Bought 2 hobby boxes today and am really impressed again:

First Box
Base Cards: 2 shy of a full set, few doubles
Etched Foils(1:6): 4
1/1 Original Etche Foil Artwork(1:43,720): 0
Silver Foils(1:3): 8
Bronze Foils(1:24): 1
Gold Foils(1:39)#rd to 770: 0
Refractor Foils(1:17,488): 0
Lost Galaxy(1:24): 1
Sketch Card(1:24): 1 very nice Grant Gould Color Jawa
Shaped Sketch Card(1:192): 1 nice Greivious pencil sketch
Manga Sketch Card(1:274): 0
Galaxy Autograph (1:274): 1 Jeremy Bulloch as Boba Fett

That box bucked the odds big time!! My best box yet!

Box 2
Base: Full set, few doubles
Etched Foil: 4 same 4 as the first box
Silver Foil: 8 same 8 as the first box
Bronze Foil: 1 different than the first box
Gold Foil: 1
Sketch Card: 1 nice Denise Vasquez Yoda!

Overall, great 2 boxes, IMO! The base cards are fantastic, the autos are cool cause they reproduced the card with a gold stamp and a clear auto sticker. The Martinez foil cards are great, as well as the etched! Really happy to pull the auto, die-cut, and sketch all from one box.

I'll try to scan them soon!!

Good luck to you all,

I've opened two boxes. Both boxes had a Gold Foil card in addition to the Lost Galaxy card, Bronze Foil and Sketch. Unfortunately, I did not get any of the other high-end chase.

Base Set: A+. Some really fantastic artwork in this set. The cards themselves feel substantial and look great.

Foils: C. The silver set of foils is fairly easy to get, even with the 15 total cards. However, I am less and less enthused with the increased rarity parallel sets. Bronze foils at 1 per box, and golds at roughly 1 per 1-1/2 boxes make completing those chase sets a pain. On a side note, I thought these foils did not look as good as the G4 foil set. To be fair, I like G4's style more, but I thought the foil medium actually hurt the appearance of Martinez's artwork.

Etched Foils: B. They look good, but this is a been, there done that type of chase card.

Sketches: B+. I pulled a color Katie Cook sketch (Happy Wookie Lifeday theme), and half of a color Bruce Gerlach Jabba sketch. I was very pleased with both of them as they look good and are something different than what I usually am able to pull. However, looking over the ones available on eBay, there seem to be the same sketch issues with this set that have plagued other sets. To be honest, I'm not sure what can be done. So, in short, buyer beware for the sketches.

Lost Galaxy: A. I loved the set from G4, and this one lives up to its predecessor. At 6 cards, it shouldn't be that difficult to get them all even at 1:24 odds.

Since I didn't pull any of the following, these are just some thoughts in general on them...

Autographs: Nice idea, and great signers.

Die Cut Sketches: I wasn't crazy about these with G4, and I'm still not. They are different, however, and some are really quite clever.

Print Plates: Interesting idea but not something I'm gaga over.

Manga Sketches: I'm not a fan of manga at all, and I don't see why separating these from the other sketches was necessary. however, the ones I have seen are very nicely done- far nicer than many of the regular sketches.

Refractor Foils/Original Etched Art: I wish Topps would stop this type of 1/1 nonsense. A better idea would be for Topps to auction off those cards to benefit charity.

Overall, I give the set an A-. I was pleased enough with the boxes I got that I am getting two more- too bad ESB 3D is coming so soon or I might have gotten more.

I finally got through my two boxes and here's what I found.

First, the packs are arrayed in three trays of eight packs each, just as for Galaxy 4. Being a numbers person, I decided to keep track of what I found in each pack and compare the results for the two boxes. Amazingly, they were identical in the location of the chase cards. Here's the layout, counting front to back:

1. Silver foils - Packs 1,4,7,10,13,16,19,22.
2. Etched foils - Packs 3,9,15,21.
3. Bronze foil - Pack 18.
4. Lost galaxy - Pack 11.
5. Sketch - Pack 23.

