Welcome back! Today we’re opening our 16th box on this site, and I picked something really interesting to look at. A few weeks ago, I received a package with a few of the newest boxed trading card sets from AliExpress. At this point as long as the set is around 20$ and something that looks decently interesting I just auto-buy it. So when this arrived I wasn’t quite sure what it was. Now that I’ve looked closer I see that this is set 2 of the Gundam Duel series by LeCard! These are going to be some truly mind-blowing Gundam trading cards.
The Box
Just look at this box, it’s even better designed and higher quality then the set 1 box was – and that box was already best in class! This has a beautiful mechanical pattern on the front set with rainbow gold foil. That centerpiece is an actual metal coin that you can display separately, it holds the two doors together. What you can’t see from this picture is that those corners with the 3 bolts? Those are lenticular 3d stickers, so the bolts look 3d when you move the box around. This is just a box of trading cards, just the box!
The sides of the box are only decorate with the Gundam logo, again set with the gorgeous rainbow gold metallic foil. Then the back has a label where we find out that this is in fact GD-1002. The 2 there means this is the second set! I had seen this pop-up on a few vendors and I was wondering if it was very new, or very old – either would be valid reasons for not all the vendors to carry it. Now everybody has it, but it’s also been over a month since I ordered this. With the shipping delay you need to jump on these when they appear if you want to get them first in the states.
The Set
This set is also produced by LeCard, interestingly even though I now have nearly 50 boxes from AliExpress on these shelves – only these two Gundam sets are LeCard productions. They must be a boutique printer, or possibly Bandai’s in house printer in China, just with a different name? Either way this company makes some simply bad-a** trading cards, pardon my french there. The cards from set 1 were head and shoulder’s above anything else I’ve seen except maybe Disney’s Star Wars cards.
As you can see from one of the marketing images above, the cards are thicker than normal. They have many layers of cardboard fused together in a process that the advertising calls “Hot Stamping”. The layers cal include cut-outs, making them seem almost like little shadow-boxes in a trading card. Or they can metallic foil, metal emboss, engraving, various types of etching and all sorts of other advanced printing and stamping techniques. These trading cards demonstrate the cutting edge in printing and design – years ahead of anything Topps is producing here for example.
With the box opened, we see that there are two stacks of packs inside. This set comes with 12 packs, also with 3 cards each – just like the first series box did. So this set costs 34$ for 36 cards, while set 1 was only 32$. So we’re looking at the most expensive cards I’ve opened so far, by a few pennies at least.
This is also not a set you are going to be completing by buying boxes, at least not unless you are buying like 100 boxes, and that is not an exaggeration in this case. There are so many rarities and sub-rarities and sub-sets in here that getting them all at only 36 cards a pack – with only 12 high rarity slots per box, well, that would get expensive fast. I’m just going to be happy with what I get from this box, and maybe I’ll pick up a second box later.
First up we’ve got the true chase cards of this series, metal cards – yes real metal cards can be in these packs. That’s assuming the packs weren’t weighed, as you’d easily know that way. But, there are only 10 total copies of each of those in existence. That’s almost as rare as Willy Wonka’s golden tickets lol. Good luck collecting even 1 of those.
Then you’ve got this totally new “Top” rarity. I’ve never seen this in any other set before by any manufacturer. It seems roughly like PR rarity but again limited to the entire set printing – not a case or a box. This rarity level is blowing my mind outside of anything else about this. Usually you only see things like that in an actual contest – not just a chase card!
Then things get a little more normal with 10 SE cards, 5 ND cards – but only 500 of each in the entire set. 12 GDs, 12 “ACE” cards – one of the sub-sets in here, 18 ARX. There are then 18 VS cards, which are matchups where if you have both sides they make a bigger picture put together. 12 XG, 12 EQ, 12 MS, 18 CP. So yeah, the upper level rarities in this set are off the charts insane, hats off to anybody who seriously attempts completing even one of those levels.
The pack art is different, but the labeling is very similar. This art features Exia and it’s pilot Setsuna. I have the Perfect Grade lightning model gunpla of Exia over there, that kit is incredible if you ever find yourself with 400$ extra dollars and in a universe where stock exists.
Getting back to rarities then, we’re now into the standard rarity levels. If this is like set 1 then each packs default is going to be 2 SSR slots and 1 UR slot. This set 2 includes 24 UR cards – so that’s at least 2 boxes right there with perfect luck. Then we finish the set out with 48 SSR cards. That’s a lot of unique cards in this set – I hope I don’t get any dupes in this box as a result.
So this box looks really cool, I plan to keep it on display next to my other Gundam models. Yeah, I’ll be displaying this box – it looks that good! Now it’s time to open a pack and look at these cards, but that’s for another article.
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