Opening some Date A Bullet boosterpacks for Weiss Schwarz

 Earlier this month, a local visit to Nendo Addicts brought back some booster packs of the Date A Bullet series.

Now, while I don`t play Weiss Schwarz, I am trying to collect a select amount of series from the line, just because I love the anime's they are from.

And to that end, I'm opening these two packs, always in the hope of getting one of the signature cards (chances: slim).  And considering there is barely an aftermarket for the game here in Belgium, I`m also hoping on not to much doubles hehehe.

So, without firther ado, I cut open the first pack, and getting these cards:

The rare of the set, "Zafkiel" Kurumi, is unfortunatly not the signed version, but still a 3.90 euro card according to Cardmarket, so that's not to bad.  And with the Uncommon "Doll Master" Pannier and the Common card In Recollections, Isami I also scored two foils in this pack.

The second pack was then opened, yielding me the following:

Now, the Rare of this pack is nothing spectacular: Predetermined Conclusion, Queen.  While only a 0.25 cent rare, I did also get her Foil version in this pack.  Guess that's both a yay and a nay in one and the same go?  

But in the end, that card, and now the non-foil version of In Recollections, Isami where the only ones to be added to the doubles stack.  And the small series got fleshed out some more once again.

So if you want to pick up those, check out my CardMarket page for them.

Opening 2 Pokemon Vivid Voltage boosters: These are FAKES

 Well, I grabbed these boosters with our left over prize tokens at a fancy fair, during our recent trip to Leuven with Noshi.

And now we are ripping open the booster packs, and see if any gems are hiding in these two little packs.

So, I taped the opening, but then my alarm bells went off, something wasn`t feeling right with these particular cards.  Never the less, I kept the little clip of the opening of the packs, as I was checking them out and after cutting the camera, started to notice all sorts of strange things on them.  But at least it shows these packs actually exist out there...

Because both the packs and the cards are fakes!!!!

I sensed something was off when I only had 19 instead of 20 cards after opening both boosters, and no online code cards.  So I went in to look deeper.

For starters, they feel course and not smooth like a real card, and the colouring of the backs in in various blue hues.  At first I thought they might have been stored badly, but then I went to look closer.

For starters, the booster pack doesn`t have the "6+" age mark above the letter N of Pokemon.

Further inspection on the cards themselves show that some have very vague printings, while other look a bit faded in colour.

But it gets "better" when looking at the rares: the Galarian Darmanitan V actually is a few milimetres shorter then the other cards, while the Orbeetle V is cut wrongly at the bottom.

So these are straight to the garbage can cards, elaborate fakes they might be though!

Haul Report 84

Hello everyone to another overview of stuff I`ve added to my piles this week.

Again a bit of a mixed boat, as it includes second hand finds, new stuff and even a price I`ve won...

The first thing I`ve obtained was when i made a trip to the local used bookstore.  Here I found two nice books, the main one of course being a book on the Army of Northern Virginia.  Added to that, I also grabbed a novel in The Tide of War, about the war in the Carribean.

I picked up the Miniature Wargames issue I did a small overview on earlier this week as well.

The next thing I bought was a card to load up my Steam account, as the Osprey game Battleplan: The American Civil War was at a -75% discount.  The Pirate: Carribean Hunt was a free game, so I installed that as well.

Perhaps the most awaited parcel fell in the mailbox as well earlier this week, an order from Renedra for plastic bases, so I can continue restoring my old forces.

Free stuff is cool, and through BrickGeekz on Facebook I won a pile of the UK trading cards for Lego, not available overhere. 

On Amazon I found some Osprey rulebooks cheaply, and I`m currently "in talks" with my Nemesis (as in, I dropped the subject and we need to look at it) to perhaps starting some historical skirmishing in the club, in all probability the Napoleonics setting.

And that is it once more for this week, a lot of reading stuff to add but some nice other additions as well.  See you all laters!

I won: BrickGeekz Collectable Cards

A little luck yesterday night, as I won a raffle from BrickGeekz.

The price?  A set of the UK trading cards from Sainsbury, so not available here in Belgium.

All you had to do was the "like, share, tag someone" routine from Facebook, and tadaaa, after three years of knowing Phil and often hopping by on his streams (unfortunatly, time hasn`t been gentle to do that the past months) I came out on top at last.

Patience is a virtue indeed...

Chima Promotional Pack

Something of an oddity today in Lego stuffsies I have here, is this Chima pack of promotional items.

This was part of a prize I`ve won at a recent Lego event, the LCC Happy Reunion, at the end of january, and while most would be `bleugh`, I really liked this little thingy.

Why?  Because it includes the foil trading cards of Laval and Cragger.  Keep it silent, but I`m still trying to collect all the trading cards that can be obtained through the speedster sets (and accompanying sets for that matter.  Because I always have, and always will, loved trading cards.

Other things in the pack where a ripcord for the speedsters with a rubber `head` to put on top of your personal rip cord, making the grip on them easier, a small poster and a holographic key chain.

So yeah, this is definitly a `better` promotional pack compared to for example last years new Bionicle range one...

Today`s Haul, all for my own...

And by god, it was a good one.

For my personal collection, I managed to obtain some more Micromaster Transformers, namely red Hot from the Rescue Patrol, as well as Road Hugger and Hyper Drive from the Sports Car Patrol.

But that was not all for my own use, I also got this lovely set of OverPower cards, 94 more to scratch of the want list...

Then the Lego Club Magazine fell in the mailbox, and it came with a poster and dvd of Ninjago.  Even if it is targeted at a young audience, it ain`t even half bad...

New STUDS cards for the collection

Three more cards to complete my eternal goal of getting all the STUDS cards in the series.

Two promos detailing the excellent Star Trek vessels, and a signature card of Cale Leiphardt and his special train.

