A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

 

I recently got on a kick.

            It happens every few years around Thanksgiving.

            I get a kick for this.

            And this.

            And this.

            And...

            I think you get the picture.

            And no, I don’t think the Star Wars movies are the end all be all. But I don’t have the problem with them that some childhood into adult fandom do. I like the prequels. I enjoy Jar Jark Binks. I think The Rise of the Skywalker is the worst of the bunch. The Solo movie is a blast. I’ve been enjoying the TV shows…at least the ones that I’ve seen.

            I still lovingly look at action figure packages when in toy stores.

            Star Wars t-shirts a vital part of my weekly ensemble.

            I even read the comic books that Marvel has been putting out there for a decade now.

            But I was never really into the trading card aspect of Star Wars. I mean I was, a little bit, as a kid. I was too young for Star Wars cards. And when Empire came out I was just discovering baseball cards and cards in general. Return of the Jedi were the cards I remember buying and buying sparingly. Money doesn’t come easy to nine-year-olds. At least it didn’t in my neighborhood. If I had some change and the choice was between buying baseball cards or football cards, or a pack of Jedi cards.

           Baseball and football would've won handily.

            I got my fix on Star Wars with the action figures. I played with them incessantly. My friend Ray-Ray and I made up our own Star Wars TV show with the figures with scripts and plots and seasons.

            Star Wars cards would’ve paled in comparison.

            Although I do have one old Jedi card in my collection.

            While in the midst of re-watching the Star Wars, the adult collector in me got to wondering what kinds of Stars Wars card products were out there. And there’s a good many from low-end to high-end, to those weekly print-on-demand cards that Topps puts out on the regular. The one product that struck me was this one.

            2023’s Star Wars Flagship.

            It seemed like a good place for me to really dip my toes into the world of Star Wars card collecting.

            But there was a problem.

            The cards had mostly, if not completely, sold out in the market. And anything I was finding on the secondary market was overpriced. A case of the “oh well” and “que sera sera” set in, and I generally forgot about Star Wars cards.

            Until I went to my local LCS.

            I guess I wouldn’t call this place and LCS. They have cards. A lot of cards. But the store is kind of a kaleidoscope of hobby interests. There’re toys. There’s those POPZ. Old comic books. Records and CDS. Etc. The place is near my job so I regularly go in there to snoop around. I happened to be a stand featuring a bunch of random blaster boxes, and what did my wandering eye come upon.

            You guessed it.

            So, I had to buy one.

            I had to buy two.

            If you don’t know Star Wars Flagship here’s the gist of the cards, front and back.

            Pretty standard and pretty basic.

            A few more cards for your perusal.

            2023 Star Wars Flagship is a small 100-card base set. With two blasters I was able to make up nearly 4/5 of the base set. Flagship features cards for characters in every Star Wars movie, some of the TV shows, and even some of the animated series that are out there. Regrettably Star Wars animated programming is the one real blind spot that I have in my Galaxy viewing.

            Your standard Topps insert cards are in Star Wars flagship.

            You have your foil cards.

            Your gold foil cards.

            Your parallel cards.

            Your numbered parallel cards.

            And some pretty cool inserts.

            My favorite of the bunch are the lightsaber dye-cut cards.

            But I wasn’t stingy with them. I gave this one to my wife.

            Rey is her favorite.

            Overall, I had a pretty good time opening packs of Star Wars flagship. I don’t often non-sports, but I think I should dip my toes in further. It’s just harder to find out what kind of products are being released for what kinds of movies and TV shows. Or I’m just not looking the right places and need to connect with more non-sports folks.  I’m a pretty big fan of the latest Star Wars program Skeleton Crew. I thought it was a lot of fun. Be nice to see some card product for that.

            Anyway, thanks for reading. Happy Collecting.

            …And MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.