Star Trek TNG Seasons Card Sets
SkyBox released a series of trading cards based on an episode format for each of the 7 seasons of TNG, starting in 1994. The cards were created with digital video transfer. The pattern for the episodes was to start with a 9-card timeline for the episodes from that season, followed by three card overview of each episode. The final section of the sets was a 9-card close-up look at two main characters per set. Each set includes two holograms featuring the two spotlight characters. Each set has its own color scheme. One hologram tended to be somewhat easier then the other to acquire, though SkyBox reports that they were all released in about the same proportions.
The insert sets were randomly inserted cards, 3 of which featured aspects of the Klingon race, the other three showed secondary characters from a TNG episode that season.
The binders, wrappers and boxes are color-coordinated. Occasionally, the retail markets had box sizes and compositions different than the hobby markets. For example, for Season 5, hobby boxes had hologram ratios of 1:90, retail boxes 1:180.
Star Trek TNG Season One Card Set
Release Date: May 4 1994
8 Cards Per Pack
36 Packs Per Box
Set Composition
| Base Set-108 | Embossed Cards-6 | 1:12 | |
| Holograms-2 | 1:180 |
Base Set
The series started with Season One episodes with a 100 card base set. The spotlight characters were Picard and Data. The color scheme is orange.
Inserts
- There were three Klingon and three Character embossed insert cards and Picard and Data holograms. The Data hologram seems to be a little harder to pull.
Promos
- The 3-card panel from The Official Fan Club came in their July 1994 Magazine Issue #97. This sheet was stapled into the magazine and apparently during the process the machine crimped the card. The crimp is distinctive and the same in all known panels. UPDATE: In 2020, a small supply of uncrimped cards were found that were never inserted into the magazine.
- Promo cards sent to dealers included S1 and S2.
- Inserted randomly into packs was a card called “The Future Arrives in 1994”. A variation of this card appears in MS II packs. The non-glossy card with “STAR TREK PROMO…” was from Season One. The other, glossy, says “SKYBOX INTERNATIONAL/STAR TREK PROMO..” and came from the 1994 Master Series packs.
Misc. Items
- The All Good Things 1987-1994 card was found as a box topper at one per box.
- The binder for this set tends to be more scarce than others in the series. Many collectors had not yet developed a desire to put their cards into the official binders, rather than a cheaper generic one.
- Sell Sheet
- Dealer Mobile
Star Trek TNG Season Two Card Set
Release Date: March 1, 1995
Hobby Box-
8 Cards Per Pack
36 Packs Per Box
10 Boxes Per Case
Set Composition
| Base Set-108 | Embossed Cards-6 | 1:12 | |
| Holograms-2 | 1:180 |
Base Set
Season Two follows the same theme as Season One, only this time with Deanna Troi and Riker as the highlighted characters. The only difference is the character subset follows the mural set at the beginning of the set rather than last. The color scheme is blue.
Inserts
- There were three Klingon and three Character embossed insert cards and Riker and Troi Holograms. The Troi hologram seems to be a little harder to pull.
Promos
- The S1 promo card was sent to dealers for General Distribution.
- This set also boasted a very hard to find set of promo cards. Sent only to dealers, this promo card was a two-card Riker and Troi uncut strip consisting of one Riker and one Troi card from the character profiles subset cards without the UV coating. There are 9 known variations of this 2-card promo. The strip came with a letter from SkyBox reminding dealers to order their boxes.
Misc. Items
- Binder
- Sell Sheet
- Survey Card
- Dealer Promotional Folder
Star Trek TNG Season Three Card Set
Release Date: Aug 16, 1995
22 Cards Per Pack
24 Packs Per Box
Set Composition
| Base Set-108 | Embossed Cards-6 | 1:12 | |
| Holograms-2 | 1:90 |
Base Set
This set covers Season Three with Worf and Beverly Crusher as the main characters. The color scheme is green.
Inserts
- There were three Klingon and three Character embossed insert cards and Crusher and Worf holograms. The Crusher hologram seems to be a little harder to pull.
Promos
- SkyBox produced a 7-½ x 10-½ 9-card promo sheet, numbered P1. These were sent to dealers and featured a few common and insert cards from the set with set details on the back.
Misc. Items
- Retail Exclusives-This set also had an exclusive set of 3 oversized ship cards. They are similar to three of the common cards in the set(# 249, 261 and 307), but ’blown up’ The fronts have a gold foil delta symbol stamp and the backs say 1 2 or 3 of 3. They measure 3 x 4 1/2. The boxes containing these cards had a sticker promoting the ship card, contained fewer packs and had a white sheet of paper with black text advertising the blow-up card. Most of these boxes were found at K-mart or Sam‘s Clubs. Regarding the Retail Exclusive insert cards common at this time, Ken Baroff had this to say: “Things got tricky in the trading card world by 1995. Every big chain would only take your product if you gave them an exclusive subset. I hated the fact that collectors had to chase the product all over hell and creation.” Although at one point, SkyBox printed a letter saying they wouldn’t do retail exclusives, the retail chains placed orders that equaled or bettered the hobby orders and those sort of numbers are difficult to ignore. There were rumors of a similar set for Voyager, and a buyer for K-Mart apparently requested one, but it was not followed through on.
