One of those ways was the trading card market. With sales up across the company and new titles and traditional top line characters both doing brisk business, Marvel looked for other ways to make money. Marvel dominated, grabbing around two-thirds of the market. The advent of the trade paperback as a universal part of the comic reading experience was still a ways off, leading collectors to snap up first issues and special editions of various comics.
A speculator’s market in comic books was behind it all lower print runs of popular stories in years prior made scarcity mean value. The company was riding what was, at the time, an unprecedented high. The comic book industry was booming in 1990, and nowhere was that boom felt more than at Marvel Headquarters. The mystical art of alternate revenue sources And history suggests the success of the cards changed the course of Marvel’s history. Without the stats and ratings on the back, the cards likely wouldn’t have been as successful, even with the rabid comic fans at the time. Marvel’s foray into trading cards paralleled the company’s boom and bust fortunes of the ’90s. The rankings gave enthusiasts concrete numbers to point to when arguing over character attributes and helped fuel the crossover comic trading card business.
#Best marvel trading cards series
In the early 1990s, Marvel Comics released a series of popular trading card sets called “Marvel Universe” that changed fan debates forever by using power rankings to assign relative ability levels to different characters. Prepare yourself for Polygon's Who Would Win Week. Collectors are scooping up literally anything that they think will gain value.įor Marvel fans of a certain age, the first series Marvel Universe trading cards were something new and exciting, and the renewed interest in them shows how they continue to resonate to the present day.One eternal question spans all of pop culture: "Who would win?" That's why we're dedicating an entire week to debates that have shaped comics, movies, TV, and games, for better and worse. But right now, people are throwing crazy money at them. Will the short-term investment be wise? That remains to be seen. With Pokemon and other collectible cards reaching exorbitant prices online, speculators are looking to cash in on the next boom - hence, these prices have skyrocketed. The cards are also over 30 years old, making scarcity a contributor as well. Then, Marvel put their top creators on the cards, giving them an air of authenticity in a pre- Wikipedia age, these cards, and the wealth of information on them, were a gold mine of information for fans clamoring to learn more about their favorite characters. The cards were a melding of two popular types of collectibles, something that had rarely been done. What has led to this surge of interest in these cards? While some of it can be attributed to market trends, nostalgia and scarcity are two big factors as well. What is truly astounding are the prices on unopened, factory-sealed boxes, which contain 36 packs-the cheapest on eBay is going for 700 dollars, with many more going for over a thousand some are approaching two thousand! A quick scan of eBay shows that complete sets of the first series are fetching four to five hundred dollars in some cases. The cards proved to be a massive hit for Marvel and Impel, and it inspired subsequent series, including the famous Marvel Masterpieces line. Now the cards are commanding a top dollar on the secondary market and on online auction sites. The backs of the cards featured statistics for the characters, including battles won and lost - which the copywriters admitted later they completely made up. The cards featured art by a number of prominent Marvel artists such as Mark Bagley and Ron Frenz with back copy by Tom Brevoort, Dwayne McDuffie, and others. The first series, published by Impel (later rebranded as Skybox) consisted of 162 cards and would lay the foundation all future sets would build upon. Related: Agent Coulson Burned His Captain America Trading Card (In the Comics)
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