Top 5 Star Wars Card Trader Cards of 2023

I am really happy that this list has become an annual item that I have the opportunity to share.  These 2023 Star Wars Card Trader cards all come from the rare variant and are, in my opinion, the Top 5 of my collection.  There are many, many more insert sets that I don't have that might very well be much more interesting or coveted, but I am only going with what I've collected.  That said, I may not have succeeded in completing the set, but they are cards that I pulled from those sets.  

Here is my Top 5:  

5. Original Art: Pulp Covers by Robert Jimenez, Icebound Invasion, Wave 3 Red Variant, 4,379 Card Count

I loved this entire set of Pulp Covers, but I, as a librarian, really enjoy a digital trading card of a book cover.  Icebound Invasion depicts one of the most epic battles of the Star Wars original trilogy.  It really captures the imagination and reminds me of some of the great pulp book covers.  

4. Character of the Month - 2023, Darth Maul - six, October - Darth Maul - Red 6564 Card Count

I really liked the look of the Character of the Month set in 2023, but I especially like that they find images of the characters that aren't on other card sets.  Darth Maul just happens to be one of the coolest and most interesting characters from the Star Wars saga, so he receives #4 on my Top 5 of 2023 list.  

3. Featured Creature - 2023, Loth-Wolf, Series 1 - Red, 5184 Card Count

Well, the Loth-Wolf holds a soft spot around our house, so it should be no surprise that they would show up on this list.  Besides that, the Loth-Wolf is shy to the digital cards, so any sighting definitely puts that card on the shortlist.

2.  Classic Card Art - 8th Anniversary, The Mandalorian & Grogu, Wave 1 - Green Card Count

I loved the look of these cards in 2016, and I think they still look great today with our new Star Wars characters from the Mandalorian.  I am old fashioned, so of course the title Classic Card Art would be something that I would absolutely love.  

1.  Topps' Choice - 2023, The Colossus, Series 1 - Cards, 3328 Card Count

Over the years, the Topps' Choice may be my favorite set because of the originality of the images and topics.  Many times the cards are quite scenic as is this particular card with a rare, like the Loth-Wolf, sighting of the Colossus on digital cards.  This is an absolutely beautiful card.  

I appreciate you taking a look at this year's SWCT Top 5 from the collection of JEDIGROSS.  I do have duplicates of some of these top 5 cards if you are interested in acquiring any of them.  I don't trade singles, so hands off if it isn't a dupe.  

I also have a collection that goes back to the beginning in 2015.  I will never forget standing in line at the Indiana Comic Con with Coffee with Kenobi co-hosts, Dan Zehr and Cory Clubb, as we downloaded the app and started building our collections.  The rest is history;  I was hooked. 

Give me a follow on the SWCT app as well as here on Seeking Positivity in the Galaxy.  Also, consider following the Rebel Basecard Podcast hosted by Greg McLaughlin and join his #CardSquadron group on X for some fun trading card discussion.  

Top 5 Marvel Collect Digital Cards of 2023

It is time to continue looking at the top 5 digital cards from Topps.  Marvel Collect is up and there were some really great sets and cards this year that it was difficult to keep up and not completely run out of credits.  These 2023 Marvel Collect cards all come from the rare variant and are, in my opinion, the Top 5 of my collection.  There are many, many more insert sets that I don't have that might very well be much more interesting or coveted, but I am only going with what I've collected.  That said, I may not have succeeded in completing the set, but they are cards that I pulled from those sets.  You might recognize those last three sentences because they came right off the post from last week when I looked at the Top 5 Star Wars Card Trader 2023 cards.  If you didn't get a look at that post, you can click right here and then come back for the Marvel Top 5.  

Here are the Top 5 Marvel Collect cards from the account of CYCLELIBRARIAN: 

5. Guardians of the Galaxy Collection, Major Victory, Series 1 - Galactic Heroes - Static 10,083 Global Count

Okay, so right out of the gate I did a little cheating.  This card is actually from the Uncommon variant, but I knew I had a Major Victory card.  Major Victory is a really cool character with lots of interesting history, and he doesn't make many appearances in the digital card world.  He had to be on my Top 5.  

4. Collector' Reserve '23, Moon Knight, Volume 1 - Across the Universe - Silver, 12,823 Global  Count

Why did this card make my top 4?  Take a minute to look at the art on this card.  It comes right off of the cover of a book or off of a framed picture on the wall.  It is beautiful artwork.  On top of the realism of the card, it has great action where we can guess where he is coming from and where he is going.  What is his next move?  You tell me!  

