Star Wars Galaxy: The Original Topps Trading Card Series (Topps Star Wars)
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Photography & Video
Star Wars Galaxy: The Original Topps Trading Card Series (Topps Star Wars) Details
About the Author Gary Gerani is the creator, editor, and writer of hundreds of Topps trading card sets and the author of Topps’s Star Wars series. Gerani lives in Los Angeles. The Topps Company, Inc., founded in 1938, is the preeminent creator and brand marketer of sports cards, entertainment products, and distinctive confectionery. Read more
Reviews
This book is an incomplete representation of the first three Star Wars Galaxy card sets issued in the early-to-mid 1990s and a major letdown especially when compared to the superb Volume One book reviewing the original 1977 SW sets also published by Abrams and written by Gary Gerani. 1977 Volume One came in at a hefty 547 pages, showed all 330 cards and 66 stickers (front and back images) from all five original series, and as a bonus had a section on the Wonderbread promo set. The Galaxy book only has 223 pages and only highlights the New Visions artwork, omitting the vast majority of the 365 base cards in Galaxy I, II, III.While the New Visions subset was an integral part of the these sets, it was only part of what made these sets special at the time. Subsets such as "The Design of Star Wars" and "The Art of Star Wars" were just as important -- if not more so -- than New Visions and they are completely absent here, aside from Gerani's brief comments in the introduction. The backs of the cards in the Galaxy sets were a huge leap forward from the original sets from the 1970s-1980s, with full color artwork and well written text, but are completely absent in this book.Even the introduction, while an interesting read, is copied almost word-for-word in some places from Generi's "The Art of Star Wars Galaxy" book that was published alongside the original set in the 90's and is very light on content. How can there be no mention of the infamous Yodas P3 promo card for Galaxy II that was pulled and destroyed because Lucasfilm ultimately didn't approve of the content? And on a lesser scale no mention of the promo card showing an Ewok attacking a Biker Scout with a knife, where the knife was ultimately removed when issued in the regular set. Surely the history behind these two cards was worth of a mention, but here they are completely ignored with not even a scanned image. Generi provided some good insight on the infamous "x-rated" C-3PO card in the previous book, and his lack of commentary on these two cards sticks out like a sore thumb.Ultimately, I can't recommend this purchase. If you want just the New Visions artwork, buy the old "Art of Star Wars Galaxy" books, which can be found for a couple bucks used or better yet, just buy the original physical card sets, which can be found very cheap. I hope the forthecoming book on The Empire Strikes Back sets is more along the lines of the Volume One book and not this Galaxy book.
