Beauty & Brawn Progressive Proof Set
So you guys know I have a soft spot for trading cards and this is a really cool trading card thing I want to share! In 2002, Rittenhouse produced the Xena trading card set ‘Beauty & Brawn’. It a nice set that features cards for many of the characters. In fact, this is the official description given at the time:
Xena is known for its beautiful and powerful women and the men who love or hate them. Now Rittenhouse Archives showcases these memorable characters in their all new Xena: Beauty and Brawn card set.
As usual, it is made up of a base set and several chase sets of varying rarities and insertion rates. But here, what I want to share is a progressive proof set. Whoaaaa...
When trading cards are printed, they are run through 4 different printing plates which colour the cards. Much like a home printer, the colours are black, yellow, magenta and cyan. Often as an incentive for dealers to buy multiple cases of cards or as a special limited edition purchase, trading card manufacturers produce what are called ‘progressive proof’ or ‘printing plate’ sets. These sets contain 4 copies of each base card with each card only run through a single printing plate. So for the Beauty & Brawn set, what is a normal 72 base card set becomes a 288 card progressive proof set. These progressive proof sets are really cool! A couple of the Xena sets had them- but they only made 25 or 30 of each set. They are really rare to see for sale as they usually sit in private collections.
Here is a snippet from the wayback archives for when the progressive proof set for Beauty & Brawn was available for sale:
Recently I was lucky enough to obtain one of these sets and I was so excited! Only 30 sets ever made. So without further ado...
Now of course, these cards don’t have an official binder and because there are so many cards I need two binders to hold them. I could get some more Beauty & Brawn binders, but where is the fun in that? So instead…
TA-DA!! decorated in complete high-school style with amazing stickers.
shhhtiiiickerssss 🤩 ...I have a slightly unhealthy sticker obsession at the moment as some of you are aware.
I really love the way these binders turned out. I ordered these stickers from @aphroditexwp‘s Redbubble store (along with shirts, blankets, pillow cases- I CANT HELP IT! So many cool designs!) you totally need to check it out… https://www.redbubble.com/people/CharXena/shop
Well, that’s it for today. Hope you like the cards! x
