Pack Sampling: 1992 Impel The Uncanny X-Men

Collecting cards, or any other item for that matter, has always been a fairly lonely hobby for me. Aside from a friend who collected baseball cards when I was really young, and a friend who briefly got interested basketball cards during my teens, it's pretty much just been a thing I do, by myself, for the majority of my life.

The only real exception being a magical two-year period from 1991 to 1993, when I found myself surrounded by kids, kids my age and a little older, who collected, talked about, and traded all things comic books.

We moved to Beaverton (OR) in 1991. Summer had just begun, and despite all the other homes in the vicinity, I can remember thinking how desolate the place felt. I didn't see any people out doing things during the first few days, and more importantly, I didn't see any other kids. Turned out though that all I had to do was get out and explore my new surroundings, because once I did, I found other kids, lots of kids in fact, and by summer's end would have more friends than I had ever had up to that point, or would ever have again.

Finding friends was great, but finding out that the majority of these new friends collected comic books, comic cards, and comic related action figures, was like a dream come true for the then nine year-old me. 

I was already working at my uncle's comic book shows by that time (this was the source of much envy from my new friends) , so I knew how popular such things were with kids my own age, but still, I never could've imagined that there was a place, outside of the shows, where I could be surrounded by so many of them -- but there was, and for the next two years, I was.

Things would get even better that first fall when 4th grade started, as I found that kids outside of my immediate vicinity collected as well. These were kids that generally lived a couple of miles or more away from my core group, and were rarely seen outside of school, but once we got to school everybody was the best of friends (for the most part), which worked out really well when one was a card or two from a particular set, because everyone had duplicates laying around, and everybody was always looking to trade. Comic books were traded at school on a fairly regular basis, and even though I never did so, action figures would often get swapped too. It was a good time to be alive.

This trading network would continue pretty much unchanged until I moved away in 1993. We moved far enough way that I really wasn't able to keep up with all of my neighborhood friends anymore. I only stayed in contact with one friend, and he was one of the select few who didn't collect anything, so I have no idea how long everyone else continued collecting. I would continue to do so until around 2000, when I took a ten-year hiatus from almost all things collectible, save for a few comic books from time to time, and those were for reading, not collecting.

I have a strong affinity for that 1991-93 time period, and the older I get, the more often I revisit it. And although rarely discussed, I will forever be drawn to comic related items from that two-year span as well. It was with all of this in mind, and a healthy dose of depression induced nostalgia (the two go hand-in-hand for me), that I purchased a lone pack of 1992 The Uncanny X-Men off of Sportlots a few months ago.

Even by 1992, the '90 and '91 Marvel Universe sets were still kings of the playground. Despite being released ahead of the now iconic X-Men: The Animated Series, I don't recall there being a lot of interest in the set from my friends. It probably didn't help too that packs from this set weren't for sale anywhere around us. I only remember ever getting a few packs at my uncle's shows, and then a few more some years later at Things From Another World (that's a comic book shop in Portland that still exists, but was much better in the pre-internet days). 1993 saw the release of X-Men Series 2, which was/is much more strongly associated with the cartoon, and therefor was, and still is, the more popular card set of the two. It's also worth noting that because the second series was just called, X-Men Series 2, most people nowadays just refer to the first series, as X-Men Series 1. I, on the other hand, still call the first set what it was called when I was a kid, The Uncanny X-Men.

Because of the difficulty of finding it at the time, and it's lack of popularity amongst my peers, The Uncanny X-Men is one of the few sets from this period that I never completed. With the ability to trade gone after I moved away, my only real option for finishing sets like this was if I came across some cheap packs, and was fortunate enough to pull the cards I needed from said cheap packs. That never happened with this one, and as the years passed, the completion of it became less and less important.

Like pretty much everything else in the last year, boxes and packs (but not singles) for this set have skyrocketed in price on the secondary market. After so many months, I can no longer recall how much I paid for the pack, but there were no other bidders, and it was basically gotten for the price of shipping -- which was multiple times cheaper than the current going rate on eBay.

As the front of the pack mentions, aside from the base set, one has a chance at pulling cards from one chase set, Gold holograms. It was also possible to find signed cards from the great Jim Lee . The holograms are still just as great as they ever were, and the autographs, if memory serves, were just base cards signed on the back by Jim Lee. Despite the lack of glitz, I would have to think that the autos have increased in desirability over the years, as most young kids wouldn't have been overly excited by such things back in 1992. Holograms on the other hand...

It had been so long since I last opened up a pack of this stuff, that I had completely forgot that the charts for the characters ability ratings were on the inside of the packs; had I known otherwise, I would've been a little more careful opening the pack. i.e. I wouldn't have just torn it open.

Assigning numbers to a characters abilities was kind of a big deal in the early 90's, at least as far as a lot of the card sets went. They were a starting point when looking at who might fare against who in a battle. My friends kept our "What If?" conversations relatively civilized (surprisingly!), but there were a few heated debates at school, especially if someone started cross-comparing ratings from different sets (I'm looking at you Marvel Universe!).

I had also forgotten that you only got seven cards per pack, so was surprised by the overall thinness of the pack. But again, the pack was cheap, and when you think about it, you really can't put a price on nostalgia, can you? (sounds like a tag line from an old Franklin Mint ad)

The first card out of the pack, Dark Phoenix, just so happens to be one of the better looking cards from the set. I wasn't a huge fan of the alternate Jean Grey as kid, at least not until I saw The Phoenix and Dark Phoenix Sagas episodes of X-Men: TAS, than I began to pay a little more attention to the character.

Oh, and speaking once again of the animated series has reminded me of this:

                         

You're welcome! Now back to the regularly scheduled post...

The abilities graph wasn't the best in this set, but it still did the job. As you can see, her mental powers are at 7 across multiple rows, or in other words, are off the charts -- this was basically code for, you don't f*** with the Phoenix!

A lot of people are only interested in the big names, but at this point, I appreciate these early 90's sets more for the lesser known, and forgotten, characters like Polaris, and...

... Caliban! Though I should mention that with fresh faces being needed for the myriad of comic related films and television series being produced these days, a lot of the once lesser knowns have seen a bit of a resurgence, even if it just to provide a meaningless death to advance the story, or worse yet, cannon fodder for the more popular characters.

I've never been able to get behind Forge, 'Exceptional Tinkerer' just isn't very exciting as far as mutant powers go. And big muscles, and big guns, doesn't make that particular power any cooler either; they actually make the power seem even less cool.

Lots of 90's star power here. I liked the early version of Shatterstar, but lost interest him as his character progressed. Ditto with Domino (how's that for some literation?).

Despite the coolness factor of the Dark Phoenix, this is my favorite card in the pack. It depicts the first encounter between Mutant X/Proteus, and the X-Men. Nightcrawler and Wolvie didn't fair so well, were the next few panels shown, both would be seen incapacitated, and in a bad way. Had Storm not been able to weaken Proteus, Nightcrawler probably wouldn't have survived the battle.

No autographs or holograms (not that I was expecting any mind you), but still a pretty solid pack. It even inspired me to do something that I haven't done in over two years, which is to try and complete a set. Thankfully I held onto what I had gotten as a kid, after finding my stash, and then resorting them, I found that I needed about half of the 100-card set. This pack alone took care of four of those needs, and between the Baseball Card Store, and a TCDB trade, I've been able to acquire all but nine in the last few months. I suspect that I'll have it finished by years end, but even if I can't; I've waited 30 years to finish it, I think I can wait a few more if need be.