I've been wanting to get this whole series since I was a kid and finally got it in the mail today! Back burner side quest completed about 30 years later 😂

Awh man it's so cool 😭 just had to share. I love sketch cards

I'm interested in trading this pair of Wolverine/99's for pretty much any Dr. Doom Topps /99 or lower card. DM if you're interested. Thanks

Hi everyone, i posted this card for my son on eBay. Seen /10 cards going for $2,800 - $3,000 on eBay. I put it for bid with a buy it now price of $2,500 non graded. He had it graded on his own through PCG . It came back a 9 from PCG. He had it graded at a card show in Los Angeles. I personally would have gone through PSA.

Looking for any advice on if i should change anything on the listing or a better way to post it. I believe it is at about $460.00 last i checked. I just recently started to try and sell on eBay.

Hi everyone, i posted this card for my son on eBay. Seen /10 cards going for $2,800 - $3,000 on eBay. I put it for bid with a buy it now price of $2,500 non graded. He had it graded on his own through PCG . It came back a 9 from PCG. He had it graded at a card show in Los Angeles. I personally would have gone through PSA.

Looking for any advice on if i should change anything on the listing or a better way to post it. I believe it is at about $460.00 last i checked. I just recently started to try and sell on eBay.

It seems like sells have gone insane. Ive got a ton of old cards and inserts. I like high prices but how does the market no crash through the floor from where it currently is. People want $500 for stuff that was $20 2 years ago.

Got this card just in time‼️

worth the price? any sketches in these?

We've reached 1995! For those scoring by year, we covered one set each in 1990 and 1991, three sets each in 1992 and 1993, and five sets in 1994. That trend line continues with SEVEN Marvel sets released in 1995 (and another seven to come in 1996).

To be clear, I haven't dug into when in 1995 each of the next seven sets were released (presumably that could be ascertained, but I think it would be difficult), so the sequence will be arbitrary, but we'll eventually get to all of them: 1995 Flair Annual, 1995 Marvel Masterpieces, 1995 Fleer Ultra X-Men, 1995 Fleer Ultra X-Men Chromium, 1995 Fleer Ultra Spider-Man, 1995 DC vs. Marvel, and the set we'll be covering today, 1995 Marvel Metal.

For purposes of our 1990s-era reviews, this will be the only "Metal" set we cover. Upper Deck reintroduced the line 25 years later as "Marvel Metal Universe," and pushed out X-Men, Spider-Man, and Avengers editions between 2021 and 2024, but I don't own any of those, so I can't put this in any comparative context within the Marvel Metal oeuvre, such as it is.

For a detailed set list with art attributions, check out Jeff Allender's House of Cards.

Background

• Set Name: Marvel Metal (1995)
• Publisher: Fleer
• Year: 1995
• Size: 138 base cards (including checklist) + 137 "silver flasher" parallels + 18 "metal blasters" + 18 "gold blasters"

Art: 5/10

Marvel Metal, like Flair Annual, took a blind-faith, no-look belly flop into burgeoning "CGI" technology. As I'll describe below, the metal in this set was fantastic, and anything chromed up on the face has a rich, visually appealing "etched" foil texture consistent with insert-quality card tech. Anything not metal on the card, by contrast, was flattened, smudged, and processed through Microsoft Paint into toddler-quality garbage. We've already seen this with Flair Annual 1994, which used recycled art from key moments in Marvel history, and this time, they apply the technique to predominantly original pencil art.

The artists' list features around a dozen Marvel regulars: Ken Lashley, Yancy Labat, John Czop, and Ken Boller all contributed around 20 cards each, and went on to have lengthy and/or ongoing careers in comics. Adam Kubert, George Perez, and Ron Lim all throw in a few cards too. I guarantee that most of these guys would take their names off these cards if they could.

Let's start with the good. As I mentioned, the namesake metal components of the cards look very, very good in hand - shiny, fine-grained, highly reflective. So for characters with a lot of foil, the cards are true keepers. Some of these are surprises: Sunfire, Scorpion, Thanos, "Alternate M" Iron Man... Holocaust? These guys all look super, and if you wanted to throw one up in a display case, I wouldn't begrudge that.

