Collecting Trek

A TOS collection 40 years in the making

Revisiting the FTCC cards for Khan’s 40th anniversary

The 40th anniversary of The Wrath of Khan got me thinking about my Khan collectibles. Probably my favourite are the big 5×7 cards made by FTCC in 1982. Cards that size are a rarity; SciFi Hobby made an In Motion TOS set and there were some box toppers but I don’t think there are many other 5×7 cards. 

(Quick aside: I own the full set of the In Motion cards but I don’t love them. They are gimmicky and the motion thing doesn’t work that well.) 

The Khan cards are impressive simply because they are big. Also, the production run was limited, so not too many collectors own these. Having said that, the quality is middling. Registration errors in the printing means the colour layers on a number of the cards did not line up accurately, and the backs feature only a monochrome version of the movie logo. No trivia, interesting stories or even movie quotations.

It’s odd to me, then, that StarTrek.com says “Fantasy Trading Card Company’s owner Mark Macaluso was a respected, pioneering figure in modern trading card collecting. FTCC had built a reputation for making quality cards…” That is not proven out by my set. Still, I really do like these, especially because there were not a lot of photos from the film available in 1982. That was the year Pocket Books gave us the high-contrast, washed-out, black-and-white The Wrath of Khan Photostory. 

Here is the full set of the 30 FTCC cards. Click any image to scroll through larger versions.

Gallery 1

Gallery 2

Postcript

The registration error is most evident on cards 21, 26 and 28.

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5 responses to “Revisiting the FTCC cards for Khan’s 40th anniversary”

  1. I have this set plus 4 unopened packs of them in my TWOK collection. I just got an unused flattened box for them from a seller on ebay super cheap. I would be interested in seeing a post about the other card set by Monty Gun that was released in the UK. Do you have the number Roddenberry sets of cards?

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    • I do not own the Monty Gum set. I saw it once, and it is very poor quality. I do like the upside down Enterprise, though. And I do have almost all of the Majel Roddenberry card sets. I am missing one: 2129. I believe there were fewer of that one, for some reason. Do you collect those as well?

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      • Yeah they arent the best quality but I have them as part of my Wrath of Khan collection. There was so little merchandising for that movie it’s fun to find what was put out there. I have almost all of it. I do collect the Roddenberry cards. A couple of years ago someone here in Boise was selling a bunch of their fathers trading.cards. He was a.dealer and had all kinds. I told them I was interested in any Star Trek cards. He told me he had quite a few but I couldnt tell how many from his picture but we agreed on a price of $40. I figured it was a few binders. When I went to pick the.up it turned out to be a large plastic storage tote full of binders full of cards. There were so many and every series too. I only collect TOS Soni sold off the other stuff but that’s where I got my Roddenberry’s plus Leaf 1981 set and the Topps 1976 set well almost complete on that one.

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      • The card score really got me to amp up my collecting and it also gave me a way to pay for my collecting without making my wife mad. lol During the process of selling the non TOS cards in the lot I met another collector who I offered first dibs on anything else I found and in the two years since, I buy large lots of Trek stuff, sell what I don’t want to him for a bit of profit and keep what I want. I’ve managed to build my collection fairly quickly doing that and without breaking the bank. plus it’s been fun to find a these great buys.

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