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40th ANNIVERSARY SET (Rittenhouse)
The fictional character of James Bond was created with the publication of Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel "Casino Royale", but his first movie debut came almost a decade later with Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman’s production of "Dr. No" in 1962. Since then, agent 007’s adventures have taken him into space and around the globe, creating a legacy of secret missions, sadistic villains, nasty henchmen, cool spy gadgets created and delivered by Major Boothroyd, aka “Q”, and the well-known glamorous Bond girls. To mark this special event, “Rittenhouse Archives Ltd.” assembled all the action, danger and glamour that occurs in the until now 19 official James Bond movies in to one amazing trading card set. This new trading card series contains only 60 base cards, the first three base cards compile a puzzle that shows the new James Bond 40th anniversary logo. Starting from the fourth card, each movie occupies three cards. The cards are printed on Super-Premium Card Stock.
"40th Anniversary Counter Display Box"
"40th Anniversary Wrapper" The cards were packed by seven (6 cards & 1 game card)in a silver metal foil wrapper, the silver shiny counter display box with embossed 40th anniversary logo contained twenty packs. In each pack they inserted a so called letter or game card. All these cards together created the following text “J A M E S B O N D”. The “D” card depicts a still of Pierce Brosnan and is extremely rare, only forthy “D” cards were printed and these were randomly inserted in 1/5000 packs, and when returned to Rittenhouse it entitled you to all of the 24 autograph cards in the set. The card was returned with the autograph cards, and the top left corner was clipped to void the card and "void" was also written on the reverse of the card twice. This nine part card set is a much seen item on eBay, except for the “D” card of course. In August 2008 a complete 40th Anniversary Master set was offered on eBay for 2850€, no bids were placed. In 2009 Valentines day was very special to someone, the “D” card was sold on eBay for 154€. Another "D" card was auctioned on eBay in August 2009, it was sold for the staggering price of 410,49€. Wow, what an investment. The "Letter Card or Game Card Set" was the first James Bond chase card set created by “Rittenhouse Archives”.
The second chase set exists of nineteen “Bond Tech” cards, also known as the “Bond Extras”. This second chase set was quiet easy to collect, actually the “Bond Extras” were randomly inserted by one in each pack. This chase set will be continued during the release of “Die Another Day”, “Casino Royale” and “Quantum Of Solace”. All these additions will be mentioned in detail later on in this book. The gadgets used by James Bond are pictured on the card, a detailed text about the gadgets is printed on the reverse. The cards are finished with a glossy metal shine and numbered from BE001 thru BE0019. "Bond Extras"
The third level of chase cards is nineteen metal foil cards, again one card for each James Bond movie now depicting the villain or a henchmen, the nineteen “Bond Villains” were randomly packed in 1/2 packs. The cards show pictures of Dr.Julius No, Rosa Klebb, Auric Goldfinger, Emilio Largo, Ernst Stavro Blofeld played by three different actors in three different movies, Dr. Kanaga alias Mr. Big, Francisco Scaramanga, Karl Stromberg, Hugo Drax, Aris Kristatos, Kamal Khan, Max Zorin, Brad Whitaker, Franz Sanchez, Alec Trevelyan, Elliot Carver and Renard. The cards were numbered from BV001 thru BV0019. “Bond Villains”
Just as the “Bond Extras” cards, the above and the following chase set on the Bond Girls will continue with the release of “Die Another Day”, “Casino Royale” and “Quantum Of Solace”. All the chase cards are beautiful designed and finished with the embossed James Bond 40th anniversary logo. The next level of chase cards is a must for every Bond fan, nineteen glamorous Bond Girls, one from each James Bond movie, from “Dr. No” until “The World Is Not Enough”. Among the Bond girls the following actresses appear on the cards; Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder, Daniela Bianchi as Tatiana Romanova, Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, Claudine Auger as Domino Derval, Mie Hama as Kissy Suzuki, Diana Rigg as Tracy Di Vincenzo, Jill St. John as Tiffany Case, Jane Seymour as Solitaire, Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight, Barbara Bach as Major Anya Amasova, Lois Chiles as Dr. Holly Goodhead, Carole Bouquet as Melina Havelock, Maud Adams as Octopussy, Tanya Roberts as Stacey Sutton, Maryam D'Abo as Kara Milovy, Carey Lowell as Pam Bouvier, Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova, Michelle Yeoh as Wai Lin and Denise Richards as Dr. Christmas Jones. The ladies are numbered from BW001 thru BW0019. The Bond Girls were randomly inserted into 1/4 packs. This meant for the poor collector a minimum purchase of at least four boxes and all the luck in the world to get them all. The Bond girls cards do have a very special design, contrary to the normal card design, the cards left side is shaped as a woman’s body holding a gun, very sexy cards if I may say so. Each card displays a full colour picture of the leading Bond girl printed on a background holding some smaller sepia coloured images. The reverse shows a circular picture of the girl and some text explaining her role in the movie. “Bond Girls”