- Retail chains had a few different box and wrapper size variations. (8 cards/20 packs, 15 cards/24 packs)
- Survey Card
- E395 Cinema collection Order Card
- Sell Sheets
- Binder
Star Trek TNG Season Four Card Set
Release Date: Feb 1996
8 Cards Per Pack
36 Packs Per Box
10 Boxes per Case
Set Composition
| Base Set-108 | Embossed Cards-6 | 1:12 | |
| Holograms-2 | 1:180 |
Base Set
This card set featured Season Four episodes. The spotlight crew members were Wesley and Geordi. The 9-card subsets had now returned to the end of the card set as in Season One. The Color scheme is purple
Inserts
- There were three Klingon and three Character embossed insert cards and Geordi and Wesley holograms. The Geordi hologram seems to be a little harder to pull.
Promos
- The promo for this series was a 7-½ x 10-½ 9-card promo sheet, P1.
Misc. Items
- E496 Cinema collection Order Card
- Dealer Sale Poster
- Survey Card
- Sell Sheet
- Binder
Star Trek TNG Season Five Card Set
Release Date: June 19, 1996
8 Cards Per Pack
48 Packs Per Box
Set Composition
| Base Set-108 | Embossed Cards-6 | 1:12 | |
| Holograms-2 | 1:90 |
Base Set
This card set focused on Season Five episodes. The featured crew members were Guinan and Ro. Episode Five was packaged a bit different having more packs in the box than usual and came in a Hobby Box and a Retail Box. The main difference being that the holograms were inserted 1:180 in the Retail and 1:90 in the Hobby. The color scheme is a slightly darker blue.
Inserts
- There were three Klingon and three Character embossed insert cards and Ro and Guinan holograms. The Ro hologram seems to be a little harder to pull. Though the sell sheets for this set make mention of the dual-flip action of the holograms, when released, they did not appear to have this feature.
Promos
- None. This set was also the beginning of a short period of time where no promo cards were released for the sets. Ken Baroff reports this as being a time of belt-tightening and many frills were set aside. A promo card image exists on sell sheets sent to dealers, but the actual card doesn’t appear to have ever been created. Most collectors feel the need to add these sell sheets into their collections to ’fill in the gap’.
Misc. Items
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- E596 Cinema collection Order Card
- Survey Card
- Sell Sheet
- Binder
Star Trek TNG Season Six Card Set
Release Date: Mark 6, 1997
11 Cards Per Pack
36 Packs Per Box
Set Composition
| Base Set-100 | Embossed Cards-6 | 1:12 | |
| Holograms-2 | 1:180 |
Base Set
This card set showcased season six episodes. The featured crew members were O’Brien and Q. This set went the other direction from Season Five and offered smaller box sizes with 24 packs per box.
Inserts
- There were three Klingon and three Character embossed insert cards. There were some changes to the insert cards. The only embossing was on the names of the character cards and on the symbol of the Klingon cards. This change in format frustrated collectors who prefer continuity between sets and resist even slight changes.
- There are two holograms, O’Brien and Q holograms. O’Brien is listed as a dual-flip holo, the Q is listed as a full motion hologram on the sell sheet. The O’Brien hologram seems to be a little harder to pull.
Promos
- No promo cards released for this set and promo geeks continue to cling lovingly to their sell sheets, sent to dealers to advertise the set, which showed an image of several of the cards.
Misc. Items
- There were two Skymotions/lenticulars for this set. Unlike earlier skymotions which were clear when held up to the light, these had regular back with text. The SM1 was a case topper, packed in the cases as dealer incentives, one for every 6 boxes. The SM2 was in every box of Season Six loose in the box inside a toploader.
- No binders were produced when the product was released, due to low sales of binders in the past, but eventually they were made and released in 1998 thanks to the efforts of James Fromm, Inc.
- Sell Sheet
- A retail box was available at some stores with 18 packs per box and Walmart had 16 pack version with a free Lucite holder.
Star Trek TNG Season Seven Card Set
Release Date: July 21, 1999
9 Cards Per Pack
36 Packs Per Box
Set Composition
| Base Set-103 | Embossed Cards-6 | 1:12 | |
| Holograms-2 | 1:90 | Autographs-19 | 1:36 |
| Captain’s Card | 1/1200 |
Base Set
The base set featured the 7th season of TNG with highlights on Picard and Data.
Inserts
- The 6 insert cards were similar to Season Six, 3 lightly embossed character cards and 3 Klingon Cards with an embossed Klingon Symbol in the corner. They were apparently inserted in a ration of 1:12 for each of the two insert subsets (Klingon and character), giving the effect of being inserted 1:6, making them fairly easy to obtain.
- The two holograms include the Enterprise-D and a flip hologram that changes between the Crew from First Season and Seventh Season. The crew hologram seems to be the hardest of the two to get.
- One of the difference between this set and the other six was the addition of the 4th multi-layered laminate Captain’s Card. The Captains card is numbered x/1200 and is part of a series of 4 cards. After Voyager Profiles was released, the set was reprinted as it was too dark and some uncut sheets from the original printing, with all 4 Captains have been sighted. Some master sets, sent out to as gifts also contain the original printing.
- The other big difference was the inclusion of 19 Full bleed autograph cards from the main cast to several guest stars. The A6 LeVar Burton autograph card was the hardest to pull, which according to one report, may be limited to only 500.
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Autograph Variations
- Many collectors enjoy going after the variations in the signature cards. For TNG Season Seven, there was one; A19 Andreas signed as Andreas and Andreas Kastulas. He signed in both blue and black ink.
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Promos
- One unnumbered promo card was released for general distribution.
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Misc. Items
- Binder
- Sell Sheet
- In 2007, a series of auctions were listed on Ebay with redemption versions of many of the cards from TNG Profiles, DS9 MOF, Voyager CTH. Most of these were not inserted into packs as redemptions. Not much is known, except that it’s possible that when printing the autograph cards, redemption versions were made at the same time in case needed.