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Mislabelled Rarities in Star Trek CCG Second Edition

In the course of researching rarity information for the Tenth Anniversary celebration, I made the belated discovery of mislabelled rarities on the Second Edition base set cards. Specifically, every card labelled "R" for Rare should in fact be labelled "UR" for Ultra-Rare. This was determined by comparison to previous (First Edition) sets printed on 121-card press sheets, such as Alternate Universe and The Motion Pictures.

In both these cases as well as many others, the so-called "Rare" press sheet contained 40-50 "R" cards which each appeared two or three times on the sheet – and one card which appeared only once on that sheet, which was labelled "UR" for Ultra-Rare, on card lists as well as on the card itself (after we started labelling rarities on the cards).

How does this compare to Second Edition Premiere? Like the UR Future Enterprise, each of the 121 cards on the so-called "Rare" press sheet appears only once on that sheet. Clearly, every one of those cards, labelled "R", is actually an Ultra-Rare and should have been labelled as such.

"I'm totally embarrassed to think that we could have overlooked such an obvious – and monumental – gaffe in assigning rarities to the Second Edition cards," said lead designer Evan Lorentz. "But rest assured that this does not affect rarity labelling on subsequent Second Edition sets. In Necessary Evil, for example, the 60 rare cards each appear twice on the press sheet, well within our parameters for "Rare" cards."

But what does this mean for the other base set press sheets – the commons and uncommons? According to designer Brad DeFruiter, "Since these sheets had a similar layout – 121 cards each appearing only once on the sheet – I guess the cards really should have been labelled UU (Ultra-Uncommon) and UC (Ultra-Common). Who knew?"

Sources at major gaming magazines indicated that they are considering how best to handle the numerous price guide changes necessitated by the abrupt increase in rarity of an entire set of cards.

There are no plans to reprint the set with revised collector's info.

Kathy (Major Rakal) McCracken
Star Trek CCG April Fool's Day Officer and Tal Shiar Agent

April 1, 2004