Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Mediocre Movie, Poor Trading Card Set: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Flops!




The Good: Good images, Relatively inexpensive
The Bad: Pre-assembled nature meant low collectibility, Dramatically overproduced, No bonus cards, Poor source material
The Basics: A poor attempt to exploit Trekkers for cash, the Star Trek V: The Final Frontier set is a waste of money for most fans and collectors.


As a proud geek, I am often happy to debate with my fellow geeks about the merit of virtually any work. And, when it comes to the Star Trek franchise, I have often found myself in a position that is far more forgiving about Star Trek V: The Final Frontier than many of my peers. The movie is bad, to be sure, but it is surprisingly unsurprising Star Trek when one looks at the source material. And, unlike plenty of movies I have seen of late, at least Star Trek V starts out decent. However, at the time Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (click here for my review) was released, there was not a card company in a position to pick up the license to release trading cards. As a result, there were no trading cards released to promote the film at the time. Later on, in the mid 1990s, SkyBox picked up the license and released the Cinema Collection sets. While the sets could be bought together, they were individually sold as complete movie sets. One of those was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier.

The Star Trek V: The Final Frontier trading cards were released well after the release of the film and it was part of a substandard release that was available (originally) only directly through Fleer/SkyBox. Unfortunately for collectors, the sets were so overproduced that they became almost instantly worthless and now, on the secondary market, sets like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier have failed to retain any value.

Basics/Set Composition

The Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading card set is a boxed set of trading cards, focused entirely on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. The set comes individually boxed in a box that was made special for the set. As such, there are no packs to open, no other cards for the set to fish around trying to find; the entire set is contained within the collector's box.

Those who bought directly from Fleer/SkyBox when the sets were originally released were given the opportunity to purchase the binders for the set, but ironically, those binders are now harder to find and far more valuable than the actual cards!

The Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading card set is comprised of seventy two cards and a survey card. The lack of popularity of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier virtually assured there would be a huge stock of this set when SkyBox started selling the sets individually.

Common Cards

More than likely, SkyBox failed to sell as many sets of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading cards because of how expensive they were directly and as a result, they ended up dumping them to dealers who wanted to buy them at dirt cheap rates. The Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading card set is comprised of seventy-two cards. The cards are created using the widevision (theatrical framing) size of trading cards. All of the cards are oriented in landscape orientation.

With the Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading card cards, the consistent landscape orientation would have been fine, save that the set includes a card of the movie poster, laid out in portrait format. As a result, the movie poster card that has the credits for the film on the back is severely truncated.

The Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading card set includes a card with the credits for each movie, seventy trading cards plotting out each film and a checklist card.

The cards look phenomenal. To be fair to Fleer/Skybox, the cards utilize an incredible array of uncommon images, making them ideal for finding characters played by obscure actors who appear at Star Trek conventions! There are a few special effects shots and most cards have an additional - much smaller - image on the back. The writing is concise, accurate and incredibly detailed. In other words, for a set that was considered not strong enough to be released as a proper release, it sure has a lot going for it.

Chase Cards

The Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading card set does not have any bonus cards. The closest thing to a bonus card this set has is the Survey card. There were no real bonus cards; these are sold as fully assembled common card sets.

Non-Box/Pack Cards

Because the cards were sold exclusively as boxed sets, there were no promotional cards or cards not available in the boxes.

Overall

Terribly overproduced and blown out right before Fleer/SkyBox lost the license, the Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Cinema Collection trading cards remain one of the big failures of Star Trek trading cards, despite having good images. Found inexpensively, they are easy to pass by, but at the original issue price of $19.99, they are a big waste of money. Still, for fans of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, who might not already have them, they can be found cheaply to make a nice collectible. Serious card collectors will find them to be well below average.

For other trading and gaming card reviews, please check out:
Star Trek 40th Anniversary Series 1 trading cards
Twilight trading cards
The Fellowship Of The Ring Trading Card Game

3/10

For other trading card reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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