Has anyone else kept track, and how does this match up with yours? The retail boxes will probably be different, but I thought it was interesting.

The base cards are good looking. I got a complete set in one box and I was just missing one in the second box. Not bad.

Each box had 8 silver foils and I have 13 different ones from the 16 total. Pretty good.

Each box had four etched foils, and between them I have all six. Really good.

The two Lost Galaxy cards were identical. Bad.

The two bronze foils are not very helpful when there are 15 altogether. I will probably just keep one as a sample and trade the other one.

My two sketches are not very exciting. They are both just line drawings and one of them is pretty amateurish.

I got none of the other chase cards - not even a gold foil or shaped sketch. That's typical for me, but it sure would be nice to pull a rare card once in my life.

One last thing. It appears to me one of the cards has an error, although I'm certainly willing to believe I'm wrong. Card 90 on the back says it is a drawing of Anakin, but the drawing certainly looks like Obi-Wan as a padawan to me. What do you think?

quote:

Originally posted by rosemaster:
One last thing. It appears to me one of the cards has an error, although I'm certainly willing to believe I'm wrong. Card 90 on the back says it is a drawing of Anakin, but the drawing certainly looks like Obi-Wan as a padawan to me. What do you think?

You may be right. It looks like Obi-Wan to me also.

I opened my cards today, and love the base set. I did not get any die cuts or manga sketches either. But I did get a Peter Mayhew auto. The sticker blends in well with the background.

quote:

Originally posted by rosemaster:
One last thing. It appears to me one of the cards has an error, although I'm certainly willing to believe I'm wrong. Card 90 on the back says it is a drawing of Anakin, but the drawing certainly looks like Obi-Wan as a padawan to me. What do you think?

Check out Terese Nielson's site:
http://teresenielsen.deviantar...-Wan-Kenobi-92020468
It is supposed to be Obi-Wan.

I enjoyed opening my cards.

I tend to like the Galaxy sets, simply because you're seeing images that aren't straight from the films/cartoons.

In this set, I found a lot of the poster art quite fun. Haven't picked a favorite card yet.

As for card 90, that is Young Obi-Wan as a Padawan, but the card back doesn't claim it is Anakin. It is titled Anakin's Galaxy (or something like that) and the description is about how the artist created the artwork for a cover of something. I suspect that the thing she did the artwork for was called Anakin's Galaxy, even though it featured Obi-Wan on the front (the interior of the comic or magazine probably had a lot of Anakin). Maybe!?

Overall I liked the base cards hugely. Very few images that weren't appealing. My sketch cards were incredibly well done. Mostly bad guys sadly. Not sure I liked the backing on the sketch cards, as it does show through the image in a way that isn't always appealing.I wish they'd had space on the back for the artist to write their name. Smaller card back might not have made that pretty I guess. Bored with the silver character foils. Liked the etched foils overall, but not sure I like them as much as the earlier ones. Great scene choices, and overall well done though.

Card backs all seem to have interesting info. There was some real creativity going on with these cards, and I'm liking them. Wouldn't mind opening some more packs, but I think I'm done!

Cathy, if you read further on the card back it says "Front: An evocative, penetrating study of Anakin Skywalker, who rises from obscurity to a destiny that will shatter the universe. Painting by Terese Nielsen, created for Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Miniatures." In this set that is the standard method they use to describe the artwork on the front of the card. They then say "Back:...." to describe the artwork on the back of the card.

There are some disappointments, but I'm pretty happy with this set of cards.

Negatives:

*The collation was the worst I've seen in a long, long time. I got two boxes, and neither one had a complete set of the base cards.

*I'm accustomed to getting 1 sketch card per box, but that didn't happen. No sketch cards, no autograph cards. (I did get one gold foil in each box, but whatever, I have no intention of trying to complete that parallel set.)