3.  Avengers/X-Men 60th Anniversary Box, X-Men #6, Series 1 - Anniversary Varients - Group 1 - Red, 12,223 Global Count

I had this cover back in the day, and it is a classic.  It is an appropriate card image for an Anniversary set.  I love the action of the X-Men as they move from left to right on the page with classic poses from Cyclops, Psylocke, and Wolverine front and center.  In the background, the title of the team and book are carved into the mountain, rock solid.  Just awesome!  

2. Artist Spotlight 2023, Cable, Kael Ngu - White - Volume 1, N/A Global Count

First, thank you, Marvel Collect, for this set highlighting the awesome artists of the cards which we love.  Second, thanks for the Cable card.  It is no secret that Cable is my favorite X-Men character, but Kael Ngu pulled the image of how I see Cable right out of my head and put it on this card.  This is why it is number 2 on my Top 5.  

1. Women of Marvel 2023, Elektra, Series 2 - Silver, 8,865 Global Count

This may be more of a tip of the hat to the series than necessarily this card, but I don't think many could argue that this isn't a great card.  That is really the standard of this set that highlights many women of Marvel like Ghost Spider, She-Hulk, Black Cat, Wasp, Magik, and so many more.  Anyway, this card of Electra is just, well, electric.  

I decided to highlight one more card.  It is more of a gold star of my collection as it comes from the highest variant that I have, Epic, and it is the lowest Global Count card in my 2023 collection.  

Artist Spotlight 2023, Spider-man, Gabrielle Dell'Otto - Gold Motion - Volume 1, 127 Global Count

Thanks for taking a look at what I think are the Top 5 Marvel Collect digital cards from 2023 in my collection.  What do you think?  Would you have chosen these cards too?  Do you collect Marvel Collect too?  Give me a follow on the app CYCLELIBRARIAN and give me a follow right here on Seeking Positivity in the Galaxy.  

Top 5 Topps Bunt Cards of 2022

Another year of Topps Bunt digital card trading in 2022 brought out some really cool and fun sets.  This is a Top 5 list of some of my favorite cards and sets.  I digitally own all of the cards shown, but I may not own the complete sets.  Here we go!  

5.  Topps Original Artwork 22, Juan Soto, Rare, 13,111 card count

Original art always stands out to me, and while there isn't anything particularly fancy about these cards themselves, I really like the simple nature of them.  The focus is very much on the players.  I also like that this variant of the set only has five cards.   

4.  Halloween Collection 22, Javy Baez, Uncommon, 64.626 card count

While I don't always collect all of them, I do enjoy the holiday sets that come out.  This Halloween collection stands out.  It is very colorful and has a real, spooky feel.  A lot of variants and subsets came with collecting cards from this set.  To quote my digital card-collecting friend and host of the Rebel Base Card podcast, Greg McLaughlin, "this set has lots of tasty nuggets."  I think what he meant is with all the uncommon, rare, and super rare variants, there were a lot of insert cards to collect, and once you got deep into cracking packs, the odds were that something would be popping out often.  I have four copies of this Javy Baez card, so I am trading for any uncommon 2022 card I don't have if you are in need of this card.  I highly recommend checking out the cards in this set.  They are full of spooky baseball fun.  

3. MLB at Field of Dreams 22, Wilson Contreras, Uncommon, 31,286 card count

The Field of Dreams games that the MLB has played in Dyersville, Iowa at the sight of the filming of the iconic film Field of Dreams the last two seasons have been very successful and brought lots of attention.  When Topps Bunt brought out a set of the two teams who played there in 2022, I knew I would have to pick up this set of 50 cards, because my beloved Chicago Cubs played and are highlighted in the set along with their opponent the Cincinnati Reds.  I love the classic look of the border and font with a different player from each team highlighted on the card with a cornfield in the background.  So cool.  I have all but 3 cards in this set with lots of dupes.  I would love to fill this set if you have the cards I need. 

2. Topps Now 22, Aaron Judge, Uncommon, 18,024 card count

This is one of my favorite sets.  I don't collect them all, in fact, I don't come anywhere close to collecting all of these daily sets of the season and off-season.  I generally collect when players of my teams (Cubs and Tigers) appear on the Topps Now cards, or I will chase them when I feel something significant has happened like a No-Hitter or something.  So, when Aaron Judge belted home run 62, that seemed appropriate.  These cards always have sharp images of the highlights of the prior day's games.  

