The Hobbit is a single book of about three hundred pages. Peter Jackson turned it into three films, and The Desolation of Smaug is the middle one: the barrels, Lake-town, and Bilbo alone in the dark with the dragon. Cryptozoic's card set follows it closely. This is what a box contains.
The configuration
A hobby box holds 24 packs of 5 cards. The set was released on 13 May 2015.
The 72-card base set is drawn from film stills. Five chase sets branch off it: Character Biographies, Lake-town, Smaug, a Triptych Collage set, and Movie Posters finished with 3D lenticular embellishment.
Who signs
Twenty-seven people signed for this set, and the list reads like a call sheet. Martin Freeman (Bilbo), Richard Armitage (Thorin), Lee Pace (Thranduil), Aidan Turner (Kili), Graham McTavish (Dwalin), Ken Stott (Balin), James Nesbitt (Bofur), Stephen Fry (the Master of Lake-town), Sylvester McCoy (Radagast), Mikael Persbrandt (Beorn) and Manu Bennett (Azog) are among them, with the company of dwarves complete down to Bifur and Bombur.
Two signers come from behind the camera: Andy Serkis, who was second unit director, and Fran Walsh, who co-wrote the films.
The rarest cards
At the top are the Fine Art cards: hand-drawn originals, each one of one. No two exist alike.
Which autographs and chase cards a box contains is random, and no specific signer or card is guaranteed in any single box.
Middle-earth in our catalog
For collectors of the earlier films, we also carry sealed boxes of Decipher's Lord of the Rings trading card game from 2001 to 2004.
See The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug hobby box
Read about the Lord of the Rings trading card game
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