Card collecting can be an odd hobby. I have collected cards in one arena or another since I was a kid, and my uncle gave me a rubber-banded stack of 1987 Topps baseball. You know, the wooden borders. In the mid-90s I picked up hockey, then eventually some non-sports. So I've seen it all. From a time when jersey cards were rare hits to them being so common you can't give some players away. From a time when cards were hard-signed to when they are all nearly stickers. From before sketchcards to them being readily available in nearly every non-sport release, oftentimes as a box hit.
So while I consider myself a veteran of card collecting, I was a little shocked when someone mentioned the terms "alpha" and "omega" in a Star Wars collector group on Facebook. In the context of the post, it was obvious they were talking about the first and last stamped card. By that, I mean if a card is stamped out of 99, the "alpha" is stamped 1/99. The "omega" wold be the 99/99.
Because card collectors are a strange breed, some will actually pay a little more for one of these. I personally do not, but I also have to wonder if collectors would attach any premium to these stamped cards if they knew that the "alpha" card, stamped 1/99 in this example, is usually the LAST card stamped. Most manufacturers will, essentially, have a setting on their stamping machine that represents the total print run of any given card.
So, again using this example, they would set the stamping machine to 99. The first card gets it's 99/99 stamp, then it goes to 98/99, 97/99 and so on until the "alpha" card of 1/99 is actually the last card. In a sense, the alpha IS the omega, the omega IS the alpha.
