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I began collecting my first “non-sports” trading cards back in 1976 with presidents cards produced by local bread companies such as Colonial Bread.  I then moved on to Star Wars cards thanks to a very small run of cards released in Wonder Bread loaves.  Hooked on images of Star Wars in an age before VHS, in 1978 I moved to the Topps series with their red and then gold series of Star Wars cards.  Thanks to collecting dimes that fell out of my older brother’s pockets I was able to pick up a pack per week from the Kwik Shop down the street.  At the age of seven, I learned more than you might think from these cards.  I learned vocabulary words.  Words like “peril,” “chasm,” “evacuate” and “triumph,” and I can point to those individual cards that formed part of my education, much like kids today probably credit the Harry Potter series with similar learning experiences.  (I also learned great words from Marvel’s Star Wars comic books, like “armageddon” and “behemoth”).  Star Wars as teaching tool?  Who knew?

Only later I learned I had missed an entire series of Star Wars cards, the original blue cards with a white star field.  None of these Topps series ever got very expensive so I picked up a complete set of the original blue series cards for $10 in college.  Here is what all five of the original series look like:

As part of the lead-in to Episode VII, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Topps has produced a new series of 110 cards called “Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”  They are made to match the style of the original blue series, but also come with rarer background color cards and stores like Target, Toys R Us, WalMart and Walgreens have even more variants by store.  You’d go crazy finding them all, so don’t.  Just pick up the complete sets from eBay card retailers who do the sorting for you.  Or take your chances by the pack.  But don’t look for the bubble gum or classic bubble gum scent of the cards.  You’ll need to find an original set for that.

Here are the checklists of what you will find (click to enlarge):

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