Hello and welcome back for another Mail Call post, these are where I open a package I’ve received and show you all what was in it. These days I’m mostly collecting AliExpress trading cards, I even ranked the 10 I’ve opened so far. I picked these because they seemed cool and they are relatively cheap. They do take a long time to get here though, sometimes over a month, then I just stash the unopened package in a closet until I get around to writing one of these. Today is really special though, today I get to tell you about I (sort-of) completed my SCP Trading Card Collection!
I’m opening two boxes today, and I do mean boxes. If you’ve read the other mail call posts you saw me raving about this shipping style I call “Bubble-wrap Cocoon”, where the vendor just wraps your products in a ton of bubble wrap and tape. It’s more like a ball then a box, but this tends to make the overseas journey way more in tact then any box I’ve gotten. You can see a picture above of the typical damage the boxes take during shipping. It’s a rough journey, and everybody is cutting corners to save money along the way.
I don’t always have a choice though. Sometimes a product is only available from one vendor, or sometimes I need to do a “test buy” from a new vendor just to see how they ship things myself. In this case I was ordering from a Vendor I would not recommend and I did not want to have to order from again: Goddess Story Store. They have never ripped me off or anything, it’s just that the ship in these boxes and things get kind of damaged as a result. Don’t ask what Goddess Story is yet, we’re going to get to that someday, eventually.
Inside the box are two more boxes, one loose and the other wrapped in bubble wrap. There was a cool ZR metallic card in there too, it was sleeved but just loose in the box, surprisingly undamaged. The bigger box is a 5-yuan box of one of the newer Demon Slayer sets. I liked the other cards I opened enough that I wanted to see what one of the fancier boxes would have in it.
The other box is really special to me, it’s just a 1-yuan box – but it is from the first SCP set! That was the only box I was missing, I had all 8 of the others already. So now I own a complete set of SCP card boxes. There are only I think 3 sets here, maybe a fourth spin-off set – I think that’s what the orange and white one is. But I have each level of each set. So for set 2 I have the 1-yuan, the 2-yuan the 5-yuan and the 10-yuan! That triangle one is the 10-yuan box, it would have to more interesting to justify it’s 10x cost per pack.
I had tried ordering this set 1 box a few times, once I received the set 2 1-yuan box – the vendor just sent what they had of equivalent price I think. And a second time I tried and the vendor messaged me to let me know they did not have it so I had them send me a different box instead. But finally I got a hit, and now I own all 9 boxes which is kind of amazing. Someday we might event get around to opening more of them, haha, anyway.
The second box I received and opened for this post is also kind of special, but for a different reason. See, I’m starting to understand more and more about this hobby – and maybe me sharing this will help others figure out what exactly it is they are buying. This box came from Dream Card Store, I wouldn’t recommend them either, again for the shipping reason – you can see these are just loose in the box, not even a layer of bubble wrap.
They survived just fine though because these are what I’m calling “Boxed Sets”, like that Star Wars Pre-Release one I reviewed before. I think these are like 20-yuan equivalent products, they wouldn’t be sold in a grocery store to children, but rather in a proper hobby shop to people who can actually afford them. That’s because these boxes usually have only 12 packs in them, maybe 18. They cost over twice as much as a 1-yuan box – which has 36 packs. But the packs in these are supercharged with rare cards – so it’s worth it, that’s why I bought 3 more.
The ones I bought here are the boxed set for the JoJo cards I reviewed here, those were so awesome I just had to get this upgraded box. The vendor included a loose, but sleeved, very cool PR JoJo card in there too! Next is a brand new Gundam boxed set, you know I love Gundam so I had to get this too. This is the reason I ordered from this shop, at the time I ordered a month ago they were the only ones who had this boxed set. Now every vendor has it, but I have it first. These cards look even cooler then the ones I already have, I think they are maybe the 2nd series or some other special production.
The last box in there is something really weird, to me at least, it’s a box of World of Warcraft trading cards. I knew they used to make these in the west, there was even a TCG that was honestly really fun but short-lived, I might open a box of those someday – I’ve got one over there. But these are brand new, I think they were printed in 2022 or at least 2021. Of course for the Chinese market, so maybe this property is just bigger over there still? Anyway we’ll get some Arthus vs the Lich King action going later, for now I’m going to go eat dinner.
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