3D Foils. Holofoils. Phantom Foils. Ghost Holos. They go by many names, and are well-known as being uber-rare in the Acceleracers community. Coming in at roughly a 1 in 6 pull rate on the Acceleracers Booster Packs (now well over $100 apiece), the math says you’d need roughly $600 to pull one, let alone the full set of 10 needed to complete your collection.

I’ve opened dozens of booster packs in search of these elusive cards for buyers - at any given time, there are 6-10 different people all looking for the same 10 3D Foils. The second I would pull one - it would already be promised to a buyer. The demand for these cards is unreal, even at a $250-$300 price point. I always felt terrible for the buyers far down on the waiting list, knowing that eventually the supply of booster packs would run dry or become too expensive, meaning they might never get a chance to acquire the cards they were missing for their sets.

When a seller emerged in the marketplace bringing 5-10 different 3D Foils to sell - it was pretty big news in the tight-knit card collecting community. Immediately, I’d send out emails, reddit messages, Youtube comments, etc. to the buyers I knew were missing those cards, advising them to snag them quickly. There were just never enough to go around, we badly needed an influx of new 3D Foils.

Lo and behold, one morning I checked my inbox and noticed a message from a longtime buyer claiming they had found a sheet of not just any Acceleracers cards - but 3D Foils exclusively. No way, I thought. Surely, it has to be a clever photoshop, or a fanmade sheet. I took a closer look at the listing, on Craigslist of all places, based in California. Sure enough - an authentic, fully intact uncut sheet of Acceleracers 3D Foils that looked like it had fallen off of the printing press before it reached the cutting section. I couldn’t believe my eyes. We’ve never seen uncut sheets of Acceleracers cards before, let alone 3D Foils.

I anxiously conferred with my source, and they confirmed they were able to snag the sheet for a cool $50. It turns out that the Craigslist seller worked for a wing of Mattel specializing in trading cards and board games back in the early 2000s, and was part of the Acceleracers card game printing process. (We’re not 100% sure if they worked for Mattel directly, or a company that Mattel outsourced to for printing). Needless to say, during the printing process, they and several other team members were given sheets of cards as a thank-you sort of thing for their work on the project. It’s not uncommon for production teams to be rewarded with small samples of the work.

The team member kept it stashed away for 15+ years until they decided to sell it on Craigslist upon rediscovering the sheet. We’re not entirely sure if they didn’t know the value of what they had, or maybe if they were trying to avoid getting in trouble for releasing something like the sheet, but either way - $50 for an uncut sheet of 3D Foils.

After snagging it, my connection thought on what to do with the sheet - it contained 30 3D Foil cards, 3 of each of the 10. At a $200-$300 per card rate, we pegged the estimated value at $6000-$9000 in total. My source then sent the sheet to me, allowing me to review it on YouTube and see if anyone was interested in buying the sheet whole as a collector’s item, and if not - to have the cards professionally cut and sold to collectors starving for these super rare cards.

I recorded a video on the sheet, hoping to find someone willing to buy it whole, but unfortunately the offers topped out in the $800 range for the sheet, but there were a TON of commenters and emailers offering $200-$300 for the individual cards if they were to be cut. We conferred again and I was commissioned to have professionally cut and sold individually to the buyers desperate for the cards.

And so - under the knife the sheet went. It was laser cut by a local printing company, freeing 30 3D Foil cards that proceeded to sell like hot cakes. I believe the 3 Metro Realms were gone within 48 hours.

Overall - it hurt to see the sheet cut, but unfortunately, there isn’t an Acceleracers museum or anywhere to submit finds like this to. There were plenty of people unhappy with the sheet being cut, but at the end of the day: a one-of-a-kind item was able to be reviewed and documented on YouTube, 30 more 3D Foils entered the marketplace and completed no less than 5 more card collections, and the finder made a solid profit that he then turned to bulking up his Acceleracers collection even more! Sounds like a win-win-win to me, and it also makes you wonder… what other sorts of gems are out there laying dormant, still just waiting to be discovered?

The $9,000 Acceleracers Card Sheet

The Good, the Bad, The Ugly: AR NFTS

The Vision/Goal of ARHub.com