1. Topps 206 22, Anthony Rizzo, Uncommon 42,530 card count

This set topps my list (pun intended).  I really enjoy when Bunt creators use throwback borders and card styles.  These mini-cards from way before my time are cool when they show players of today.  This set had 4 series in 2022, and I didn't get nearly enough of these cards.  I am very willing to trade dupes of these cards for cards of this set that I didn't get which is a pretty significant number.  

Baseball Cards: How much are they worth?

To be able to answer the question of how much baseball cards are worth, I think we have to explore to whom baseball cards are meant.  At first, I think about when I fell in love with baseball cards, and that was when I was a kid.  Is that who the cards are meant?  It seems, given the packaging, placement on the shelves, and the stick of gum inside (old-school, I know), that they were intended for kids.  If we go far enough back, however, some of the most famous (and expensive) baseball cards came out of cigarette packs.  That changes the audience a little, even in those times.  This makes the answer simple; baseball cards are for baseball fans. 

I love the idea that cards are a great way to introduce kids to the game.  I happened upon a blaster box (I'm not even sure I know what that means) of 2021 Topps Baseball cards at Target a few weeks ago, and with the excitement of the new baseball season and a few extra dollars in my pocket, I picked it up.  But who seemed to be as excited about the purchase as my nine-year-old daughter.  She knows I love the Cubs and watching baseball, so she seemed interested.  She convinced me to let her open the packs with her.  So what is the value of baseball cards?  I have no idea in this case.  How do you put value on your child asking to spend time with you to open baseball cards?  Dare I say that these packs of cards are priceless when the payout is time with our own children.  

As she was opening the cards, she was tossing them in a pile on the ground, then sliding them together and using the floor to create a nice stack.  The instinct in me was to say, "Careful!  Don't bend the corners!"  I stopped myself. What was I thinking?  This is supposed to be fun.  She is supposed to enjoy looking at them, opening them, organizing them, not get yelled at because she isn't being "careful" enough.  Heck, I used to stick them in the spokes of my bike!!  What is the value of a baseball card?  The value is looking at them, checking stats and stories on the backs, organizing them and then reorganizing them, talking about the players and the teams.  

I am sure this treatment makes some collectors cringe, but what is the value of a baseball card?  Ninety-five percent of the cards will be worth less than twenty-five cents years from now!  Heck, my Topps Rookie Ken Griffey Jr. card from the 1990 set is only worth $1.00.  Is that what that card is worth?  Heck no!  That card is worth the stories and my history with the card, my history of watching Ken Griffey Jr. play baseball, my history of trading that card with friends.  That card and set is a history book when I open it up with my kids.  I share those cards and tell stories of the season and the players.  They look at the backs of the cards to discover which players were the greats of my time growing up.  What is that worth?  More than any money, that is no doubt.  

When the season starts, I can't wait to put these new cards into sleeves and a binder.  But this year, my daughter will organize them.  Knowing her, she will ignore the numbers on the back.  She will probably organize them by team, or by position, or maybe by which uniforms she likes best.  But the most important part to me, is that she wants to organize them with me.  What is the value of that?  

Digital Card Trading Part 2 "Hoarding"

The Topps Digital Card apps have become a big part of my life as I carry those apps on my phone with me
wherever I go. Which means I also get to carry my card collections with me everywhere as well.  Notifications let me know when new sets or new cards of marathon sets are released.  It is great!  I get to celebrate some of my favorite things from Star Wars, Marvel Comics, and baseball.  I get to share the fun of card trading with my kids with the Disney Collect app, and I get the sheer joy of cracking open packs in an app that doesn't necessarily appeal to me in the WWE SLAM app.  I still don't know why I collect those cards except it is just fun to open packs and see what's in there!  

