If Gundam was the reason I started this site, then SCP was the runner up. When I started searching for Gundam cards I ended up on AliExpress. While there I kept running across a series of trading cards that were named SCP. I assumed it was some property from Asia I was not aware of and kept ignoring it. Until I finally clicked one and started looking — these really are SCP Foundation trading cards!
The SCP Foundation is an old but still active and quite famous wiki that hosts 1000s of fan created articles centered around the idea of secret foundation that protects the world from the supernatural. This foundation (S)ecures, (C)ontains and (P)rotects any supernatural beings or artifacts the find out about. The articles on the wiki are each a sort of case study surrounding one of those items.
As popular as this site is here in the west, it is many times more popular in Asia – specifically in China where these cards are produced. A company named Camon makes these, they’ve produced at least 9 different boxes that I’ve been able to purchase and this book. Without being able to read Chinese it’s difficult to learn too much about these. The translations are mostly just taken directly from the wiki, or basic information. I don’t know how many sets, or actual cards there are. I suppose we’ll start learning as we open them.
Today I’m not opening one of those boxes, sorry not enough time for that. Instead I’m showing you one of the card binders they sell along with the series. This is a 2×2 book with maybe 25 sheets in it. The book is very low quality, almost paper. The sheets inside I would not put real cards into. I bought this not to use, but just so I could say that I have everything from this series.
Even though I’m not opening a pack here, the book comes with one pack-in card. I think all the books come with this card although I didn’t open the other one I bought to find out. This card depicts SCP-2521 a rather interesting choice as this one eats information about itself so I better not write too much more. The artwork seems to be stolen from fan art on the site (Sorry, I didn’t make these, just writing about them).
The card material is thin and cheap feeling, it was bent from shipping a little too. The foil though is pretty nice, that swirl effect has layers of foil on it that give it and almost 3d look. The writing on the back is a basic description of the SCP, which shouldn’t actually be possible with this one but uh, ok. Then there are some stats like it’s containment risk, safety level and things like that. This is an SSR card, which is probably the default rarity, maybe they have SR too though we’ll see.
Ok, that’s it for today. Just wanted to give you a quick look at these cards. We have so many more to go through, no joke 9 sealed boxes of these to open. I think some are just 2/3 yuan versions of the same sets, but that will just get us more cards to look at.
[…] I’ve been following this wiki since it started essentially. It’s my go to reading material for airports or anywhere else I can’t do anything else. So when I saw these cards I was immediately interested. There are some youtube videos of westerners who bought these and opened them on camera, but otherwise very little information about these sets here. Hopefully I can help fix that. I bought all of them, every set, every Yuan level, I even bought the cheap-o themed binder! […]