Come and see us at the Birmingham NEC Memorabilia and ComicCon show this weekend (March 31-April 1st 2012) and find some of these new fabulous promo cards! We will be at table V13 which I am told is next to one of the celebrity signing areas. The very talented illustrator Carolyn Edwards will be making an appearance on Saturday, and Matt Dixon will be attending the show as well. 
Sherlock Holmes & Victorian Crime: Second Edition Factory Set.
Our first Sherlock Holmes set was a sell out and one of our most popular products. Because of this late last year we put together a very limited edition second printing of this set as a convention exclusive. We are now making a limited number of these available to everyone!
This second edition printing of the original 18 cards was limited to just 200 factory sets. Each hand numbered set will come packed with two correspondingly numbered mini chase cards along with the “missing” crossover card numbered 19. This was originally issued in the Monsters Zombies and Freaks set, and was only produced in limited numbers. New for this set you may find (1 in 3 packs) the new Mini Canvas card, this card shrinks the original 9 card canvas chase set image down onto one regular size card, and it looks stunning. You may also find a sketch if your lucky! They fall at about 1 in 20 packs and include art from Sanna U and Robert Hack.
Numbers are strictly limited and as an extra incentive we will add one of the fantastic 4 card Sherlock Holmes Terror by Night Rathbone mini sets in for every pack ordered!
Of course that’s not all you will also get a nice selection of promos but importantly you will also get one of out VERY LIMITED Buyers Preview card for a set that will not be announced until the 25th of February. This will be one of only two or three chances to obtain this card and we expect it run out quickly, you will get one for each pack you order not just one card per order! We will also include one of the NSU Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 2011 Memorabilia show mini promo’s with the first 20 orders!
The price for this package is just £14.99! You can find ordering information on the Sherlock Holmes page You will also be able to order the Terror by Night set on it’s own for £3.99
Military Propaganda & Posters Series 1 is shipping the week beginning 27th of Feb, and the new “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” set is due for release in May/June! The last Mystery Box will be up on Ebay soon, we held it back again to add some extras to the charity auction! (Next Week)
The set is coming along and we expect it to be shipping in the next two weeks. The cards should be back from print in the first week of Feb. and they should tack roughly a week to pack if everything works according to plan. The images above are for the two new exclusive promo cards for this set P4 and P5.
P4 (Allons-Y) is issued by Tom Breyer via TomUnique and of course P5 could only be MhopOnHop’s very own promo. Some of these will be sprinkled into the sets, and some lucky folks will find a redemption for a set of all the propaganda full size promos!
And below you can see a sneak preview of the fantastic sketch cards going into the set. These cards are from Wynn Ryder and this is his first set! He has completed 20 for us and they are all stunning. Sadly some of our sketches are going to be redemptions but rather than hold up the set we decided to just press on. You can expect to see the fantastic work of Dane Ault, Laura Inglis, Patrick Hamill and a few select others.
We have authentic WWI and WWII vintage medals along with some very limited edition reproductions featuring items like the Victoria Cross (VC) and fantastic authentic patch and WWII ribbon cards. Of course you also have the chance to obtain some of the rare and carefully reprinted posters mixed in with vintage originals, and look out for the ultra rare parallel set. The final print run numbers will be decided on Monday but at this point we are looking at less than 1,000 sets! More information can be found on this HERE
Sherlock Holmes Terror by Night is a 4 card micro set we put together in very limited numbers. (600 sets in total) Until now this set was only available as a show exclusive. This week we will be offering it through the site for the first time. You will have two options, you can buy this set on it’s own or get it for free with any order of our reprinted Sherlock Holmes and Victorian Crime factory set (more on this shortly). In the next 24 hours you will also find the first images of our Military Propaganda poster sketch cards, along with 2 new promos. This set is close to completion and should be shipping by the second week in Feb.
We have just received pricing information the new and fantastic looking Red Sonja set from Breygent so please check out the new product page. This looks like its going to be a very popular set!