This puts the total to 119 cards collected, but at current I only have 7 autopgraph cards out of the possible 90, and barely 2 of the promo cards, so it is still a LONG way to go before I will have the full collection, if ever, completed.  Oh heck, maybe I could just travel the world and go ring at people`s doorsteps to sign the cards ;-)

Just kidding honey... sort off.

STUDS series one: opening my boxes

This morning the mailman brought a very nice parcel to the door (okay, so I had to pay import duties, but that was expected), as my order of two boxes of the new STUDS trading cards and the binder had arrived.

STUDS is a series that originated from Kickstarter and details the life of (stateside based) AFOLs and their various gorgeous creations.

Now, I bought two Hobby Boxes, and a single box is said to be guaranteed at least a full base set of 96 cards and the 9 card Lowel Spehere inserts.

Every pack also contains a BrickForge custom piece, uniquely made for the series.  Autographed cards (90 out of the 96 card set has an autographed version, this is going to be a pain to collect them all) are inserted at random ratios.

So off we go, and ritually open the very first pack of the series:

Great looking, solid artwork cards, and a blue transparant Tomahawk element. The cards are of a good quality like all the current day trading cards, this is going to be the set I`ll be drooling over A LOT.  I did decide though to get a second binder from my own stacks to include the alternate Autograph series and any promo cards I might still be able to get, as the `official` binder is a bit thin for that.  The basic checklist contains the base set, the Lowell inserts and the 5 piece smaller minifig series, so that`s what I`m putting in the official binder, and all the rest (IF I can get them) in the other one.

Slowly I start filling up the base set.

He, cool, I just reviewed that book last week!

My first autograph!  The great thing is these come in a seperate `penny sleeve` for additional protection.

This is probably the most touching MoC for myself.  I so hope to get the creator, Ian Heath, his autograph card somewhere.

More cards get added, including the awesome EXO suit that caused such a ruckus on Ideas lately as sales soar for that set.  And yes, that is indeed the Serenity in Lego bricks...

The Lowell Sphere insert completed.  At the front a MOC of a billiard table, at the back an instruction leaflet on how to make a sphere.

Inserting card number 36, from the penultimate pack of the first box, and indeed, I now have a FULL base set, FULL Lowell Sphere and indeed also the full series of 5 smaller Minifig cards.  I did carefully taped the opening of the sheets for them, to avoid the small cards from slipping out.

I can`t say every box has a full set in all honesty.  Box 2 was ripped through for any possible autographs and the BrickForge elements.  In the end I scored 6 autographs (3 per box, but I can`t say if that is meant to be), including ironically and awesomely the Cult of Lego card signed by Joe Meno.

This also results of course in `some` doubles, which I can hopefully get traded away.

And a large number of custom elements.  Now, the scifi guns and medieval suitable weaponry I`m keeping, but those with `modern day` appliances and weapons will end in the for trade maps, as I have zilch use for those in my MoC`s and intrest areas.

All in all, I LOVE these cards, and will be scouring the net over my regular sources often in the hopes of finding all those missing autograph and promo cards.

And in the meantime, I`ll be looking out for series 2, rumoured for 2015, as I`ll definitly will be getting those as well!

Lego Trading Cards set is released

They have been officially released yesterday evening for us europeans, the STUDS series 1 trading card series by Brickstuds.

Evolved from a Kickstarter campaign, the series features of course the regular Base Set, but apart from that also a whole series of extra`s, lots of autograph cards, and a nice goodie per pack.

Personally, I`m going to aim to get together the Master Set, though I doubt this will ever be actually feasible due to my physical location, but never the less, we can only try.  I have no idea of the actual ratio of inserts and chase cards, and the website talks about Sketch Cards which I can`t seem to find on the actual Master List, so that will all require some puzzling once the series appears on checklist websites like Jeff Allender`s.

Each pack comes with 8 random inserted cards, as well as a single BrickForge element card, one of the biggest third party manufacturers (and since they aren`t numbered or listed, can just be taken off the insert and added to your bricks and parts collection).

The cards themselves revolve around famous (american) AFOL`s and feature their creations, as well as that most of the cards also come with an autograph version (almost all but 5 actually), so adding in all the promos and special cards listed on the Master Checklist, the full series would come to 217 cards, broken down as followed:

Base Set - 96 cards
Autograph cards - 91 cards
Lowell Sphere Instructions - 9 cards
Minifigure cards - 5 cards
Kickstarter stretch goal cards - 2 cards
Promo cards - 7 cards
Pigs vs Cows Promo - 2 cards
Steamworks - 5 cards

So as you can see, no mention of how it works with the sketch cards, and I can`t say anything about them yet before I have my copies in hand (I went for two hobbyboxes of 28 packs each as well as the collection binder, I`ll talk about the contents of the boxes once I received them in I estimate a few weeks).

What are my realistic expectations for the Master Set collectioning?

Well, I hope to get the full base set from the boxes for one, as well as the Lowell Sphere set.  I think they will be pretty common inserts, as you can grab a `Factory set` from the website containing the 96 cards set and the 9 set special.
Of course, I`ll also have 56 new parts for my minifigures, courtesy of BrickForge.

But apart from what I expect to be `sure shots`, I hope to collect from those boxes at least 2 or 3 autograph cards (giving me about half a dozen out of 91...) and hopefully a single one of the 5 Minifig cards.

For the promos, I fear I`ll be related to trying to find them through people looking to sell or trade over the NSU forums, or eBay.

And hopefully get some more ideas of how the Sketch cards work, though i`ll be asking that question perhaps on their Facebook page.

But all in all, a definite series of cards I`ve looked out for, and now the wait can kick in for getting those cards in my hands and admire them!