Some people have asked me about a few new things on the scnee in the last year, so I thought I'd write an update about what's going on with collectible card type items.
In 1999, I started noticing some more variations on the number of card packages in a card box - several boutique card sets came out in 20-pack boxes. In late 2001 and 2002, I've noticed this trend has advanced and now there are boxes coming out with only 7 packs in them. Beware boxes which seem really cheap, only half what you would think they would be, they may be half-size boxes and it's hard to get more after you order a few thinking that's enough to complete a set.
One new addition in 2001 was the "AP Card" - what AP stands for is anyone's guess (Anime Phone Card?), but an AP card is a reprinted phone card without the time on it. Hence, like phone cards, AP cards are lightweight, close to the size of a pp card but a little longer, and are unlaminated. Unlike phone cards, you don't have to pay for the $9 to $25 in Japanese phone time which is electronically embedded in each phone card. So you can collect the pretty artwork of phone cards without paying an arm and a leg. AP cards are usually about $1.25 when they come out. While the first ones were all reprints of previously printed phone cards, apparently they were popular enough to merit release of new images because there are now AP cards coming out for series which are too new to have had phone cards yet.
Also in 2001, collectible 'bottle caps' with character images on them started coming out - normally these caps are carded in plastic protective covers, and are backed with a little backing that -surprise!- turns out to be a trading card. This is another possible entire field of expertise if the bottle caps turn out to be very popular.
Another new thing on the scene is mini shitajiki. Just like a regular pencil board but about 1/4 the size, up to 1/2 the size of one.
On the bootleg scene, shitajiki have been introduced which say Movic on them but do not follow the correct release codes of an authorized Movie boad - instead of the Movic codes they have something like IA02LM or another six-character set of letters and numbers. I have received one of these shitajiki to look over, and the quality is not as good as a normal shitajiki. The texture is grainy, the board is a little heavy, and the picture is fuzzy. Yucko.
Lami have news too! The little laminated idol cards are now coming for some series in double-sided versions. Like double-sided shitajiki, they still have codes down at the bottom of one side, but the images on both sides are full color and large and well centered. The industry people in Japan have started calling clear cards 'lami' as well, since they're made of laminate material and are the same size. But doki doki cards with the little love meters on the back maintain their own name.
Some items which have made some inroads which are faintly related to these - clear files have been around for a long time but are going like gangbusters, with premium sets released last year for both Yoshitaka Amano and Mutsumi Inomata. Clear files are clear plastic folders imprinted with series images, usually released one at a time as opposed to the sets of eight or twelve in these premium releases. They usually run about $5 each in the US, but the premium ones are $15. Portraits are also spreading. These lightweight pretty images of characters are printed on one sheet which is then overlaid on a sheet of another color so that it is matted (albeit on a lightweight paper rather than a strong mat) and ready to frame (I have seen this described as 'already framed,' but as you might expect from an item that costs $5 or so in Japan, no, it's not framed, just very lightly matted. Ones for Rurouni Kenshin were released a few years ago, I've seen a few more series such as Harukanaru Toki No Nakade releasing images this way in the last year.
News for 2003-2004 - this year saw continued releases of the boutique cards for boys' and girls' love games, and an interesting release of Snow trading cards in which each box came not with a promo card, but with a charm phone cord with a picture of the little cat mascot on it. Hwei for cute things!
Hwei also for Anisa who is running a massive communal effort at compiling information on anime trading cards at wikipedia. I originally thought Anisa has been involved in the old shitajikionline.com/anime goods online project which unfortunately now seems defunct, but she was kind enough to correct me that she had not been involved in this project. She is taking the wikipedia project further than I have taken this article list, for instance she is currently working on a list of publishers and their home pages. Check out her community and their work here:
That's it for now, I'll write more as I find out about it. ^_^