We had a number of promo cards available at the show, including the Stunningly Savage P1 and P2 cards which were split between out table and the NSU table, in addition we also had an announced P3 card from this set (pic coming soon). We also have two uncut numbered versions of the P1 and P2 cards which I forgot to hand out for half the show sorry folks! Harris had the Mini Sherlock Promo card to hand out for us, and we had the new Art of JD Seeber P2 card. Along with these we produced a new promotional poster advertising the second set of Matt Dixon cards which will be available soon, and will indeed have some limited sketch cards randomly inserted.
We also put together some products to take along to the show including: a four card Terror by Night Basil Rathbone Sherlock mini set, some show exclusive sketch packs, along with a limited to 200 reprint of our first Sherlock set, details of which will hit the site in the next day or so.
That covers what we had new for the show, we also spent a good deal of time handing out some of our older promos to folks how had missed them or us in the past. It was a pleasure to meet so many people and the feedback was constructive and positive. I talked to a number of collectors and a few dealers, but to be honest a lot of the UK dealers for whatever reasons don’t stock our products and don’t seem interested in doing so, with the few notable exceptions. Perhaps it will change perhaps not, in the mean time you will be able to find our products in the UK from only the most discerning of retailers. I had a productive conversation with Paul from Umbrella, he had a lot of interesting things to say and really put forward some good ideas for content, pricing and packing. Several of his ideas we will be tested on upcoming products, so thanks for that Paul. We will be doing an exclusive promo for you guys soon.
I also talked with Jason from Unstoppable Cards, I think I talked to him so much he only escaped when I turned my back for a moment! They had a sketch card promotion going with the NSU stand, and Jason seems like a really nice guy. Unfortunately the promos they hoped to have available were not ready in time. The issue is when you do larger batched sheet runs any single card problem can delay all the other cards in the run, and my understanding is that this is what happened. Still there is another show in March! We look forward to seeing what they come up with! Until then we wish them well.
Paul (from UKCardCast) and I spent many hours avoiding each other until near the end when he had the pleasure of following me around for 45 min. completely failing to record anything but generally seeing how disorganised I can be while at the same time trying to talk to 6 people at once. Also I got to talk to Caroline Munro for a while which was fantastic, shes a super lady and we are going to be doing some things with her and a few other well known folks in the coming months.
Artist Ally bluntly was a bit grim, no offence to the folks in attendance, it was just badly laid out and not half of what it once was. This is almost completely because of the Leeds Thoughtbubble comic festival that took place the same weekend. I hope the two don’t clash next year but I am sure they will for petty political reasons. Even in it’s reduced size several new faces appeared which we hope to bring to official sets next year. They will no doubt then be plucked from us by the bigger boys with the extravagant promises of $1.50 pay rates! Patrick Hamill also stopped by and wow what a nice guy he is, as a long suffering collector of MGS cards I feel a lot of empathy with him, as a sketch artist he is a very talented and it looks like he will also be working on some sets with us next year which is great news. He is also helping to develop a new sketch card grading system which I will be talking about in the next few weeks.
The whole weekend flew past in a bit of a blur, and I have missed a ton of stuff out, like Matt Dixon being there and the poster advertising his second set (coming soon) along with a number of other great properties in the works, (last count was close to 16 sets in various stages of negotiation and development). I’m pleased to say the Liza will be coming onto the staff full time in December so that should help meet a lot of those deadlines! We also hope to announce some new writers for the site which should help keep everyone update with not just what we doing but also what the industry as a whole is up to.
I wish I could name all the fantastic folks we met at the show but thee isn’t space or time, as I should be making cards even as I type this… that January deadline is getting much to close! Heck it took me nearly 5 days to get this done!
A limited number of these fantastic new sets are now available for pre order. Head to the product page for more information.
AT LAST! Military Propaganda & Poster Series 1: Shipping Jan/Feb 2012. Limited to 1,000 factory sets worldwide. This fantastic 36 card collection will retail at just $27.99 (£18.00) and will be available for Pre-order from November 4th. For more details and a special retail case buyers price check the product page
