Marvel 1990 Vending Prism Sticker Cards (Impel-style)

[Tick]

I've seen the recent craze over the 1990 Impel Marvel trading cards, and I noticed there's also a set of vending machine prism sticker cards based on them. Anybody have an idea how many of them are in the set and how much they're worth? I've seen a wide variety of prices on the ones listed. Can't imagine they were mass-produced like the Impel set, and I love how these look.

Here's an example of one of the Captain America vending prism sticker cards:
http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/wdoAAO...ay/s-l1600.jpg

Exact same design as the Impel trading card.

[Vision59]

I was wondering about this myself - I'm not sure if they were licensed or someone just made them. I still have quite a few of them in excellent condition.

[alphaomegas]

In this market anything collectible is going up. Even empty wax boxes lmbo. Thanks government for all this money printing.

[DynaEtch]

They were unauthorized stickers that featured 1990 Marvel Universe that were from coin op vending machines in the 90s. So not just someone making them in their basement, but also not officially produced by Impel. There are also prism stickers of other sets like 1992/1993 marvel masterpieces, 1992 Impel x-men, and 1993 marvel universe.

The 1990 Universe prism sticker set is 15 cards. I agree they are not as mass produced as the normal 1990 MU cards (although there still seems to be a decent amount of these out there). I’ve seen complete sets of 15 going upwards of $300ish in the recent up-swing market.

With 1990 MU prisms it’s nice because there are 15 and that’s it. With the Marvel Masterpieces prism stickers there are different variations: black border vs borderless for the names, different prism patterns etc, which makes it tedious to track down a complete collection.

I always liked the look of them, even though they weren’t official, they were done very well.

[PurplesaurusRex]

I picked up some of the X-Men ones recently:

[alphaomegas]

they are nice but what is stopping companies or random people reprint them and act like its 1990?

[DynaEtch]

Originally Posted by alphaomegas

they are nice but what is stopping companies or random people reprint them and act like its 1990?

I can’t imagine someone could replicate these, especially with the prism pattern. I mean I guess you could say this about any card, unauthorized or not- why can’t someone just reprint it? But thankfully I don’t think it would be that simple. I can’t see it happening.

[PurplesaurusRex]

Originally Posted by alphaomegas

they are nice but what is stopping companies or random people reprint them and act like its 1990?

Why would they waste time when they could reprint more valuable cards? You can buy these for around 5 bucks a piece.

[Tick]

Originally Posted by DynaEtch

The 1990 Universe prism sticker set is 15 cards. I agree they are not as mass produced as the normal 1990 MU cards (although there still seems to be a decent amount of these out there). I’ve seen complete sets of 15 going upwards of $300ish in the recent up-swing market.

Do you know which 15 are in that set exactly? I often see listing where people have mixed and matched the prism sticker cards from various years, so it's hard to know for sure which ones are needed for a complete 1990 set.

Originally Posted by DynaEtch

I always liked the look of them, even though they weren’t official, they were done very well.

Yeah, the print jobs on them are phenomenal. They look far better than the Impel set IMO.

Originally Posted by PurplesaurusRex

I picked up some of the X-Men ones recently

Nice score. I particularly love those two landscape designs for Beast and Wolverine.

Originally Posted by DynaEtch

I can’t imagine someone could replicate these, especially with the prism pattern.

You can easily find places to print on that same material these days (I posted about a scammer doing it recently with some sports cards). Thankfully, they're pretty easy to spot as they're always pristine and the printing process used on them today is different than the classic vending machine prism sticker cards. One thing you'll notice on any modern ones is that they all have a glossy finish AND the cuts always look perfect. That's certainly not the case with many of the old ones.

[here2havefun]

I picked up a lot of 10 of the 92 Masterpieces stickers last year, just wanted to say they look really awesome in-hand. If you like the original cards, pick up some of the stickers.

Also, this site has tons of good info on the vending stickers (on the left, click "Sticker Sets > Unauthorized Vending Machine"):
http://abs-cards.net/checklists/index.html

[DynaEtch]

Originally Posted by Tick

Do you know which 15 are in that set exactly? I often see listing where people have mixed and matched the prism sticker cards from various years, so it's hard to know for sure which ones are needed for a complete 1990 set.


Yeah, the print jobs on them are phenomenal. They look far better than the Impel set IMO.


Nice score. I particularly love those two landscape designs for Beast and Wolverine.


