Ok I’m going to say something that will sound odd coming from me: I might have too many boxes here. Someday I’ll empty the archives and lay everything out in a room and photograph that just so you can see this complete insanity. This mail call post will include two packages just because I can’t keep doing 1 at a time or there will be 50 of these by the end of the year. Basically my backlog is too darn high and I need to to just burn through some of this fast.
Like I said I have way too many now lol. I’ve got 26 opened, reviewed boxes. I’ve got 40 others that are still sealed in the archives and waiting to be shown to the world. Then I’ve got these two packages opened and photographed. I’ve got a whole other one full of sports cards that I haven’t written up yet. Finally I’ve got 3 other packages that are not even opened yet, I have no idea what is in them anymore. Oh yeah, 5 more shipments are in flight too right now. That isn’t to brag, but more to warn you – this hobby gets crazy really fast, be careful.
Package 1
The first package I’ll write about here is all reviewed already. I opened it a while ago, kept all the photos and then jumped ahead and did the reviews before I wrote this up. I’m the archivist so I’m allowed to cheat like that.
This first package came from Anime Card Store on AliExpress, I order from them a lot because they are: 1) fast 2) reliable 3) cheap. The do not ship carefully, as you can see from this nearly destroyed Kayou The Three Kingdoms box here. But I didn’t know I would like that set until I started cracking packs. Now that I’ve seen the card I already put another order in with my favorite vendor and paid extra for careful shipping. If you deal on AliExpress a lot don’t be afraid to just talk to the vendors, yeah the language barrier is rough – but they are super nice, and I’ve gotten a lot of special treatment just by talking with them a bit.
Next in that package is that un-believably good Chainsaw Man set by Big Face Studios. This is sold out everywhere or I would have bought a case. I seriously would have dropped 500$ on this set, it’s that good – but you can’t. They are all gone. There are 2 other sets available though, and I have both of those coming too. When they get here I plan to run a Chainsaw Man pack battle just to trigger everyone’s jealousy lol – who would have all three of these? The Archives… that’s who. I already reviewed this too, so let’s move on.
Ah, now this is something different. This is called “New Hot Blood Yuan Universe Big Gathering”, and I’m not re-doing that translation because it is already perfect in my opinion. What this is, is a Doujin set, that means it was produced outside the normal licensing world. It includes characters from basically every single anime you’ve ever seen. Naruto, Dragon ball, Bleach, King of the Fighters (what is with that game’s popularity in Asia?) – and I’ve heard Death Note. Idk if that’s true, but the prospect of getting any kind of Death Note trading card was enough to get me to buy this one.
Package 2
Like I said, this post covers two packages from two different sellers. This package is kind of weird. I need to explain a bit about how some of this works before I try to explain what is in this. As you know I’m kind of obsessed with those SCP trading cards. On AliExpress I’ve found 9 different products in that series, like 9 different boxes, some are reprints – others are higher yuan levels, but the point is they are 9 different boxes.
So I bought all 9, or I thought I did. In fact, the very first YCSR1 1-yuan box is nearly impossible to obtain. Yeah, I know it looks like you can buy it from 10 different vendors – but go ahead and try. You are going to get the YCSR2 1-yuan box, every. single. time. Ask me how I know? Well, I have 4 copies of that set 2 1-yuan box. That’s 144 1-yuan packs, or 500 dupes lol. I didn’t want 4 boxes, I wanted 2, the other 2 came form packages like this one.
Oh wait, let’s briefly mention that Bleach 5-yuan up there first. so when you order these, never order just one. I did that a few times early on, they never arrive. One did, that Beast Mother waifu set, that showed up on my porch in a tiny little orange package. Every other single I ordered was lost. So I always order at least 3 anytime I order. These are so cheap that this is not really an issue, other than you end up in my situation, swimming in trading card boxes.
There you can see the 1-yuan set 2 box, it has that giant monster bird on the front. I have 4 copies of that now, one opened and 3 sealed. That’s not horrible, I have 3 of most of them anyway. I wanted to have one to open and one to store from each – and then I just bought another set cause, yeah, stop asking questions like that. That silver packet was a bonus the vendor just thew in for me – turned out to be that freaking sweet gold Freedom Gundam card! <– if you haven’t seen that video, go watch, this shine on that is something else.
Let’s move on from that minor disappointment with SCP, I did finally get a box of 1-yuan – but I only have 1 box. Still looking for another one, but I haven’t found a vendor that actually has it yet – if you know, get in touch and let me know. When I put this order in I needed two other boxes to make it worth shipping safely, if that makes sense. First was that 5-yuan Bleach set above, the other was one of the few Gundam sets I’m missing.
This is the “Mechanical Story” set, a 5-yuan box that I think is kind of old now. I’ve seen it listed for a few years – although clearly still available so either they printed a ton of these or they didn’t sell well in China. From the fliers these do not look anywhere near as high quality as the Duel Gundam sets 1 or 2 – but they are Gundam trading cards, so you know I’m buying those eventually. Once I get to this box, I’ll run a pack battle between this and the two Duel Gundam boxes – mostly as an excuse to open more Duel Gundam.
Conclusions
That was a quick look at what it is like to me, receiving 2-3 packages a week and not even having enough time to open them all, much less deal with the tsunami of boxes already on the shelves. I dug this hole, so I’m going to lie in it, and to be honest – I’m not really that mad about it 🙂 Next Mail Call will feature those sports cards, I promise, I need to explain myself there cause I don’t even like sports.