe issue comes with a mini sketch book and a promo for Jacks new Dark Zodiac set which is coming out shortly. (We will have more info on that set soon) You also have the chance to pull a sketch card from some top name artists, along with the chance to obtain a variant sketch cover to the sketch books!
This is a bargain and really deserves as much support as possible, so check it out on the ReddLife Entertanment site!
Bettie Page
This looks like it’s going to be a fantastic set, and Versicolor have brought out some wonderful promos already. Grab a copy of NSU for another one and check out the Versicolor for more info on the set!
Upper Deck:
News Flash Upper Deck pull another dick move and screw independent card dealers. In other news sun still sets, and water is wet.
UD have overhauled there distribution policy (Read: they screwed a bunch of folks) They are artificially propping up the card shops by refusing to sell to anyone without a bricks and mortar store, so if your a show dealer or internet retailer Upper Deck want nothing to do with you. I predict this will fail, I can’t see it lasting. Can you imagine RandomHouse refusing to sell books to Amazon because they don’t have a shop? It’s the same thing, moves like this really show what a small industry we truly are. It’s another case of a manufacturer trying to control products before and AFTER they are sold. This is not free market economics folks it’s market manipulation, but thats nothing new from the company renowned for counterfeiting and lawsuits.
This is talked about again on the NSU forum and over at TraderCracks (which at the time of writing this is offline)
NSU: Lots of good stuff in the new magazine, I found Alan’s Editorial about Dr Who and licensing of particular interest, and I wanted to come in and talk a little about that myself. I’m going to try and be uncharacteristically diplomatic so…. read between the lines…
I have had some experience with this, I had a conversation with Richard Hollis who is the head of BBC Licensing some time ago, and I can tell you now I found the man is extremely difficult to deal with. The interaction I have had with him was very very negative. We approached him about a number of subjects, one of which was the Dr Who license which at the time had lapsed from Strictly Ink, (In fact the last set, Dr Who Trilogy, was released outside of the license terms according to Hollis) and a new part works magazine tie in card set was being produced called “Battles in Time”
This was a “gaming” card printed on very very low quality card stock at a high price. While is was meant to be a game it had no coherent rule structure and people overwhelmingly collected it as a card set.
We talked about the quality problems and the difference between hobby product and a retail product. Hollis dismissed this out of hand, along with the idea that a Classic Who set could be popular now that new Who was out. There would be no other cards released while BiT were being marketed, and he saw no reason to involve any other companies.
Well years later BiT finally folded and Panini took a shot at Who, they produced a gorgeous set of cards which retailed at ¼ of the price per pack on a much higher quality stock than the BiT cards, though again it was meant to be a “game”. One set and then the BBC took the license back “in house” that means a return to a poor card stock and a massive jump in price (see top gear turbo). Expect these cards to flood the market shortly. The lack of understanding and the total lack of interest seems typical of the industry they work in. Lets be honest BBC licensing have authorized some godawful crap in recent years, not to mention the threatened lawsuit against a woman’s knitting pattern, and yet they seem unable to bring a half decent card set to an international market which would snap it up. It’s not just the US fans missing out, the UK fans have had to put up with substandard “gaming” cards for more than half a decade, and there are no signs of any change. A lot of this stems from the BBC wishing to “double monetize” products, they want to sell the rights in the USA to a different company and keep the rights in the UK thus two products and no cross sales. This is never going to work, no US card company is going to take the risk of a USA only Who set, and no card company in the UK seems able to bring a set to market.
We have attempted to contact the licensing department after our initial conversation with Richard, the truth is we were very interested in a limited edition Blackadder trading card set, but after vast numbers of unreturned emails we just gave up. the BBC are not interested, and if they were they will make it damn near imposable to work with them.
With so many properties available I think the BBC is to be avoided at all costs. The cards they do produce and license are generally of a low quality and with a high price tag. This will, in my view, create both a poor first and lasting negative long-term impression of the card industry with consumers, and parents. They will be put off collecting cards as a whole because of this poor first experience with the BBC brands. I wish RH all the best with the upcoming Merlin card set, and I hope that this proves to be the exception to the BBC licensing issues. UK licensing companies and employees just seem to have such a limited grasp of the world outside, while still feeling an unwarranted amount of self worth.
It’s Wrong and yet…
This ebay listing was tweeted about by Robert Hack. All cards should be displayed for sale in this way.