The ripping and cracking of the 56th seal of the Roboplastic Podcastalypse is the sound of 96 foil packs of Breygent Marketing's Transformers Optimum Collection Trading cards being torn apart! Yes the May 14th release date of this most anticipated (by me at least) of Transformer card sets finally came and went, and with it, lots of my money. So to celebrate this momentous occasion I discuss to myself the long road to conquest littered with Autobot wrecks it's been since these cards were first announced just over two years ago. Then with the help of a very special guest (aka the Prince of Macrocrania), we tear into a box of Transformers cards with the recorder capturing it all live. What fabulous pieces of dead Autobot corpses await us in our foily packs? Will we get a super rare, super special Destavator card? Don't we already have that one? Find out all this and more in this NO PODCARDALYPSE FOR OLD ROBOTS edition of the podcastalypse!
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This episode features commentary on Breygent's Transformers cards by special guest toy destroyer "Super Ban", who at six years old is not only the same age as the Michael Bay Transformer movies, but also the age I was when I destroyed my first box of Empire Strikes Back cards back in 1980. To establish his Transformer fan credibility I can attest to the fact that he rides a movie Bumblebee bicycle, wears a movie Bumblebee backpack, and owns tons of movie Bumblebee toys (plus some G1 Robot Heroes he never plays with). Just so you know where his bias lies, he has been known to use the word "old" to describe any Transformers that are not from the Michael Bay movies. Plus the word he most commonly uses to describe the look of those "old" Transformers is "crappy".
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This is the 72 card base set. Almost half is dedicated to character cards and the rest don't do a good job of representing iconic moments from all three movies. It's as if the base set was an afterthought, or something for autograph hounds to have handy for those times they see stars like Shia LeBouf at comic conventions.
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Our complete (minus promos) G1 foil set. We're missing some promo cards numbered outside of these 18 but still in this style that include Demolishor, Jolt, and Rampage. I don't know how many total foils are out there, but if the promos are foil then there could possibly be one for every non-movie character that shares a name with a movie character.
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BREAKDOWN
I was doing the math to figure out just how many of each type of card there are. From the totals supplied by Breygent, I know there are 250 cases with 3,000 boxes that have 24 packs each and 6 cards to a pack. So that's 24 * 3,000 = 72,000 packs with 6 * 24 * 3,000 = 432,000 cards. From what I've seen, signature, cloth memorabilia, and foil cards replace one base card in each pack, but the tire cards do not. I didn't get a comic panel card but I imagine they replace one base, too. So here are my estimates of what exists in terms of 'hits' based on the ratios printed on the boxes:
Movie foil puzzle cards: 1 in 8 packs = 72,000 / 8 = 9,000 cards or 1,000 sets
G1 foil cards: 1 in 4 packs = 72,000 / 4 = 18,000 cards or 1,000 sets
Autograph: 1 in 29 packs = 72,000 / 29 = approximately 2,483 autographs
Comic Panel: 1 in 72 packs = 72,000 / 72 = 1,000 comic panels
Sketch cards: 1 in 21 packs = 72,000 / 21 = approximately 3,429 sketches
Film memorabilia 1 in 36 packs = 72,000 / 36 = 2,000 memorabilia cards
If you add all these totals it comes out to approximately 36,000 special cards that displace an equivalent number of base cards in the packs. With 72 base cards in the set, the final number of complete sets possible after subtracting the special cards from the total of all cards made is 5,500. So my guess is there are only 5,500 base sets available, which is easily the attendance of Botcon on a good day. And the subsets are even rarer. There's really not a lot of these out there if you think about it. Luckily, dealers are considering this set a failure and are dumping their stock of it on ebay. So patient collectors should eventually be able to complete sets without too much money invested.
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SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE
Our hits from 4 boxes
- A brief history of Breygent's Transformers set
- October 2010-Enterplay gets the Transformers license
- May 2011-DOTM cards make the cover of Non Sport Update
- Original release date for Enterplay's set stated as July 2011
- The set gets delayed until October 2011
- April 2012-Breygent takes over for a fall 2012 release
- October 2012 interview with Breygent's president mentions collector's box format
- Case breakdown statistics released just before cards hit the market in May 2013
- Episode of the Podcastalypse where I interviewed three artists who worked on the set
- Initial dealer excitement over the Breygent Transformers set
- Initial dealer consternation over the Breygent Transformers set
- Seishiro Ookubo, master 3D card artist
- How to make a 3D trading card
- A gallery of great 3D Magic cards
- The insane idea behind comic panel cards
- Don't rocket punch your friends!