*Cards 103 and 115 have goofy orientation; if you have the backs of the cards aligned right-side up, the images are in the opposite direction of the rest of the series. -- so add those to the card #90 error.

*Was it really necessary to begin the text of so many cards (81-94, 99) with "Star Wars has become more than just a movie experience, with art generated by the saga appearing in a plethora of creative venues"? Put it on card #81 to start the art series, then just do the front/back comments on the rest, thank you.

*Am I the only person who would always pass on the JAKe images? Maybe I'm just reacting to the excessive hype I've seen/read. Thankfully the JAKe images are relegated to the backs of some cards.

*I personally could have done without the foil cards. They're a pretty boring set of chase cards (although farmboy Luke was a big surprise instead of Jedi Luke). (Oh, and did anyone else notice that the sequence of the foil cards was determined by alphabetical order? You have to go by "Palpatine", not "Emperor", "Princess Leia" not just "Leia", and "Darth Maul" is sorted by "Darth" but "Darth Vader" is sorted as "Vader", but the alphabetical sequence is apparent all the same.)

Positives:

*The Unleashed images (cards #67-78) are spectacular. (Would it be too overtly male to comment on #73? )

*The posters (cards #18-23, 51-54, and 65) are all cool.

*I don't know that I can pick one favorite. (No, not #73; as much as I admit to liking that image, I honestly don't think of Leia like that.) Among my favorites are 97, 64, 57, and 24.

*I know others think the Etched Foil cards are old hat, but I like them. I think they are part of what defines the Star Wars Galaxy cards, and I liked that these particular cards stuck with TESB characters and situations, a passive acknowledgement of TESB's anniversary.

Just finished cracking my case so heres my few initial thoughts on this set:

Base set, amazing front images, best base set yet. haven't had time to look at the backs in too much detail but I did notice one or two oddities in flicking through.

Foil cards, nice images but not liking them on foil cards, should have stayed with the same type of drawn images from G4. No need for parallels though. Thats just boring and lame in a set like this (or any set for that matter). I'd rather have had another chase set instead of 4 parallel sets.

Etched foil, nice belong to galaxy sets, nice slight tweak to the card technology on these as well.

Sketches. Despite what I have read on other sites I reckon there are more decent sketches with this set that any other. In hobby boxes at least. Shaped sketches are definately a bad idea. The one I pulled was ugly and a child could have painted it.

Lost Galaxy. Nice set, on par with the G4 one but could have easilly been base set cards, I found it hard to identify these apart from the base set cards.

Autos, didn't pull one but bought one from Ebay before I broke the boxes. Not a card type that galaxy sets need I am afraid, rather have had the auto images as base cards.

Correlation. I think Topps has taken a step backwards with correlation in this set. It wasn't always the best in previous sets but this one was bad. Topps will be hearing from me on this. One of my boxes had no, yes NO Etched-foils in, should have been 4 if correlation perfect (like the other 7 I opened). I also I had only 4 of the 5 Lost galaxy cards out of 7 found in the case (Yes I missed 1 of these from a box as well). Base sets wise, in the one box I picked to take my base set from I was missing 1 card to make a complete set (yet to check the rest).

It is worth noting that my case was poor on the high end stakes, no manga sketch, printing plate or auto. Going on the odds yes I shouldn't have been gauranteed one of these in a case but if you group them as one then a case should have at very worst one of these.

A final little quibble, I know these have to be displayed in shops but the size of the boxes these come is just ridiculous. What is wrong with the standard box (e.g. the ones every other set other than Galaxy has come in the last 10 years). Would make shipping easier and possibly a little cheaper. The racking thing (it was the same for G4) makes cherry picking easier than ever.

Over all I like the base set, the chase cards were a bit samey, nothing special, I was more wowed pulling the base cards than the chase cards. Something for Topps to consider. Less chase cards of beter quality.

That is more of a thorough review than I had intended, oh well