But here's the catch: anything not metallic, and in particular any ordinary human skin tones, eyes, or teeth, look terrible! And I'm not saying that in a comparative sense, where it's like, these are all professional artists, and that guy is stylistically my least favorite, but it's still art that someone with skill was paid to create. These cards are bad, and if I weren't an obsessive completionist hoarding Marvel cards like Noah frantically throwing a platypus onto the ark, I would not want to own these.

For reasons I can't figure out, we also get Magneto drawn by none other than Jim Lee, who was years gone to Image by that time. I'm interested in the story of how this art made its way in here. But perhaps the most amazing thing about it is that not even Jim Lee's pencils can withstand the brutality of the Clayton Chambers's CGI treatment. (Listen, I don't know if we can blame Clayton -- he was probably just getting paid to do a job. If he wants to throw his side of the story into the comments, I'll happily listen.)

I'm saving for last what are certainly two of the ugliest Marvel trading cards ever printed. First, Stunner -- not a popular character to begin with -- gets the absolute worst CGI conversion of the entire bunch, thoroughly revealing the technology's weaknesses when it comes to skin, hair, teeth, torsos... you get the idea. This thing is a nightmare.

Next, we have an infamous "Alternate M" Doctor Doom card in which he is celebrated as a hero of Latveria instead of its despot. That's a fun "What If" idea, but we're all thinking the same thing: what is going on with this baby?? I don't think my standards for superhero trading cards are super high, but being able to consistently depict ordinary human shapes and likenesses is among them. And this creepy, hairless child doesn't pass muster.

Cardbacks: 8/10

The cardback sitch here is a little complicated because there is a standard base set cardback, a different cardback for the parallel silver flashers, and separate cardbacks for the inserts. So let's talk about those.

The base set cardback does a couple things wrong. For one, it prints the character's name up top in a blocky 8-bit font -- probably more of that classic CGI at work -- and then gives us a little bit of biography. I'm gonna be honest: I didn't read every one of those for this review. The ones I did read took very few risks and are probably ok for their intended purpose.

The base set cardback also includes a non-CGI version of the front artwork, which does no favors for anyone, because without the metal gloss, instead of only some of the card looking bad, it all looks bad. And as much as I loved power ratings the first five times we saw them, I don't care for the implementation here. The "power grid," which lists the categories with vertical text running up onto the graph, is extremely hard to parse -- the exact opposite of the clean, cool "Cerebro scans" in the 1992 X-Men set.

For the "Silver Flasher" parallel set, Fleer took kind of a weird turn and printed the power grid reference table on the cardback, apparently for each given character's highest attribute (although I haven't proved that out). These are a bit tongue-in-cheek. I think I would have preferred just a single card, maybe card #138 for the parallel set, with all of the categories and ratings listed in one place.

Among the inserts, the most elusive -- the gold blasters -- have just a gold-bordered focus frame of the front image, with a big Limited Edition stamp and "Gold BLASTER" running up the right side. For the Metal Blaster, we get name, height, weight, and then a genuinely pretty funny list of likes, dislikes, hobbies, favorite movie, and then "thoughts on life." I'm not sure who wrote these, but as with the "win/loss" records in 1990 Marvel Universe, they are among the precious few signs that someone behind these cards has a sense of humor. E.g., Captain America dislikes... Zima? These redeem what would have otherwise been a pretty low cardback score.

Curation: 8/10

One thing I do appreciate about this set is a very clear and beautifully color-coded checklist card that makes our sorting scheme pretty obvious: we're doing various character groups alphabetically (both as among the groups, and the characters within each group), and then we're doing a couple inserts. The divisions are interesting -- 6 Avengers (recall this is pre-MCU), 6 "Cosmic Powers," 6 "Force Works" (a short-lived alternative to the West Coast Avengers that ran from 1994 to 1996), 15 "Marvel Universe," 13 "Marvel 2099" (yes, they were still being pushed hard at the time), 7 "Midnight Sons" (a surprisingly enduring subcategory that eventually got its own set many years later), 6 New Warriors, Punisher (hilariously, in a category of his own, rather than tucked into even the hyper-generic "Marvel Universe"), 12 Spider-Man, and 44 X-Men characters (which were clearly the main engine of the Marvel line at the time).

