Okay hear me out. I'm not trying to rag on anyone, cause an argument or hurt anyone's feelings but this set is driving me nuts and I want to dive in and fix it. This set is so screwed up I believe, and I'm not sure anyone can fix it but I keep wanting to try. Now I'd like some opinions on this. This is going to be a long post.
First off Wild Card management and it's employees are horrible at their jobs. I have sent dozens of emails asking for clarification on numerous things to the email address provided on their web-site. I've only received one reply which did little to help. Their checklists for this set are woefully incomplete and inaccurate. Half of the inserts and parallels aren't even there.
So I've done a lot of research on various sites about all things Wild Card cause I love the college cards. But I by no means proclaim myself to be an expert. Some of the following statements are my opinions and while I think they're right I may be mistaken.
First off this set is broken down into 2 separate sets and I think that's a major flaw. We have Wild Card Matte and Wild Card Matte White. I think they should be blended together under one umbrella like the other sets are. I've seen nothing that suggests there were 2 separate Wild card offerings. Now there are two sets of cards called Black and White but I believe one to be the base and the other the parallel. Under the Black set it lists a parallel of retail White and under the White set it lists a black parallel. Both can't be true can they? Now I think we got here because the cards were sold in Mega Boxes that were Black and White boxes in color. Images on various websites confirm this. But there were also Mega Boxes sold in Gold and Silver colors. Now compound that with Retail Hangers, Walmart exclusives and Cracker Barrel boxes and God knows what else and it quickly goes to hell.
Now let's look at the checklists I can find. Wild Card's website partially lists checklists for Retail Hangers and Cracker Barrel. Cardboard Connection I believe only lists the Mega Box checklists. I can find nothing showing what you'd get at Walmart. My gut tells me the base cards were in all those releases.
Looking at one specific insert set. Smoking Guns is a 10 card set with a million parallels. I own 2 copies of the Ian Book white card with green smoke. One is SN149 and one is SN199. The one SN'd to 149 is directly under the player's picture in a little box and the one SN'd to 199 is on the bottom right side of the card. After hours of E-bay comparing and comc. searches I believe the Smoking Gun cards with the SN under the player's picture in a little box come from the 4 Mega box releases. The ones with the SN's on the right come from the retail hangars because most SN match up that way. But I've found several other cards and chase cards which I can't figure out where they go to.
So that's just one set. There's the same problem of Mega vs. retail for some of the other sets too. Another problem is that insert sets have been added to both entries and in some cases duplicate insert sets in each.
I wish ADMIN would delete the entire thing and let us start from scratch but I know that's not happening.
So any thoughts on this would be appreciated. Please stay constructive. I'm not looking for an argument or to be the final say on this but it's driving me nuts as I purchase more of these cards. Is it worth trying to combine, fix and streamline or should I just leave it alone?
Thanks as always for your time and thoughts.
Always looking for Blackhawk hockey, Notre Dame Football, White Sox and Bears Stuff. I have a plaque in my card room that says, "I could have been a millionaire but my mom threw out my baseball cards". How apropos!!! Collecting Chicago Blackhawks Hockey, Doug Wilson Hockey, Chicago Bears Older, Notre Dame Football in their college jerseys and Chicago White Sox.
