Trading Cards

Prime Time Productions produced and distributed a set of Speed Racer collector cards. They are designed by Frank Rocco at Wotta Concept! and colored by Jeff Wells, Tom Wooldridge, Cesar de Castro, Hector Martinez and Richard Ziehler-Martin.

They come in packs of 8; 7 regular cards and one gold foil card. Each card has the Speed Racer logo on it, and the gold foil cards have the logo in, well, gold foil. The full set is 55 cards with an additional 6 card chromium subset. The advertised odds of finding a chromium card is 1/80. List price is $1.25 per pack, though the cards are no longer being produced. I've scanned in a few cards in the Picture Gallery.

The whole collection is here at the official Speed Racer site.

If you've never seen the cards, I'd give them a grade of B- as far as the artwork goes. The scenes are from the original series but are clearly not original artwork. Many cars and characters have been significantly reworked. Trixie, especially, looks awful. In general, however, the cards are nicely made. Check out the Usenet newsgroup devoted to trading cards. You can probably pick up a full set for about US $7 without the six chromium cards, which go for about $4 a piece.
                                      


Last modified: August 26, 1997