Last night, I fell into a deep hole. A hole started out of curiosity, like many of our original pieces here at Retro Dodo. I was researching vintrage trading cards from the 90s and 2000s that featured iconic video game characters.
Many I already knew about, such as Nintendo Game Pack cards that feature stickers and scratch cards based on levels and characters from video games such as The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario, Punch Out and Double Dragon, alongside Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat cards that I ended up buying (don't tell my fiancée).
After two hours of digging in the middle of the night, I ran across a trading card release that I had never heard of, featuring one of my favourite retro game characters of my childhood, Crash Bandicoot. These were not just any trading cards; these were insanely rare cards released in the 2000s that only came to fruition in 2024 after somebody posted an image to Reddit showcasing a booster box filled with Crash Bandicoot collectable cards, officially called "Jr. Sense Crash Bandicoot Trading Cards", released in the year 2000, exclusive to the USA.
I had never seen these, nor had many Crash Bandicoot enthusiasts, until last year. So I had to find out more about them, so I spoke to the very person who shared the image of the only known Jr. Sense Crash Bandicoot Trading Cards. It turns out Stephen still has them, and unfortunately, knows only limited information about their release.
Who made them?
This set of trading cards was originally made in South Korea by a company called Junior Sense Co. Ltd (주니어센스 /) in 2000, and distribution is unknown at this moment in time. What we do know is that they were not widely released at all, and there's no history of them being listed at popular retailers, many guessing that they were possibly given out at Universal Theme Parks in 2000, who has the Crash Bandicoot license at the time. There is Universal branding on the cards too, suggesting that Universal wanted to sell them or hand them out as promotional cards at their theme parks.
Stephen obtained this box from a distributor who held onto a single unit since 2000, making it an incredibly rare product, with the cards rarely making their way onto the secondary market and are now sought after by trading card enthusiasts and fans of the marsupial. Who knows when and if these will show up again?
What's absurd is that I can find no trace of them being advertised; they don't feature on any product catalogues of trading card retailers during the time, making me believe these were either handed out in person or distributed to a small handful of toy retailers near the parks during the time. I say this because other rare Crash Bandicoot items were given out at Universal Parks, such as a Cookie Jar and a plush of Crash with the same limited history.
How many cards are in the set?
The set contains 24 "Crystal Crash cards" to collect, all labelled CC-01 to CC-24 and each featuring unique rarities depending on the gem at the bottom right corner of each card. The rarities are: Ruby, Sapphire, Diamond, Emerald and Warped (being the rarest).
The cards themselves mainly featured illustrations and artwork from the video games, which were developed by Naughty Dog at the time, showcasing nostalgic moments, weapons and scenes that many of us loved as kids and adults to this day.
The back of the cards will often feature closeups, and more information about the card name, the card number and a character profile, with Jr. Sense logos and small print that states that they were made by Junior Sense Corp in New York. This suggests that even though they were likely made in South Korea, they were distributed by their subsidiary company, which had an HQ in New York during the time.
Going back to the collection, the main set consisted of 24 cards to collect, but there were also additional art cards to collect featuring even more illustrations of Crash and co. These art cards had backs that connect together to create iconic pieces of video game art, which we are familiar with to this day.
Though it is unclear how many of these there are to collect, as Stephen is the only known person to have opened a box, and there's no indication or sheet of paper that comes with the box to suggest how many art cards there are to collect. That said, he has no odd one out, so to speak, so perhaps a booster box features the complete card list, which would make sense and was common in the 2000s.
As of right now, this is all I know about these cards, becoming likely one of the rarest Crash Bandicoot collectables on the market, with very little data available about them. Let's hope Stephen and other collectors who have these somewhere can protect them and potentially archive them for future Crash fans to discover.
It's stories like this that really excite me, and why I love doing what I do. Things like this I never knew existed, and the thrill of uncovering them was hopefully reciprocated in this article. Should these ever come to fruition on a secondary market, I'll try my hardest to get hold of them, to not only document for you, but to archive them myself.
If you have any extra information on these cards, or even happy to own them, please do get in touch, we have many questions that we'd love to share with our community! Happy collecting, folks.