I noticed a certain culture develop in the Star Wars Card Trader app pretty early.  It is a culture where people try to collect as many duplicates (or dupes) of a certain card.  This practice is called Hoarding.  I don't know why, but I found myself looking for a card that was my favorite to try to hoard for the fun of it.  If you take a look at my BATTLEJUMP SWCT account in the 2015 set, I attempted to hoard Darth Maul.  My attempt got me to 695 copies of this card.  I will say this is quite a small hoard as I have seen many card hoards in the upper 1000's, but I would not be surprised to see some hoards over 10,000.  This is a really interesting and in my eyes a fun and silly way of collecting.  For a few years and sets, I would find a card or two and start collecting as many as I could.  Then, I started collecting and hoarding teams.  One year I collected all the Rebels, then stormtroopers, etc.  Of course, the more cards I try to "hoard," the more difficult it becomes to accrue a large number of those cards without spending a ton of time trading.  

I have started using this concept of hoarding to try something new with my collection.  I don't actively go out and trade for as many of certain cards anymore (okay maybe a little), but I use the workshop to help shape and curate my collection.  For example, in my CYCLELIBRARIAN account in the current 2020 card sets, I am collecting as many of the animated (Clone Wars, Rebels, Resistance) cards as I can. 

Then, to get those cards to the top of my collection, I "workshop" any base cards that aren't animated to try to get those to drop below all of my animated cards, and when I look at my collection, I choose to look using the duplicates settings, so the cards with the most dupes are at the top.  

I know this is all pretty silly, but it makes for a fun way to curate your collection and it brings some fun to collecting "just" the base cards.  So, here is one more thing I am playing with the Disney Collect app.  In the base tier 1 collection, I have been able to separate my curated dupe collection from the rest of the collection by a large span of cards.  There is a 30 card separation between my top dupes and the rest of the collection.  So now using the Workshop, I'm going to start putting in order my favorites of the "favored" cards.  It is one more level of curation so that my very favorite card is at the top and then in descending rank they will show up by the amount of dupes each card has.  For example, right now I have 136 Kristoff cards, 128 Sven cards, 122 Elsa, 116 Olaf, and 107 Anna cards.  I would like Elsa and Anna to be at the top of my collection. 

So I will probably trade to get Anna's count up and then start workshopping Kristoff and Sven so they drop below the 122 count.  Wow!  That's a lot of work for Tier One cards, but, hey, they are Tier One so why not have some fun with "throwaway" cards now that I have the award for the set.  

What do you think?  Do you hoard cards in the digital card apps?  Do you hoard print cards?  What do you think of using the idea of hoarding and the workshop to curate a collection?  Leave a comment and let me know what your largest hoard or card count is.  Want to trade?  Check part 1 of my Digital Card Trading posts for the card apps that I am in and follow my user ID's.  Have fun!  

Marvel Unlimited Plus Package

So I got home from work the other day to see a small package sitting on my front porch.  I wasn't really expecting anything, so I had that "Oh oh, the Wells Fargo Wagon is-a, coming down the street" moment of excitement.  An unexpected package!
To my delight the package wasn't for my kids or my wife, it was for me!  The box was covered with comic panels and the title "Marvel Unlimited."  I have written about how much I enjoy the Marvel Unlimited e-comics subscription before, but this is definitely a perk of renewing my subscription.  I apparently signed up for the Marvel Unlimited Plus subscription.  I didn't even know I did it, so the cost is either very close to the regular subscription or I unconsciously just clicked and went down that road.  Either way, I am now a plus member and got this cool box.

So, you may be wondering, what comes in this cool box? I will quote from the letter that was found inside with my Marvel Unlimited Plus Member card attached.  "To kick off the new year, we're bringing you all new plus member kit featuring a stunning Marvel Unlimited Plus box redesign.  Inside, you'll find your official membership card, an exclusive Hasbro Marvel Legends Rescue figure not available anywhere else, 3 exclusive variant comics of Invincible Iron Man #1, Captain America: White #1 and Agent Carter: S.H.I.E.L.D. 50th Anniversary #1 with connecting covers by Paul Renaud, and a collectible set of 2 exclusive S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter pins."
This is a nice package.  As a plus member there are discounts to digital comic store as well as the Marvel comic store.  Here is a Q/A from the Marvel Unlimited Plus webpage that explains everything.
To me the real benefit comes from the massive digital comic catalog that is open to anyone who subscribes to Marvel Unlimited, plus or regular member.  I have been reading the new arc of the Deathlok, the New Warriors, Moon Knight, the original run of Marvel's Star Wars and much more.  I also use the collection as reference to story lines and character/villain connections.

Do you use Marvel Unlimited as your comic source or another digital comic source like Comixology?  Or do you say, no way, paper copies, please?
Comment below and share your experience.