This will be really short I promise. So, as you know, I love to collect these SCP Foundation Trading cards from AliExpress. I own all 9 boxes already, but I bought them before I really knew what I was doing. Some of those boxes arrived damaged, especially that glitter bomb of box – 5-yuan set 1. That box has the most incredible cards in it – but I can’t pick it up without it falling apart. That is what sent me back to my favorite vendor, I love C1LUXURYACC store! I don’t get paid any money for saying that either, they are that amazing.
The Meaning of The Archives
The longer I do this for, almost 5 months now – doesn’t seem like a long time maybe, but you try running a website for that long. It is not easy. But the longer I do this the more developed the concept of an Archives becomes to me. This is how I want to differentiate myself from the 100s of breakers on Youtube, Drip and Instagram. There is nothing wrong with breakers, personally I watch every stream BullPen LA produces.
What is breaking? The idea is that instead of opening a bunch of packs at home all by yourself, you pay a little more and somebody else opens them for you. Sounds terrible right? Well, no, it isn’t. See they open it live on a video stream with tons of other viewers. So if a big hit is pulled, everybody celebrates – and it feels so much better than being all alone. If you live in LA you can even go pick up from their shop instead of paying for and waiting for shipping. If you’ve never done it, I recommend trying at least a blaster once, it’s 50$, won’t kill you and I guarantee it’s going to be fun.
But I’m not that, I don’t want to just rip packs – blow through all the base, and only care about the money I can make back. To me, that isn’t what the hobby is really about. I want to explore each product, learn as much as I can about it. When I pull a base card, I want to know who the character on it is, again learn as much as I can.
It goes further though. I want to elevate these “cheap” cards into the premium space I think they really belong in. These cards often look much better than anything Panini or Topps is making – I bought a bunch of sports cards specifically so I could prove that point. So if you watch my videos, I’m wearing gloves, I’m sleeving every card seconds after it leaves the pack. I’m top loading every single SCP Foundation card I pull. The top loaders cost 10x the amount of the cards – and top loaders are cheap as dirt. These cards cost like 6-7 cents each, and they look like 1000$ cards.
Mint Condition Box
And that little rant brings us right back to this package. After seeing how cool that SCP box looked – I had to have one for the archives. See, with each of these – I’m opening and reviewing each box. I’m also buying 2 of every box, one is just getting stashed away for a few years.
That’s what this is. But, I couldn’t trust anyone to ship this to me correctly. It’s a really delicate box, and even in a bubble wrap football – it will have damaged corners, at least. So I went back to my favorite vendor, C1LUXURYACC. This vendor is not the cheapest, you will pay a few bucks more per box. In return you will get two things: 1) Factory sealed boxes, I’ve never received a searched box from them – I always get that from Anime Card Store, like the last Marvel box I bought from them had cut seals and a missing promo. 2) Top-freaking-notch shipping, especially if you talk to them on AliExpress messaging about that.
Look at the condition of that box. I unwrapped it from the bubble wrap football – and the box is wrapped again in protective plastic, outside of which are 8 hard plastic corner protectors. This is like 5$ in shipping materials – which is a lot, like a real lot for Chinese vendor shipping to the USA.
You can see the benefits of that above. This box was shipped literally half way around the world, it took a solid 4 weeks to get to me. And still, it’s perfect, mint condition. I have 0 complaints about this box, I put it into an acrylic case and it will stay there for many years. The original Camon security seal is even still in place, and 100% undisturbed.
So look, I don’t get any kickbacks from this. That vendor can’t even read English, trust me I’ve spent hours “talking” to them with mixed pidgin Chinese and English. They are amazing. Full stop, there is nobody better. Yeah I know about Small Frog, I know about all the Kayou Official (lol) stores — I’m telling you, as someone who has now spent a bit over 2000$ on these cards.
Conclusions
You. Cannot. Do. Better. Than. C1LUXURYACC store. You can’t, I’ve ordered from at least 20 different ones. If you think you know a better vendor, let me know and I will happily test them out. When I ordered SpongeBob cards, this vendor let me pick from the case which box I wanted. Like what? They have 0 reason to do that other than they are awesome people who genuinely care about this hobby. If you buy any cards at all on AliExpress – buy from them. If you have any problems – I will personally reimburse you, just get in touch. That’s how sure I am of this.