I recently purchased a ton of sealed boxes of TSR Fanstasy Cards and decided to break one open to see what was in it. The boxes give such a vague breakdown of the contents so I decided to pop one open and share some of the info for the few people that might be interested.

Box Title: All New 1993 Series Fantasy Collector Cards, Part 1 TSR 1993, 36 Packs, 12 Cards Per Pack. Includes Shrink and Silver "TSR slanted logo" sticker for tamper proofing.

Card breakdown:
378 Commons (top left picture)
36 Parallel Red Inserts (top middle) - 1 in every pack - There is one for every base card in the set, only difference is the red border.
18 Inserts - 1 of 60 inserts not included in factory sealed sets
*within the 18 inserts here is the breakdown*
14 basic inserts - (top right photo) also the only cards to have color backings. You can see from the two bottom photos the difference between a regular card and a insert
2 Foil cards - (middle left) very nice cards but my scanner won't pick up the shine
1 Sticker - (middle, middle?)
1 Sportflick card (middle right) the only card in the set like this. As you flick the card it turns from a lich to a middle aged man.

Notes: Box breakdown seemed pretty predictable, with the fourth card in every pack having the red parallel card and also having a insert 1:2 packs. Cards are not shuffled well like the latest standard cards, so you will get the first 8 cards in sequential order and then the next 8 will also be in order. None of the base cards have the artists name on them except for ones done by Carol Heyer.

benjoshua wrote:It would have been nice if these were good for something other than just collecting.  I bought a box BITD, organized them and never used them again.  I guess you could use them as photos for monster encounters or NPC encounters, but shuffling through them every time to find what you want to show the players (if you spent an ungodly amount of money collecting a set) wasn't practical.  The art wasn't even that great on many of the cards.  

I think if they had to do it all over again, they would have made a game out of the cards somehow.  Remember, these came out prior to the Pokemon card game in America and Magic:The Gathering was already gaining significant interest....and probably pulling away some D&D gamers.

Yes, I agree with you. My original idea was to get some of the cards signed by the illustrators but the artwork on these cards......they were very uninspiring with the exception of some of the Dark Sun ones.