You can easily find places to print on that same material these days (I posted about a scammer doing it recently with some sports cards). Thankfully, they're pretty easy to spot as they're always pristine and the printing process used on them today is different than the classic vending machine prism sticker cards. One thing you'll notice on any modern ones is that they all have a glossy finish AND the cuts always look perfect. That's certainly not the case with many of the old ones.

Good to know. I suspect that it would be still be super hard if not impossible to replicate them exactly as they are. But I’m no expert on the printing side of things.

Yes, there were 15 in just the Marvel Universe 1990-version prism set. The problem with some of these vending stickers sets is definition. Do you define it as just the ones that have art from a particular set (say 1990 MU)? Or do you lump all the ones printed in a certain year (say 1992) or multiple years which encompasses art over multiple Marvel sets. It’s a little confusing, but I personally prefer the former definition- separate the prism stickers by the card set the art is from.

[BobCollects]

I’m generally not a fan of stickers but I have to admit these are nice to look at.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jdandns]

As I recall, these were 50 cents each from the vending machines.
If they'd been a quarter, I probably would've ended up with more than the 15 I have from the series that used the '92 Jusko MM art.




I suspected they were unlicensed (as much as I thought about stuff like that 30 years ago), but by the time I got the one that had Marvel & DC characters on the same sticker, I was sure of it.

I do have a few more beside these, all 1-of-1 pink plastic back variants (so named by me once I cut them out of the cheap pink plastic 3-ring school binder they'd been stuck to by some kid way back when. ).

[PurplesaurusRex]

Nice! Lots of detail on the 92 Masterpieces.

[A Levine]

I was working on a project to cover my wood table with stickers, and picked up about 7-8 of the 1990 MU vending stickers in December for anywhere from $2-7 apiece. Stuck them to the table, and very happy with them.

[Tick]

Originally Posted by here2havefun

Also, this site has tons of good info on the vending stickers (on the left, click "Sticker Sets > Unauthorized Vending Machine"):
http://abs-cards.net/checklists/index.html

That's super handy! Thanks for the link!

Originally Posted by DynaEtch

Yes, there were 15 in just the Marvel Universe 1990-version prism set. The problem with some of these vending stickers sets is definition. Do you define it as just the ones that have art from a particular set (say 1990 MU)? Or do you lump all the ones printed in a certain year (say 1992) or multiple years which encompasses art over multiple Marvel sets. It’s a little confusing, but I personally prefer the former definition- separate the prism stickers by the card set the art is from.

Yeah, I'm with you there, as I consider the 15 that were based on the 1990 Impel trading cards to be the actual set.

Originally Posted by jdandns

I do have a few more beside these, all 1-of-1 pink plastic back variants (so named by me once I cut them out of the cheap pink plastic 3-ring school binder they'd been stuck to by some kid way back when. ).

See, that's why I think all these old vending sticker cards are incredibly undervalued. Standard cards were mass-produced, but these stickers were far more limited (and even regional in some cases). Combine that with the fact that many of them didn't survive over the decades due to being stuck on school notebooks, lockers, skateboards, etc... it's kinda miraculous how many unused ones are still available. (Nice set btw!)

Originally Posted by A Levine

I was working on a project to cover my wood table with stickers, and picked up about 7-8 of the 1990 MU vending stickers in December for anywhere from $2-7 apiece. Stuck them to the table, and very happy with them.

That sounds pretty awesome. Got any photos of the table you can share? Would love to see how it turned out!

[DynaEtch]

Im seeing 1990 Marvel Universe prism stickers pop up on ebay that are not part of the "official" (unauthorized vending) sticker set, which only had 15 stickers. Names like Thanos, Venom, Stan Lee.....those were never part of the 15 set.

example:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/14412122997...MAAOSwdgZg99S0

This is what a regular 1990 MU vending sticker looks like:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/39320393009...UAAOSw3RlgSqi6

This has both a "new" Wolverine and (possibly?) original Wolverine sticker next to each other

https://www.ebay.com/itm/14412795896...IAAOSwljpg98jq

(none of the above are my listings).

It appears the Stan Lee and the ones like it are probably newer constructions, as I have not encountered them in the many years before dealing/collecting these.

The way to tell the difference: The prism pattern is wavy in the original 90s 15 sticker set, it is a squarish compact disc pattern in the new ones. The most obvious difference is the entire 1990 MU card is there on the newer ones (with header and all), vs the original ones did not have that and are different than the actual 1990 MU card.

