Two Cards Stood Between Children and a Prize

In one surviving Argentine Star Wars album, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia sit across the top of a page. Darth Vader is underneath Leia. Tarkin and Chewbacca occupy two of the spaces below.

Under Han there is a blue rectangle with a small number in the corner: 88. The card that belongs there is missing. The album is short of just three: 23, 88 and 91.

Two of those numbers have a history of their own.

Star Wars, with somewhere to put the cards

The Argentine Stani issue is usually catalogued as 1977, including in this index. The release chronology is less tidy. Robert Daugherty's collector account places it in 1977-78; Rebelscum's report on Diego and Gabriel Campo's Argentina collecting panel dates the cards to 1978. That panel also places the film's Argentine opening on Christmas Day 1977.

The cards had an album waiting for them. The collection combined 66 main cards with 26 additional cards, and the promotion also included separate pieces for a large picture puzzle. Completing the numbered run meant finding 92 cards. Completing every part of the product meant paying attention to the extras, too.

Daugherty describes another difference within the set: numbers 1 to 66 were printed on very thin paper, while 67 to 92 used thicker card stock. The supplementary cards adapted images that Topps had used for stickers. Stani gave those pictures a different job.

Two sections, two difficult cards

According to Daugherty, Stani offered prizes for completing either the main album or its supplement. Number 23 was the difficult card in the first section. Number 88 was the difficult card in the second. Collectors came to call them prize cards because finding one removed the principal obstacle to finishing the relevant section.

That is collector testimony from the owner of a complete set, recorded in his PSA Set Registry notes.

The pictures themselves give little away.

Number 23 shows Luke and Obi-Wan with C-3PO, framed by blue borders and white stars. Its grading label identifies the scene as See-Threepio Is Injured. Number 88 depicts a Tusken Raider. Neither subject explains why these particular numbers became so difficult.

Their place in the album does.

The economics of one missing number

A completion prize creates a straightforward problem for the company offering it. Every completed album can mean another reward to supply.

Restrict one essential card and you can limit the number of complete albums while distributing large quantities of everything else. The rare card becomes the controlling number. Printing more copies of the other 65 cards would do nothing to help a child whose only gap was number 23.

That makes deliberate restriction a plausible explanation for Stani's two difficult cards. It also gives this story its obvious question: were they scarce because the promotion needed them to be?

We have not located production records, an uncut sheet analysis or original distribution figures that settle that question. The surviving collector accounts establish the cards' reputation and describe the prize connection. They do not establish how many copies Stani printed, or prove that the company deliberately restricted them.

The distinction matters. A sensible explanation can become accepted history through repetition long before anyone finds the paperwork.

The difficulty was already well known

The reputation extends beyond one collector's notes. When Rebelscum covered the Campos' presentation at Star Wars Celebration Chicago in April 2019, its account specifically singled out numbers 23 and 88 as exceptionally difficult to find. The two numbers were already part of the story specialists told about Argentine Star Wars collecting.

What this index sees is consistent with that, though on a small sample. Across the Stani cards tracked here we hold classes spanning roughly a third of the numbered run, and for number 88 there is exactly one, graded PSA 1. One class at the bottom of the scale is not a population study, but it is not nothing either.

The almost-complete album is a useful illustration of the same reputation. It is still only one album. Its empty spaces cannot tell us the print run, and its missing number 91 is a reminder that any individual collection can have ordinary gaps as well as famous ones.

The album left its mark

Look closely at the empty spaces in such an album and there are instructions about where to apply glue. Attaching the cards was part of using the product as intended.

That has consequences nearly half a century later. A card may have survived because somebody kept the album, yet separating it from the page can leave paper stuck to the back or remove part of its surface. A clean-looking front tells only part of the condition story.

Daugherty's gallery includes a particularly clear example: the back of a number 88 variant with substantial patches of paper still attached. His accompanying note identifies it as having been removed from the supplement.

For anyone examining a loose Stani card, the reverse deserves as much attention as the picture. Adhesive residue, paper remnants and surface loss can explain an otherwise puzzling grade.

Number 88 has more than one face

There is a further complication for anyone learning this set from photographs.

Daugherty's gallery shows two distinct number 88 designs. One is a close portrait of the Tusken Raider, surrounded by yellow against a reddish background. The other shows the figure holding its weapon across its body, with a green outline against a starry background. Both carry the number 88.

Daugherty associates the second design with a later relaunch, although his gallery notes qualify that dating. The photographs establish the different designs more firmly than they establish the precise release sequence.

Record which version you are looking at. The number alone does not describe the whole card.

What completion means now

For a collector building Stani today, the useful questions are concrete. Does the collection include both numbered sections? Are the separate puzzle pieces present? Which number 88 is included? Are the cards loose, still attached, or removed from an album?

Those details make an almost complete description meaningful. A stack missing two cards can be a very different collecting project depending on which two they are.

The original prizes have become a footnote. The difficult cards have become the reward. A blue rectangle on an old album page can still explain why.

This index includes Stani alongside the other vintage Star Wars issues, card by card and grade by grade. You can read how we work the numbers out.

Sources