Welcome Back, Marathons

Happy thanksgiving! We are thankful for all of you that listen and reach out and let us know. We are stuffed after enjoying time and food with our families, and now we are talking SWCT. First things first, we have to give credit where credit is due. Galactic Moments returned with an Ewok Adventure card, and the only possible explanation is that it's all thanks to us. You're welcome! Assisting in this effort is ~JOSh-X, who's spreadsheet tracked the days since card 45 of 1977 wasn't released, until it was, and then tracked the days since the last GM release, until it was. Also, an observant SWCT player, Ribors, on reddit noticed that the Ewok Adventure GM was released exactly 30 years after the release of the movie.

The big news of course is the new marathon sets. Germain Lussier has written another great article on SWCT detailing the marathons, including sample cards from the sets.

And finally, here's to the game changers. We spend some time talking about the effect that a single person could have on the app if he has enough disposable income to buy up a substantial amount of sought-after cards.

Cash for cards, Tatooine economics

This week we find some things to talk about...Jabba's palace cards are back, and they move quickly. Topps is also burning through the Journey To The Force Awakens parallels, and while it's great that we can have a shot at any card we can pull from a physical pack, it's starting to chafe a little being asked to directly pay for these parallels also. And with the sale price bringing the direct cost of a 5 or 7 count card to $15 USD, does this undercut other low-count cards?

And the new Gorax Space Painting prompts a dream of Wilford Brimley and other Ewok movie cards.

One minor correction: When discussing Apple's 30% cut of in-app purchases, I gave the example of Spotify costing $10 per month, where all $10 goes to Spotify if signing up through their site, and only 6-something goes to them if you sign up through their app. What Spotify actually does is charge $13 per month if you sign up through their iOS app, to make up the difference. Apple's 30% take does not apply to apps where the purchase is for goods or services outside the app, for example physical goods from Amazon, or paying for a ride through Uber. Too nerdy? What can we tell you, it's in our name.

Outrage, Spirits of the Past, 1977's Card 45, Rebel Ceremony Variants

Believe it or not, we don't do a lot of planning for our episodes. And despite our lack of efforts, sometimes a theme emerges. In this episode, outrage became a recurring topic. We discuss the various things that people get outraged about in the app. We discuss whether that outrage is well-founded or misplaced. We discuss whether outrage comes from a place of scarcity or abundance: does getting outraged at something mean you have less to spread around to other areas? Or, in fact, more? But other than Rhett expressing a little outrage over people spreading outrage, we didn't have much actual outrage happening. But, lo and behold, Topps gives us something to stew aoubt even as we record, in the form a free green Journey card, that's a reminder of Rhett's least favorite card in the set. We get a real, genuine moment of outrage to bring it all full circle.

Oh, and we talk about some of the new sets and cards in the app over the last week. Including, but not limited to, Rebel Ceremony variants, digital watercolor, Rebels sigs, Comic Pop Art, and that miracle of miracles (ok, maybe at this point a Galactic Moment card would be a bigger miracle, but you get the idea), the return of card 45 from the 1977 set.

At one point we mention a Porkins poster. Here's the Episode 7 character posters if you haven't seen them, with their one-eye-obscured theme. Following is the Porkins poster.

New #StarWars poster looks great! pic.twitter.com/k0z6Y1lKlN

— Blockbusted Podcast (@Blockbustedpod) November 7, 2015

100% Neon hoard, Journey to TFA, Angles, Inserts Pack, Gold Fan's Choice Vote

After a week of little in the way of new sets to talk about, we get a flurry of activity over the last week, from the small Whiteout set to the very large-yet-accessible Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Something for everyone, you might say, and you might also say that there's something for Rhett to complain about also. If you thought the Pack Inserts set was ridiculous for selling us the virtual wrappers of previous sets, you'll understand where he's coming from. Harder to get your head around may be the fact that the way in which the ultra-low-count-yet-hundreds-of-them Neon Base Variants has allowed something we haven't seen up until this point in the app: 100% ownership of all copies of a card by a single fan. It's debatable that Rhett was the first to do it, but it's not debatable that collecting a complete set of Neons just got a lot more expensive. Also the way in which the Neons sold out was much more of a bang than a whimper, one fan who ended up spending nearly $20,000 USD on over 200 of them described their rapid sell out as a "run on the bank."

Reddit thread with posts from the bulk Neon purchaser

We also take some time to discuss the random Lars / Beru Connection card that mysteriously appeared and was then marked Sold Out, as well as a much-needed lampoon of the Gold Fan's Choice card voting ballot. All this plus the re-appearance of the "bequeathed" pink card for 10 lucky big spenders in the app. Enjoy!