It's kind of confusing, but it seems there are three types of tiers here-

1. Official, authorized cards
2. Unauthorized stickers distributed nationwide in the 90s in vending machines
3. Unauthorized stickers that were made more recently (probably homemade etc)

I think while (2) is technically unofficial, there is still an "official" sense to them in the minds of many collectors, merely because they were produced in standard fashion on a large scale, part of the time period (early 90s), and actually distributed in vending machines across the nation. Going back up through this thread was interesting, because we were talking about people possibly replicating these....this is an example of when a newer made sticker does show up, it is fairly easily distinguishable from the actual old stickers.

[PurplesaurusRex]

Thanks for the heads up. That modern prism pattern seems to overpower the image, wonder how it looks in person.

[Rictor]

I remember buying some of these from the sticker vending machines back in the nineties. I really liked them, although it was pretty obvious they were bootleg. These days the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer selling them would all be sued.

I probably still have some of these in a box somewhere in my basement.

I also like these die-cut foil magnets from 1996:

https://www.mercari.com/us/item/m703...MaAlBSEALw_wcB

I think there was a set of prizm diecut magnets at some point too that may have been unlicensed.

[DynaEtch]

Instead of making a new thread figured I bump this one. I’m trying to put together a complete set of Marvel Masterpieces vending stickers- that is, all the ones corresponding to the 1992, 1993, and 1994 MM series, the years represented in stickers. Not everyone collects these since they are unofficial, but like some other collectors, there is only so much to collect with something like 1992 MM, and this is one way to branch out and add things.

As mentioned above there are 3 tiers going on regarding this stuff:

1. Official cards released by Fleer/Skybox
2. Unofficial mainstream Vending stickers
3. Unofficial “homemade” stickers

1 is not applicable here because Fleer/Skybox didn’t release official stickers. This post is just about 2. What is the difference between 2 and 3? The type 2 stickers were widespread releases in vending machines at the time (“officially unofficial” in a sense)...3 are localized, homemade items made significantly after the time, more recently. I’m not aware of any type 3 stickers for Masterpieces, like there are for Marvel Universe that have lately crept into the market- see above posts.

Some of my current progress, and info about these sets:



1992

This is a fairly simple year: there are 25 character stickers with black border around the name. 15 of these were also made as borderless versions. If you look at the bordered 25 stickers, you will notice that there are two variations of prism style: the repeating “compact disc” squares reminiscent of superfractor pattern in sports, and also a “cracked ice” pattern. It is precisely the 15 compact disc version that also have a borderless version. No borderless were made for cracked ice.

Black border:



Borderless:



Typical cracked ice (note no bordless exists for gambit since it’s cracked ice)



Full collection. It is complete. Note Silver Surfer and Wolverine are not from art in the 1992 MM set.











1993

This is a complex year, and difficult to collect. There are 4 different prism patterns, and also normal vs die-cut. Even more confusing is not every character seems to have all 4 prism patterns made. Here is the list so far of what I believe exists for 1993, but if anyone has any to add to this, and ideally a picture or listing to reference, that would be greatly appreciated.

First, the 4 types of patterns:

Wave (simple repeated flowing wave):

Cracked ice (it’s not exactly cracked ice, but close enough I will use this term for this pattern):


Checkered (kind of hard to see in this pic, but makes rectanglular arrays of little squares. This is the type of pattern used in 1997 Topps Finest Baseball Gold Die Cut Refractors and 1997 Bowmans Best atomic refractors if anyone is familiar with those):


Circle(looks like a bunch of repeating circle suns with rays pointing outwards):


There are 25 full character stickers and 5 die-cut stickers. List of known variants of the 25 full character cards:

Archangel: wave, circle
Beast: wave, circle
Bishop: wave
Cable: wave,checker
Captain America: circle,cracked ice
Carnage: checker, cracked ice,wave
Colossus: wave, circle
Cyclops: wave, checker, cracked ice
Darkhawk: cracked ice, circle
Doom 2099: wave, cracked ice, checker
Gambit: wave, circle
Ghost Rider: wave, cracked ice, checker
Havok: wave, circle
Hawkeye: cracked ice, circle
Hulk: wave, checker, cracked ice
Jean Grey: wave, checker
Magneto: wave, checker
Punisher: wave, checker, cracked ice
Rogue: wave, checker
Sabretooth: wave, checker
Shatterstar: cracked ice, circle
Silver Surfer: circle, cracked ice
Spider-Man 2099: checker, wave
Thanos: wave, checker, cracked ice
Venom: checker, wave, cracked ice

My progress so far (Each of these stickers are different. It is not complete- have all 25 characters but not all patterns):













The die-cut set of 5 exists in wave and checkered versions, both below. Also shown is a strange Wolverine “cracked ice” version that I found in the wild. I am unsure if they made this for any of the other 4, and can’t find any info on it.

