Star Wars Pre Release Cards: A Triumph from Step Inn Games

Time to finally open up that very fancy looking Star Wars box that arrived in my last shipment. I knew from other reviews on AliExpress and some of the few youtube videos of people opening this that it was not going to be like the boxes I usually review here. I knew it would be more like the Gundam box. I guess I was still hoping against hope it would turn out to be better, I’m a little disappointed so far. Still a really neat box of Star Wars pre release cards, but obviously this is priced for Disney Parks.

I’ve revisited this set and wrote a follow-up here: https://tradingcardarchives.com/2023/06/14/revisiting-star-wars-prerelease/

Table of Contents

• The Box
• The Set
• The Star Wars Pre Release Cards
• Conclusions

The Box

I bought this box from the ever reliable C1LUXURYACC Store on AliExpress. I buy all the more expensive boxes from this vendor as their shipping has always been top notch. As you can see this box of Star Wars trading cards arrived in pristine condition. It cost me around 35$ with shipping and all that, there are only 12 packs in this box and each pack has only 2 cards in it. Making these cards more expensive then the already very expensive Gundam cards I opened a while back.

This product is really more like what we would call a “Hobby Box” here in the west, then a proper sealed box for a set. You see these when new sets from like Topps are released, they’ll release the booster boxes with 20-30 packs — this is the main product but costs a lot, usually over 100$. Then they will release a smaller hobby product with maybe 6-8 packs for 30-40$. This gives retailers two price points to sell at and helps move more overall product.

The main product line is out now on AliExpress, but it’s really expensive. It is unlikely I’ll get anything else from this line just for cost reasons. When I can get a box of Naruto cards for like 10$, and get 30 packs to open that’s an amazing value vs something like this. This is the kind of thing you get only if you really love the property and want it for your collection.

The Set

From the advertising fliers we can see that this will be a big set of Star Wars trading cards! There are 12 promo “tickets”, you’ll see what that looks like in a bit. You get 1 per box at random. So yeah, you aren’t completing this set by opening boxes unless you are willing to put in like 1000$. Each of those promo ticket cards has a “value” of 30$ just right off the bat. Such an insane rarity distribution right there.

Besides that you’ll see 9 LP cards, 15 SKP cards – 6 of which are * rarity on top of that. Another 15 SSP cards, with 6 again being * within that level. 12 each of a handful of I level mini-sets, one pretty cool one centered around ship blueprints – I’m always a sucker for those. A very cute “chibi” style QR rarity mini set. 9 promo helmet cards, not sure how you get those, and then the sets rounds out with 27 UR and 36 SSR cards.

Keep in mind you are getting only 24 cards in one of these boxes, so don’t expect to see even close to everything, or even 1 of each rarity is asking a lot from one of these boxes. This is a Disney product at Disney prices.

The box itself is really nice, very heavy cardboard. I thought it might be wood at first, but this is just coated thick cardboard. The printing is excellent, but the design work on the outside is sparse, just some logos and a few ship wirefames on the back. The box opens from the front like a jewelry box, I think it even has a magnetic clasp inside.

The Star Wars Pre Release Cards

Inside the box are 12 shiny red packs of 2 Star Wars pre release trading cards each. The packs feel high quality, like you’d get in western trading cards – not the thin metallic paper the 1-yuan packs are usually made of. Then there is that envelope, that is the promo “ticket” card. There are 12 possible tickets to get, random in each box, and you get only 1. The vendor could have easily taken this, and I’m sure 100s of these are sold without that pack-in, but this vendor has never done that to me.

Everything is presented in a high quality way, we have a molded plastic tray in here. This almost seems like this kind of product you would find for sale in those really overpriced shops inside the Disney parks. The ones where they sell the exact same stuff as on their website but for 2x the price. Sorry I keep complaining about the price here, but come-on.

Since you only get 2 cards in a pack, I figured I’d just show the cards I got here rather than making a whole post for that pack. first the ticket card, I got one for the movie “Solo”, my least favorite movie but whatever, it’s still cool. It’s cardboard, but really thick and with coating/embossing that makes it look like a piece of metal. The back is mirror finished, shiny silver in the light – on my scanner that comes through as black sorry. As a promo card it’s pretty cool! Not something I’d go out of my way to collect though.

Next up I got an SSR, this is the lowest rarity in this set – so these are equivalent to a common somewhere else. This one is for the AAT Battle Tank used by the trade federation droid army in the battle for Naboo. The card is thick like those Gundam cards were, 4-5x thicker than a normal trading card. The printing is excellent, you can almost read even the tiniest words on this. The back design is also nice, with some shiny magenta foil emboss work for the framing.

Finally, remember you only get 2 cards in these packs, I got one of those “chibi” cards from the QR mini set. This one is Emperor Palpatine and he looks super cute drawn like this. The treatments on this are incredibly complex, with lots of foil and etching. I had not seen such richly colored foil before, the red and green reflection is especially nice on this.

Conclusions

So ok, I’m obviously not impressed by the price here. The quality of these Star Wars pre release trading cards is through the roof, amazing, certainly you could convince yourself each of these is worth over a dollar. If Disney was selling just that QR card in their park, it would probably be 5$ minimum so yeah I guess I can see the value here. You’ll really have to think hard about buying these though, make sure its worth it to you.