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After yesterday’s 2023 Kakawow/Phantom Disney 100 Years of Wonder: Real or Fake? article there have been some interesting developments. I for example learned that a Chinese license exists, which I’ll explain below. And PSA also started grading these cards and put up an announcement on their Facebook page and on Twitter. This is important, because they wouldn’t want to meddle with licensing affairs if things were unclear.
I still think it was fair to be skeptical, however I’ll also give credit where credit is due, and this release does seem to be officially licensed, in mainland China.
The Chinese License
First thing first, I received this reply from @kakawow_global yesterday when I asked about their licensing agreement. I also asked PSA and Disney themselves, but have gotten no reply so far.
of course, we only made licensed products. pls see the license letter through this link. and also, @PSAcard is accepting our cards for grading now.
@kakawow_global
The link they referred to is https://scrapbox.io/kakawowglobal-02434352/2023_Kakawow_-_Phantom_-_Disney100_Wondrous_Character_Trading_Cards_Checklist_(Official_version).
Via that link you can see a summary of their license agreement, key points are as follows:
- THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY (HONG KONG) LIMITED is the licensor.
- BEIJING ULTIMAPLAY TECHNOLOGY LIMITED is the licensee.
- 70 different creative works/properties are licensed.
- The license is valid for Trading cards and Collectible trading
card albums, Trading card cases. - The license is valid in The People’s Republic of China (excluding Hong Kong S.A.R, Macau S.A.R. and Taiwan
Region). - The license is valid from April 1, 2022 until June 30, 2023.
So far everything seems to check out, however I do not have the means to verify that every company and person named in the license really exist. It also seems plausible that the Hong Kong branch of Disney can obtain licenses from Disney themselves, so that again checks out. Until Disney themselves confirm this release there is however still a small doubt about whether the entire license document itself is official, but it looks like it is.
One important thing to note is that the license is only applicable to mainland China. This also means that @kakawow_global cannot sell this product outside of mainland China, and they also mentioned that already on their Twitter. So it will still be a very limited release, and the only reason people outside mainland China can get their hands on it is because people must have sold the boxes from mainland China to other countries.
The above also means that there cannot legally exist agreements between @kakawow_global and companies or people outside of mainland China involving this product, because the license simply does not allow that.
Is the product worth its money?
I’ll again try to the question of whether this product is worth its money, with this new license information present.
Grading and licensing are not an issue anymore. PSA is grading the cards and only @kakawow_global is forbidden to sell outside of mainland China. Once the cases, boxes or cards have exited mainland China it is fair game to anyone to do whatever they want with their cards.
The big question however is whether this product is worth its money, and especially in the light of the current prices. One can see the following:
- Cases are selling for $5,000+ (on eBay)
- Boxes are selling for $400+ (on eBay)
- /1, /10 and other rare cards are getting sold for $1,000+ (on eBay)
With pretty much none of the previous Disney card releases, for example by Upper Deck, having any substantial value it is hard to imagine that there is this much legit interest in this new product to push the prices this high. Check eBay here to get an idea of what their past releases looked like. The only thing in favor of this set is that the cards are more shiny.
To me at the current prices this very much seems like a pump and dump and a lot of people will be ultimately disappointed. So proceed with caution, especially because the sealed market is completely dominated by flippers because @kakawow_global is not allowed to distribute these cards outside of mainland China and hence they cannot put an MSRP on these boxes to protect their customers. So the only way to obtain these boxes is to buy them from others and you can be sure that everyone wants to get their cut.
On top of that Disney Lorcana and a Disney set from Weiss Schwarz will be available worldwide soon, and especially with those products being a lot more available they will probably be a lot more popular than this product. And if there is anything that drives market prices then it is popularity, scarcity will only play a role much later.
Final words
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