X-men trading cards

[Jindianajonz]

Anyone else still have their old X-men trading cards? I had quite a few, but recently discovered about half of them were burgled from my garage at some point. I've periodically been scouring eBay to replace some of my favorite sets, and just got the X-men series 2 set again. I love how these sets act as time capsules for what was popular at the time. Who would have ever thought that Kylun, Phantazia, or Hazard would be immortalized in trading cards? It's also nice to review them as an adult and recognize artists by their style- it's pretty cool that the first page of my binder now has an Alan Davis drawn Cerise on it.

I actually got into comics through trading cards- they were huge at my elementary school in the early 90s, and caused quite a stir. I remember the school originally banned specific cards deemed too sexy (Sorry, Emma!) and finally cards altogether when it came out that kids were getting ripped off on particularly rare or valuable cards. Even though I didn't have a good avenue for trading, I still managed to cobble together a number of complete sets. Since this was my gateway to comics, I remember coming in with a very skewed idea of who's important: Imagine my shock when this totally awesome goblin machine character from the cards was nowhere to be found in my new comics (Prior Turin)

Anybody else still have their collections? Any particularly favorite cards or sets out there?

[Jindianajonz]

One other memory that came to me: Right when I was getting into these cards the Marvel Universe Series 4 set was all the rage. This was the first set I had seen which was primarily made up of cards that fit together into 9 card panels (the universe background on series 3 didn't really count) so finishing a particular subset was extremely gratifying.

This set also featured some cool chase chards- a red foil 2099 set, and the uber-rare Spiderman vs Venom hologram, which was a huge leap forward in quality compared to previous holograms. I remember pulling one of these bad boys out of a pack one day, and being EXTREMELY excited! The only problem: Since this was series 4, Marvel questionably used Roman numerals to designate this card "H-IV". And of course, 9 year old me had no idea what Roman numerals were, so I proudly ran around school the next day telling everyone who would listen "I got HIV!" Not a great look for the early 90s....

[Jindianajonz]

Sorry for bumping this thread one more time, but I recently learned that in 2018 Fleer released an update to their inaugural X-men set. I'd love to find a copy to bookend the original set, but from what I understand every card had four variants- regular, silver circled (which I linked above), gold circle, and rainbow circle. I've been keeping an eye on ebay for a few months now, and although a few Rainbow and Silver sets have passed through, I've yet to see anybody even offer the basic set.

Does anybody know if I'm misunderstanding how this was released? Is this just a super low-print item that doesn't come around very often? There are lots of entries for the chase card sets, so I'd expect the more common cards to be, well... common. And I don't want to spend more money on a silver foil set that doesn't quite match my existing set!

[EphemeristX]

I collected the '95 set, but I have no idea whatever happened to it. I probably had 60 to 75% of the whole run.

[Spectral Knight]

I can't remember what sets I had or didn't have...!

I definitely used to have quite a bit of the Hildebrandt brother's Marvel Masterpieces (which had BEAUTIFUL art) and remember the gold boxed Flair series too - they stood out as being mile ahead of 'normal' trading card packaging, and looked the dog's nads.

[Jindianajonz]

I collected the '95 set, but I have no idea whatever happened to it. I probably had 60 to 75% of the whole run.

That '95 set was pretty nice. I was excited to see the Gen X kids get team cards for the first time ("oh look, it's Mondo! See, he is really a part of the team despite never appearing in the comics!") though its also when cards got horny with their swimsuited Spring Break subset.

I definitely used to have quite a bit of the Hildebrandt brother's Marvel Masterpieces (which had BEAUTIFUL art) and remember the gold boxed Flair series too - they stood out as being mile ahead of 'normal' trading card packaging, and looked the dog's nads.

That Flair set was pretty awesome. The cardstock was especially thick, which really made it feel premium compared to everything else, and the foil chase Power Blast cards had a really nice texture to them. The Dark Phoenix chase card is one of the most beautiful cards ever produced, IMO. This is one of the sets that got stolen from my garage, and probably the one I'm most bummed about.