I had it all planned out on how I would collect all of Golden Child's photocards and special photos from their latest album Re-boot, however my plan quickly backfired when Kpoptown "forgot" to send me 2 normal albums and said they would resend them but never did (that was over two weeks ago). Furthermore, hardly anyone is trading or selling the photocards or special cards. I haven't seen anyone selling the deluxe special photos and with the deluxe albums out of stock online, I'm starting to lose hope in completing this collection.
Prior to this haul, I had 3 Deluxe and 3 Normal copies of Re-boot in my possession.
Choice Music had a Cyber Monday sale where I ordered 3 Deluxe and 2 Normal, however I'm still waiting for this to be shipped. I learned that there are two different systems between Choice's physical store and online store, hence there are price differences and inventory differences. The same applies to Music Plaza.
My brother visited Music Plaza on December 7th and found these treasures for me: 1st Look Vol. 186 (featuring Golden Child), Lovelyz in Winter World 3 Kihno Video, and Golden Child's normal version of Re-boot. The worker confirmed that there were only 2 copies of the normal version in stock, and the deluxe version was sold out. I'll have future posts about the magazine and Kihno.
I really wanted to cap my brother's Re-boot buying spree to just 1 Deluxe and 3 Normals for this haul, but then at Choice we had a revelation: for the normal version, you can actually partially see the top and right edges of the special photo.
Because of this, we compared the special photos I already have along with what I could find online (which was quite hard; I found all but Daeyeol's). For example, Seungmin is the only one with red on the edge, so it was obvious that the first copy has his special photo. The others are much harder to see though, and it also depends on how far in the special photo is placed within the folder. I felt horrible figuring this out since it should be randomized, however I was only going to buy one more copy at Choice when now I got four more copies at Choice; so in the end because of this, I bought more copies.
My brother looked at the 2 sealed Normals he purchased at Music Plaza; one was dark blue all around, so it could either be Tag, Jaehyun, or Daeyeol (as we didn't know how his looks like); the second was light blue in the left corner, then white all around. The second had blue in the top left, so we thought it could be Y, Jibeom, or Donghyun. After my brother came back, we opened the albums together to see how well we did with our selections. The first ended up being Daeyeol (mystery solved on how his special photo looks like!) with the Y photocard and the second was the Donghyun special photo with the Joochan photocard. So far, Donghyun and Y are duplicates for me.
For the 4 Normals from Choice, we opened the albums in order of confidence. We knew for sure the first album had the Seungmin special photo; it also came with the Seungmin photocard. The second album had dark blue at the top left, top right, and all along the right; we figured it was Y, and it ended up being Y with the Seungmin photocard. For the third album we guessed it was Joochan, and it ended up being Joochan with the Y photocard. And lastly we were debating if this would be Jibeom or Donghyun, and it ended up being Donghyun with the Bomin photocard. Now I have a duplicate Seungmin photocard, and two duplicate Y photocards and Donghyun special photos.
Choice had a total of 6 Normals and 2 Deluxes in stock (some were in the back), and I ended up with 4 Normals and 1 Deluxe. Here is my pull for the Deluxe; now of course for this version it's completely unknown, so I'm relieved I pulled someone I didn't already have.
Currently for the Deluxe special photos, I have Y, Tag, Jibeom, and Joochan.
For the Normal special photos, I have Daeyeol, Y, Tag, Seungmin, Donghyun (x3), Joochan, and Bomin.
For the Normal photocards, I have Y (x3), Jangjun, Seungmin (x2), Jaehyun, Joochan, and Bomin.
Reflecting on all of this (having 9 Normal albums, 7/10 special photos, and 6/10 photocards), I figured that I really shouldn't keep the 2 Normals I had ordered from Choice. I called them and they happily modified my order, including the shipping cost. I'm thankful that they're pretty backed up in shipping out their Cyber Monday orders. Once my 3 Deluxes arrive, I'll update this post with my pulls.
Update: I continued calling Choice Music about my order, and eventually on December 18th they said that their shipment of Deluxes never came through, and they refunded me. While they were quite friendly, it was honestly really frustrating that they were selling albums that they never had in stock (and the site did say "in stock", not "preorder"). And of course they have no more Deluxes in store. At this point, I think it's a sign that it'll be almost impossible to collect all the Deluxe special photos!
Prior to this haul, I had 3 Deluxe and 3 Normal copies of Re-boot in my possession.
Choice Music had a Cyber Monday sale where I ordered 3 Deluxe and 2 Normal, however I'm still waiting for this to be shipped. I learned that there are two different systems between Choice's physical store and online store, hence there are price differences and inventory differences. The same applies to Music Plaza.
Reflecting on all of this (having 9 Normal albums, 7/10 special photos, and 6/10 photocards), I figured that I really shouldn't keep the 2 Normals I had ordered from Choice. I called them and they happily modified my order, including the shipping cost. I'm thankful that they're pretty backed up in shipping out their Cyber Monday orders. Once my 3 Deluxes arrive, I'll update this post with my pulls.
Update: I continued calling Choice Music about my order, and eventually on December 18th they said that their shipment of Deluxes never came through, and they refunded me. While they were quite friendly, it was honestly really frustrating that they were selling albums that they never had in stock (and the site did say "in stock", not "preorder"). And of course they have no more Deluxes in store. At this point, I think it's a sign that it'll be almost impossible to collect all the Deluxe special photos!
No comments:
Post a Comment