One of my favorite trading card sets of all time was Topps Star Wars Galaxy 4 that was released early in 2009. On its surface, this was a normal Star Wars card set with standard sketch cards, base, and chase cards.
However, this set was the first to feature diecut sketch cards. The diecut shapes for this set were in the shape of Darth Vader and Stormtrooper helmets. The art was also not your standard sketch card art, by that I mean the art was largely by artists who up until that point had never appeared in sketch card sets. A lot of this guys were known in the urban vinyl toy art market, and others were known for their graffiti work.
One artist that got the most attention from me was KaToPe who is a Japanese artist that is known mostly for his toy art work for Gargamel studios. He did a lot of cool work for this set (approximately 106 cards). I managed to nab nearly 20 of them.
My favorite is probably the Angel Bird that appears at the top of this post, but he did a lot of cool stuff. I will post a few more of his cards that I picked up below, and I might post even more stuff from my KaToPe collection in future posts if anyone is interested. I ended up picking up quite a few of his original art works as well as his sketch cards he did for the Star Wars Galaxy 4 set.
Here are a few other cool ones:
Incidentally, KaToPe was also set to appear in the Star Wars Galaxy 5 set, but unfortunately those cards were never inserted! He did have a few sketch cards show up in the 2010 Art Hustle Series 1 set though. Hopefully, KaToPe returns to doing sketch cards in the future… it has been too long!
Nonsports Trading Card Talk 