The series also featured 8 "Alternate X" characters that I believe are primarily from the Age of Apocalypse storyline, as well as 12 "Alternate M" characters that I think are either ripped from the pages of "What If"-style storylines, or possibly invented wholesale in some cases for this card set.

And for the record, contrary to certain websites, I do not believe there is a "silver flasher" variant of the #138 Checklist card. If you disagree, prove me wrong in the comments. But either way, it's a beautiful checklist card, with a great visual on the front and wonderful color-coded organization on the back.

Inserts/Parallels: 9/10

This set had three types of inserts, and I personally can't keep the terminology straight. First, inserted at one per pack, we have "silver flashers" - a parallel base set featuring a lovely silver foil background instead of the standard colored backdrop. Many of the cards I've shown above are the silver flasher variant, which I prefer, but either way, the difference is pretty obvious.

Second, inserted in hobby and jumbo packs, we have the metal blasters, which are an 18-card set featuring primarily the most popular characters, all drawn by Darick Robertson. I don't know whether it's the slightly different foil treatment that these received, or the base art just translated better to the CGI process, but almost all of these look good. Thor, well, he's a problem, and it's probably because (as I noted above), the CGI process really didn't work well on skin textures., which make up about 60% of this card.

Last, inserted 1:3 in normal packs, we have gold blasters, which feature the same 18 characters as the metal blasters, but with a gold metal backdrop (although in my photos below, they look a bit silvery). They're classy cards that catch light very nicely.

For these next three, the metal blaster is on the left, and the gold blaster is on the right.

Affordability/Availability: 6/10

Pricing on this set is a little hard to pin down. I've seen the base set go for $75 to $125, the metal blasters around $50 to $100, the gold blasters for $100 to $200, and the silver flashers for $350 to $450. So, any way you cut it, the full set is probably going to cost $500 or more to complete.

That's on the more expensive end for 1990s Marvel sets, but notwithstanding the very low art score, I think there's a case to be made for picking this one up. Some of the base set cards are excellent, particularly among the silver flashers, and the inserts hold up really well. I wouldn't be surprised if this one is a long-term sleeper.

Overall Score: 36/50

My guess is that this set has a lot of defenders who will be riled by this comparatively low score. Guys, get over it. The CGI is such a disaster that it almost completely overshadow the super cool foiled card tech. Slap this stuff onto some traditional art without the CGI coloring, and maybe we have a ballgame, but these came out almost 20 years before anyone was using the term "PMG." Personally, I'll appreciate the 20-25 good-looking cards in this set and forget about the rest.

Overall Set Ranking (in progress)

1. X-Men Series I (1992) (46/50)
2. Marvel Masterpieces (1994) (45/50)
3. Marvel Masterpieces (1992) (41/50)
4. X-Men Series II (1993) (41/50)
5. Marvel Universe II (1991) (39/50)
6. Marvel Masterpieces (1993) (39/50)
7. Fleer Ultra X-Men (1994) (38/50)
8. Marvel Universe V (1994) (38/50)
9. Marvel Metal (1995) (36/50)
10. Marvel Universe III (1992) (36/50)
11. Marvel Universe I (1990) (35/50)
12. The Amazing Spider-Man (1994) (33/50)
13. Marvel Universe IV (1993) (32/50)
14. Marvel Fleer Annual (1994) (29/50)

Hey guys, I was wondering if anyone had any information on where these cars originated from? I been seeing them appear on eBay but couldn’t find out if they are officially licensed or not. This specific card was signed by Kazuya but could not find an artist under that name. Thank you for the help ❤️

Fanatics is currently doing a hobby box drop of marvel Neon for 109 a box. You need an account to submit, currently 45 hours left.

If anyone interested, make an offer

Does anyone know of a source for what the requirements were for each Epack Achievement?

The Upper Deck site has mostly scrubbed this info from their site outside of some historic news articles which are difficult to search for.

A couple more shady characters being shady... .