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New Card Review: Wax Packs

Wax Packs from Secret Audio Club is out now. The product is a bit of a hybrid product in that it will appeal to both record collectors and card collectors. Inside each Wax Packs Series 1 hobby box are five “packs” containing one 7″ record. There.

By Jan 9,2014  0

Wax Packs from Secret Audio Club is out now. The product is a bit of a hybrid product in that it will appeal to both record collectors and card collectors. Inside each Wax Packs Series 1 hobby box are five “packs” containing one 7″ record. There are ten different records to collect and variations of each record exist. Some variations are pressed on color wax, some on numbered color wax. Each box contains one of these. There are different artists on both sides of the singles so there is music from 19 different artists to enjoy (one of the singles features the same band on box sides hence 19 acts rather than 20). Most records contain one track by each band but some contain two, both on the same side, so a “single” might actually contain three or four tracks.

Wax Packs box

Wax Packs box and packs

Now, the part card hobbyists will probably enjoy the most. In addition to the 7″ singles, each Wax Packs box contains a “collectible digital download card box topper.” There are 20 to collect and they are numbered from 1A through 10A and 1B through 10B. Box topper cards allows collectors to download a run of 29 tracks, some of which are bonus, digital-only, tracks. And just as a note for all of your completest out there—there are three tracks which are vinyl-exclusives (Secret Audio Club could only obtain vinyl rights for these).

The Wax Packs packaging, while seemingly simple and plain upon first glance, is quite attractive and spells out most of what you need to know about the product. I say “most” as I’ve seen Secret Audio Club mention “heavy metal” cards and cards with guitar picks embedded on their Facebook page and Twitter account. Secret Audio Club’s Kyle Chapman tells NSU: “We included a ton of cool value add items that didn’t make the packaging or the initial sell sheet. On the trading card side—sketch cards, ‘heavy metal’ parallels (numbered out of 10) and a few booklet cards with autographs and embedded artist game used memorabilia (picks and drum heads). On the vinyl side, there are ‘super splatter’ parallels for each record (numbered out of 5 or 6). Our Facebook page has a few pictures.”

Collectors can also head on over to a dedicated page on the Secret Audio Club website for more information on the numbered color wax pressings, Heavy Metal parallel cards, sketch cards, and more. The page even lists the number of base cards that can be found throughout the run. There are only 98 of one card and no more than 130 of any so this will be one super-tough series to complete!

My box contained card 2A – Austin Lucas (Bloomington, IN) and a numbered color wax single with songs from the bands Broken Field Runner and Gifthorse (single #4). The pressing for this is on somewhat translucent wax with black swirls (Secret Audio Club’s page mentioned above calls this “Jungle Swirl”) — very cool!

Secret Audio Club has done an excellent job with Series 1 of Wax Packs and we look forward to more series in the future. When asked about what’s coming, Chapman says “Just wait for Series 2!”.

Note: Be sure to pick-up a copy of the current Feb/Mar ’14 issue of Non-Sport Update for the Wax Pack P2 promo card and the Dec ’13/Jan 14 issue for our Cards Online column with more info about Wax Packs.

Wax Packs Card 2A

Wax Packs - Numbered Color Wax Variation

Digital download card box topper 2A (top) and my “Jungle Swirl” numbered color wax single (bottom)

 

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