Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume One (Topps Star Wars)
Category: Books,Humor & Entertainment,Puzzles & Games
Star Wars: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume One (Topps Star Wars) Details
Review “This book is easily the cheapest way to add all these cards to your Star Wars collection.” (Gizmodo) “This fat little book has high quality scans of the fronts and backs of all 330 cards and 55 stickers from the five series.” (Boing Boing) Read more About the Author Gary Gerani is a screenwriter, author, noted film and TV historian, and children’s product developer. He is best known as the cowriter of the film Pumpkinhead; the author of the book Fantastic Television; and creator, editor, and writer of literally hundreds of Topps trading card sets since 1972. He lives in California.Robert V. Conte is a pop-culture consultant who, armed with his vast memorabilia collection, utilizes his expertise on a myriad of officially licensed products, including Godzilla, Kiss, and Sesame Street. He has three children and is the subject of a forthcoming documentary film, Rebuilding Robert. He lives in New York.The Topps Company, Inc., founded in 1938, is the preeminent creator and brand marketer of sports cards, entertainment products, and distinctive confectionery. Read more
Reviews
I'm a big fan of the Topps/Abrams line of nostalgic trading card books that have been coming out over the last few years (Wacky Packages,Garbage Pail Kids, and the Mars Attacks), and this first volume in a series covering the Topps Star Wars card sets of the 70s & 80s are a great addition to that series. I love that they're carrying over the fun graphic design elements from book to book (the faux wax wrapper dust covers, the imagery of the gum on the covers, etc.) and that they volumes are becoming increasingly more comprehensive. In the past the books have focused on 1-3 sets of cards per book, but this Star Wars volume collects all five series of the 1977-1979 cards. I also love that they exponentially increased the amount of commentary contained within the book (past books featured introductions and afterwards, but nut much else in the way of "new" content to accompany the card imagery.)The only minor quibbles I have with this volume are that they end up wasting a bit of space by not blowing up the card scans to fill out more of the pages, and they didn't take care to feature keep corresponding cardbacks with their fronts. As for the former, I know a lot of folks suggest that the card scans are presented at full size, but they're actually larger than standard trading cards. So if they were going to go ahead and present them in a larger format they might as well have gone ahead and made them even larger to fill out the book. With the latter, I understand that a large number of the cards feature puzzle-backs that would not make sense to showcase individually next to the card fronts, but they could have at least done this with the cards that had story or fun-fact card backs. It would keep the reader from having to flip around in the book to get the feel of the card set. Just my two cents.All in all, this is a wonderful addition to the Topps/Abrams trading card series and I hope that we'll soon see an announcement for a third volume concentrating on the Return of the Jedi sets after they release volume two this coming April.
