Are “Complete Master Sets” still possible? (...and my foolish attempt at one).

[DynaEtch]

1994 Marvel Masterpieces. The previous year Masterpieces in 1993 had a mixed reception with its variable art from different artists (although it’s a respectable set imo and is accompanied by a great insert set painted by Bob Larkin)....it departed from the fan favorite one-artist 1992 set (Jusko). 1994 MM saw a return to the consistent art, and was painted by the masterful brothers Hildebrandt of Tolkien, Fantasy, and Star Wars fame, who also painted the 9-card team portrait from 1994 Fleer Ultra X-Men, which turned out to be a popular insert set. I’m a big fan of their art in 1994 MM: realism, the colors, and especially the lighting on these cards is fantastic.

1994 was arguably the time Marvel cards were reaching their peak in popularity. Various sets from this year now saw different retail version boxes being released at stores like Walmart, which had exclusive inserts- in the case of 1994 MM, the bronze and gold holofoils are from Walmart and Jumbo packs, respectively, kind of like (and predating) what you see now in sports with the Walmart blue, Target red exclusives, etc.




Regular pack, jumbo (price on front, found in both jumbo and gravity feed retail boxes), and blue Walmart pack



Vending stickers


Masterprints and poster (the prints are nice to see the art in nearly full size and since I don’t have any original artwork- I wish- this is the next best thing I guess). Some Masterpieces collections go way above what I do and contain actual original art.





National promo on left, SDCC promo right












Silver holofoils (not pictured is the 9 card power blast, forgot to take pic).


Gold foil signature set




Gold Holofoil (jumbo excl)


Bronze holofoil (Walmart excl)


Dealer promo kit


Bronze holofoil error, picked up recently: the streaks on the right of Iron Man are bronze foil streaking (to the best of my knowledge this happened in factory production. You might come across something like this on rare occasions, streaking will be different).


Carnage holofoil error: instead of the normal dark blue/purplish background, there is a striking blue background.


Carnage holofoil error: extra foiling


This book contains all the 140+ paintings in 1994 MM and talks about the art and technique.

[Raymond23]

Wow! Great stuff! Love learning the history of some sets and licenses that I am not familiar with. Those are beautiful! Thanks for sharing!!!

[Stansfield]

Originally Posted by gdelan1

The only one truly master sets I have is Jericho and Battlestar Galactica season 1

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

Almost finished with my Jericho master set. Do you count collecting the punched redemption cards as well?

[BipolarBear]

Very nice, DynaEtch.

I've completed a few master sets from 1990s Marvel, the best of which was the 1996 Fleer Ultra Onslaught set. It's something of an overlooked set because Onslaught was terrible, but the 4 auto cards were monsters to track down.

I'm four cards from finishing the 1996 Marvel Masterpieces. I just need a few of the clipped corner promos.

[DynaEtch]

Originally Posted by BipolarBear

Very nice, DynaEtch.

I've completed a few master sets from 1990s Marvel, the best of which was the 1996 Fleer Ultra Onslaught set. It's something of an overlooked set because Onslaught was terrible, but the 4 auto cards were monsters to track down.

I'm four cards from finishing the 1996 Marvel Masterpieces. I just need a few of the clipped corner promos.

Awesome stuff- yea those autos are impossible to track down. Some huge name signers in that set! I imagine for this reason Onslaught is one of the harder master sets to put together.

I agree that 96 Onslaught doesnt get the attention of some other Marvel sets, but I have always liked those later 1995 and 1996 Marvel sets like Fleer Ultra X-men Wolverine, Marvel vs DC, Amalgam, Onslaught, and Masterpieces. The common theme in these is more limited production than some of the earlier 90s marvel, and of course the Mirage inserts found in almost all these sets.

1996 MM is a big undertaking. I too am close to completing- I finished the base set by purchasing 1 card at a time....not necessarily the best way to go about it since buying a complete set outright is cheaper with this set by a good margin these days, but I enjoyed the hunt. There are some questions I still have about 1996 MM, such as whether there was ever a dealer promotional kit for this set, and what kind of uncut sheets have ever surfaced. I can never get a "true" master set because of the impossible 1:60,000 pack redemption cards and corresponding original art, but I am definitely not including that in my definition of a 1996 MM master lol.

[DynaEtch]

My fav print ad from 1996 MM. Fleer was starting to get creative with their ads by then.