Wave set and oddball Wolverine:


Checkered set


1994

This is a simple little set of 12 stickers made in 1999 by A&A Global Industries. They are a little larger than regular size trading cards. I only associate it with 1994 MM because it has 3 that have 1994 MM art: Green Goblin, Iron Man, and Gambit

[jdandns]

Wow, spectacular collection!

The retouch artist on the '93 cards had a lot of work to do, seemingly even producing all new line art (either actual or photoshop) for some cards based on the original painted images. Not bad work overall. That Steranko Captain America is a hoot, but I'd still want one for my Steranko collection. Imagine asking him to sign that, haha.

Does it seem like the '92s were the most widely distributed? I remember seeing them regularly in various vending machines (supermarket, bowling alley, video store, etc.) but the later ones, not as much. I ended up with about 15 of the 92s, but very little of the later stuff, which was something I would've bought, had I seen them, and saved. How many of these ended up on skateboards, lockers, and notebooks, where they were meant to go?

Good show, man!

[Grid]

Originally Posted by jdandns

Wow, spectacular collection!

The retouch artist on the '93 cards had a lot of work to do, seemingly even producing all new line art (either actual or photoshop) for some cards based on the original painted images. Not bad work overall. That Steranko Captain America is a hoot, but I'd still want one for my Steranko collection. Imagine asking him to sign that, haha.

Does it seem like the '92s were the most widely distributed? I remember seeing them regularly in various vending machines (supermarket, bowling alley, video store, etc.) but the later ones, not as much. I ended up with about 15 of the 92s, but very little of the later stuff, which was something I would've bought, had I seen them, and saved. How many of these ended up on skateboards, lockers, and notebooks, where they were meant to go?

Good show, man!

I cant answer your question directly, but I can speak of the era.

I had a bunch of these stickers on my trapper keepers back in grade school. Comics were suddenly cool once more in the late 80s and early 90s

The Batman movie brought a lot of interest. And the first batch of the above, came out right as Batman Returns was hitting the movie theaters.

By the mid 90's, we were stuck with movies like The Shadow & The Phantom. And eventually fell off the comic movie cliff with Shaq staring as Steel.

So these machines that did good business with these stickers in 1992, didnt do as much in 1993 & 1994, as comics were no longer as "cool"

And a lot of those vending machines were getting stocked with the next big thing, to steal quarters from kids, and that was baseball cards. As that hobby was catching fire all of a sudden.

I remember going into Denny's in the mid 90's, and getting packs of baseball hologram cards with my pancakes. Those machines have always sold what was on trend. And comic stickers just werent selling.

Thats why I assume the later years got harder and harder to find.

[PurplesaurusRex]

Wow, had no idea they made bootleg stickers for 93 Masterpiece. Good stuff!

[DynaEtch]

Thanks! Yea some are hit and miss haha- i don’t know what’s going on with the Cap America. I thought the Steranko triptych in 1993 MM was really nice of the 3 original Golden Age marvel superheroes.



As to 1992 vs 1993, I was not actively buying these from vending machines at the time, so I can’t really say (although I would have been around the right age- instead I was just collecting regular cards, not stickers. Most of this collection I acquired in recent years).

I pretty much agree with Grid’s post, and further evidence of this is they didn’t even release 1994/1995/1996 Marvel cards in prism sticker form, so mainstream interest in Marvel stickers like this probably tailed off around 1993 or so. Since 1992 MM proved to be more popular than 1993 MM by a big margin, I imagine more people owned stickers of 1992 than 1993.

[glorbgorb]

I collect Rhino and Firestar in terms of Marvel cards. I kinda wish they appeared on some of these vending sticker sets just to give some variety to the collection. But at the same time, I'm kinda glad they don't. Getting complete checklists are a pain, and the OCD in me can't handle all the variations that might or might not exist in some sets!