Batman's Dark Victories

In 2008 Rittenhouse released the Batman Archives set which highlighted the history of Batman going back to his origination in 1939. The base set was all of the comic book covers going back to the first issue but there were three insert sets along with sketch cards with the 9 Dark Victory cards grabbing my attention. I have wanted these cards since the release because they are black light cards, some sellers list them as Glow-In-The-Dark but they are not. Individual card prices have remained stable for the past near decade and you could expect to pay $5-8 a card and with there being 9 cards in the set I wasn’t ready to pay that price.

Last year I found a seller who had the complete insert set for a little more than it would have cost to purchase two individual cards so I hit the BIN immediately. I did hit the buy button rather quick without even really looking through the cards, it was more a “Win” in my mind and I wasn’t too worried about the cards condition. In the end the set came in and was in great shape with no chipped edges or scratches, I could not have been happier.

The card's surface are a matte black with the images created using a reverse negative effect printed in a two-step neon ink with each character being one color and some white on the cards with a reflective Batman logo in one of the corners.

The set is made up of:

DV1 The Riddler
DV2 Scarecrow
DV3 Catwoman

DV4 Penguin
DV5 Batman
DV6 Joker

DV7 Mr. Freeze
DV8 Poison Ivy
DV9 Two-Face

The entire collection:

A Simpsons Nuclear Accident

This is one of my recent, more fun pickups. The 6-card neon set is from the 2000 Inworks Simpson’s 10^th Anniversary release. The cards are acetate, neon cards and they glow under black lights.

N1 Blinky the three-eyed fish

N2 X-ray Bart

N3 Homer eating radioactive waste

N4 Homer with a radioactive donut

N5 Skeleton Bart skateboarding

N6 Homer advertisement

These cards are pretty cool and I have been watching them for 14 years but never pulled the trigger because the cards usually sell for $3-5 each and that was just too much for something like this but when I came across a British dealer selling the entire set with a .99 cent starting bid it caught my attention. In the end I won the auction with a bid of $3.28 plus $4.31 shipping from England. A total of $7.59 for the entire set was more reasonable when you figure you could only get 2 cards from most sellers.

I have a strong LED black light so the cards were reflecting the light in to the camera so the full glow effect cannot really be seen in my pictures but when they are in hand they glow beautifully without a reflection. I did find a image of the set glowing nicely under a black light, but it is a small image but you get the idea.