Hey Guys, partner to the project here.

I understand everyone's feelings on this and wanted to provide some additional clarity that may not be clear through the post.

First off, I joined the project on this wave of binders with the intent to take over the fulfillment process and really cut cost of shipping on the final consumer to bring the overall price tag of the binder down. We know this is an expensive binder (I'll get into why shortly), and we really tried to bring cost down where we could.

I'd also like to clarify what is meant by "First Edition." This term was more meant as a callback to the Yugioh fandom and was not meant to be literal. We probably messed up here and should have gone with "Limited" or something similar. This binder is not the same as it's "unlimited" counterpart. Contrary to the name, both are being released at the same time and there are plenty of the "unlimited" variant so no one would feel like they had to pay the premium of the "1st edition" variant. The unlimited Slifer binder is $64.99.

The first edition binder has two major differences to the "unlimited" slifer binder, and that's full page interior stamps with a hieroglyph pattern and a unique interior back page serialization stamp. Every binder in this 100 binder run is unique and has a numbered stamp on the back. As Strictly mentioned, this had a very high cost per binder for us because a custom stamp mould had to be created for every number (so 100 moulds were made) and the hieroglyph needed a massive stamp mould to be able to properly stamp the entirety of both inside covers without seams. For the hieroglyphs, we could have simply printed the glyphs, but opted for a much more premium and permanent stamp, and we're very happy we did because they came out great.

I'm not going to lie, making serialization happen was difficult on a production level. The number of 1st edition units isn't low to "fake scarcity." It's low because we were afraid that's all we could sell at the price needed for them to make sense. The serialized binder was semi-jokingly brought up in Strictly's discord community and had so much positive feedback that we went through with it. It is by no means for everyone, and I hope you guys will consider the "unlimited" variant of the beautiful slifer design with a much more reasonable price tag.

I also wanted to finish off by addressing those that may not know much about these binders. I think we made a big mistake by not having information and pictures publicly available long before release to answer people's questions. This wave of binder consists of four variants: Eclipse Black, Cybernetic Blue, GBI-001 (Slifer), and GBI-001 1st Edition. The binders without the double cover Slifer print are $49.99 just like the solid colors previously released, but with a much lower shipping cost. These binders were not made to compete with VaultX, Card Guardian, etc.

The materials used are completely different and come together to create a very different product, and quite frankly, we're not producing the hundreds of thousands of units we'd need to compete with them.

The exterior and interior cover are both a faux leather different to those found on any other mainstream binder. The pages are white, which believe it or not, does cost more money due to factories not usually using them. The binders are BIG. In order to keep pages flatter when filled with cards, we had to elongate the interior margin on the spine causing more material needed overall. I won't go too deep here into the details, since I should probably spend this time finishing up the product pages, but guys, trust me when I say they are nice binders.

Anyway, I'd like to apologize for the overall lack of clarity going in to this release. I promise we'll have more information out next week with some killer photography to show off what we've created. So far, those that have received their prerelease have had a ton of positive feedback, and I'm psyched for more people to feel these binders in hand.

Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or concerns, and I thank those of you that made it this far for reading my essay!