About the item: 

Released in Series I of the Premier Edition (1991) AD&D collector trading card set, this gold border Series One common card features one of TSR's classic art images from their vintage years (from 1974 through 1991).  The card, which measures 2.5 by 3.5 inches, is in near mint condition and will be shipped with the utmost care.  Both the front and reverse of the card are shown in the scan.


General info about the set:


There were common cards and two different levels of rare cards in this series one set.  The first (and rarest) with ten cards (of which there was 3,000 made of each of these ten cards) and the second with twenty cards (of which there were 4,000 made of each of these twenty cards).  The common cards, of which the card in this listing is one, were printed in quantities of approximately 50,000 (still, pretty low run compared to most cart sets of the period, especially sports cards).  


This set was released in the the early days of the chase card craze.  In what would become common practice for most trading card companies, manufactures inserted chase cards into random packs.  These chase cards were usually part of a "sub-set" and were harder to find than regular cards in the set.  TSR decided to follow suit. However, they did not include any sort of chase card "sub-set" like holograms or foil cards.  Instead, they decided that regular and randomly numbered cards from the base set would be made "rare."    So, out of the ultimately 750 cards that comprise the 1991 AD&D trading card set, ten cards were selected from each set to be very rare and twenty cards were selected to be somewhat rare.  


Series I was the most rare, including ten cards that only 3,000 were printed and twenty cards that only 4,000 were printed.  Series II featured the same, but with 10,000 and 13,000 of each level of rare card instead of 3,000 and 4,000.  In other words, it is only possible for there to be 3,000 hand-collated sets to exist.  Given that numerous people were never able to complete their sets due to the rarity of the 60 total cards, yet having some in their hands, it created a situation to where, though it is theoretically possible to have 3,000 sets hand-collated, the actual number is vastly lower.  In the over twenty-five years since this set was released, I have only seen two hand-collated sets.  TSR did release a factor set that include all the cards, but they have "silver" borders whereas the cards from the pack have "gold" borders.  


This card is a gold border, pack pulled card and is not one of the reprint silver border ones from the factor set.