They’re Rare And You Probably Don’t Care

As anyone who attended Toy Fair 2010 can attest, when it comes to vintage (or Vintage Collection) Star Wars cards, fans are obsessed about getting those cards unpunched. Unpunched cards have the punch tab still firmly inserted in the card since it has never seen a store peg.  It’s considered the most pristine of card states.  Vintage Kenner figures that are unpunched command a huge premium.  Even modern unpunched Vintage Collection commands a premium on the secondary market, but it’s a little more modest.  If you check the prices of Bastila Shan, you could get a punched version for $60, but an unpunched card is going to stretch you into triple digits.

For that reason, one fan at Toy Fair 2010 grilled Derryl DePriest about whether the just announced Vintage Collection basic line would come from the factory with the cards punched or unpunched.  In the ensuing sixty seconds, the words “punched” and “upunched” were uttered with a frequency that still holds a record to this day.  In the end, it was learned that the cards would indeed be shipping on punched cards.  This was true for waves 1 and 2 of the Vintage Collection.  But Hasbro knows that we’re chumps, and they started shipping the cards unpunched as of wave 3.  This had to have been a boon to online e-tailers that sell by the case.

Because waves 1 and 2 only shipped on punched cards, the popular thinking is that figures that were not carried forward beyond these waves are only available on punched cards.  The list of figures that were not carried forward beyond wave 2 are:

• VC01 - Dengar
• VC02 - Leia (Hoth Outfit)
• VC03 - Han Solo (Echo Base Outfit)
• VC04 - Luke Skywalker (Bespin Fatigues) ***
• VC05 - AT-AT Commander
• VC06 - C-3PO
• VC07 - Dack Ralter
• VC10 - 4-LOM (repack)
• VC11 - Cloud Car Pilot
• VC12 - Darth Sidious
• VC16 - Obi-Wan Kenobi ***
• VC18 - Magnaguard ***
• VC19 - Clone Commander Cody ***

Again, most collectors think those figures are only available on punched cards.  But notice that I placed asterisks next to four of them.  As you may remember, in late 2010 a remix wave 2 case assortment started showing up.  In that remix wave the cards were upunched to the horror of obsessive compulsive carded collectors everywhere.  What makes matters worse is that on a case by case basis, some of the figures were still shipping on the older punched cards.  The Luke Skywalker pictured below came from a remix case I personally opened at Target.  The Magnaguard in that particular case was punched.  I personally feel these are some of the scarcest items in the Vintage Collection.  There is actually one that is even more rare, but I’ll save that for another day. Darth Sidious was not part of this remix case, so that is the only figure from wave 2 that is not available on an unpunched card.

Fortunately for most of you, this only applies to the cards, so you don’t care. But if you are as obsessive about your carded collection as I am, you may have more hunting to do.  While the unpunched versions of these figures don’t show up on Ebay that often, the market hasn’t seemed to fully realize how uncommon these cards are.  So there’s still time to get them relatively inexpensively.

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