“Rittenhouse Archives Ltd” doesn’t leave the autographed card collectors in the rain, for this new trading card set they created no less than 23 different cards with authentic autographs. These autograph cards are the start for a very expensive but also a very unique collection. The numbering for the autograph cards begins from A01 until A23. The foreseen autographed card A04 carrying an authentic autograph from Chaim Topol wasn’t released at the time and will appear later in another trading card series by the name of “The Quotable James Bond”, but not with the promised autograph from Chaim Topol. Inside each box a small card was inserted with apologies from Rittenhouse for the missing autograph card A04. •
Lois Chiles as Holly Goodhead in "Moonraker"
"Apologies from Rittenhouse Archives Inc." “Autograph Cards 40th Anniversary Style”
In this 40th Anniversary card series the collectors are treated with something never seen before in the James Bond trading card business, three brand new cards titled “From The Archives Costume Cards”. These new cards contain a small piece of clothing worn by Sean Connery, Christopher Walken and Patrick McNee. The card numbering runs from CC1 to CC3. The costume cards CC1 and CC2 are extremely rare and were only distributed by one in six boxes, meaning 1/120 packs.
To store all these precious cards, “Rittenhouse Archives” designed an exclusive 40th Anniversary collectors album. The album cover depicts the 007 Gunlogo covered by a James Bond silhouette surrounded by Bond girls shadows. Placed in the centre, the new 40th Anniversary logo. A must have for every Bond fan. The binder contained fifteen nine pocket sleeves to protect your cards and as a bonus you received the previous mentioned costume card CC3. The card contains a piece of clothing worn by Patrick McNee as Sir Godfrey Tibbett in the James Bond movie “A View To A Kill”. Avid collectors received another precious bonus when they purchased a complete case of trading cards, here again Patrick McNee gets the honour. He personally signed the Case Topper Autograph Card A24 as Sir Godfrey Tibbett in “A View To A Kill”.
For the real die-hard collectors a two card uncut sheet was available, the sheet contained the costume cards CC3 and AC1 (see “Die Another Day”). Personally signed and numbered from 1 to 15 by Steve Charendoff, the founder of Rittenhouse Archives Ltd., this sheet specially designed and only available on the official Rittenhouse Archives website was sold out in a few seconds. The first card is the costume card CC3 that contains an original piece of cloth worn by Patrick McNee in the James Bond movie “A View To A Kill”. The second card is also a costume card, numbered as AC1 and containing a piece of fabric coming from the military outfit worn by Pierce Brosnan in his fourth and last James Bond movie “Die Another day”
Today, promotion is really everything. With that in mind Rittenhouse Archives designed a doubled sided sell sheet containing all the necessary information on the coming card set. Also three different promotion cards were manufactured and numbered as P1, P2 & P3. Promotion card P1 displays a still of Sean Connery in “Dr. No”, P2 has a picture of Roger Moore in “Live And Let Die” and the third card P3 shows Pierce Brosnan in “GoldenEye”. All these nice promotional items are easy to get your hands on trough eBay and other online shops.
The basic cards are the easy ones to get your hands on, simply numbered from 001 to 060 and covering the movies from "Dr No" through "GoldenEye". The first mistake was the logo printed on Timothy Daltons head and the logo upsidedown on card 002. These two mistakes were put to right in 2002 with the release of "The 40th Anniversary Expansion Set" that included also the three plot cards from "Die Another Day". The plot cards for "Casino Royale" were issued in 2007 as a chase set with "The Complete James Bond", and the plot cards for "Quantum of Solace" were included in "The James Bond Archives" issued in 2009. Until now there are no extensions for "SkyFall" or for "SPECTRE". “The Basic Cards”
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BE001
