For about 40 years, I could have sworn that I used to buy packs of Pac-Man trading cards that allowed you to play a rudimentary version of the arcade game, like a lottery scratch card.

I also distinctly recall having cards based on the barely interactive – but beautifully animated – Laserdisc-based arcade game Dragon’s Lair, though these also seemed to have been largely forgotten in pop culture circles.

Yet today, thanks to a stall at the London Card Show – which, confusingly, is in Surrey, not London – I was able to get my hands on packs of each type of these trading cards.

I hadn’t at all remembered that the Dragon’s Lair cards shared the same metallic silver, scratch-off interactive gimmick that the Pac-Man cards had – but we are talking at least 40 years having passed since I last saw these!

It’s hilarious to think that, with the choice of which silver elements to rub off to ‘win’ the sort-of mini game on the Dragon’s Lair cards, they may be more interactive than the game they’re based on!

So, these cards are still in their packs, stick of gun and all, as you can see. They’ve survived for almost as long as I’ve been alive; it seems like it’d be sacrilege to open them now.

So for now, I’m content to have these as a reminder of the fact that I hadn’t simply dreamt up weird, pseudo-interactive trading cards based on video games.

They’re also a testament to the long lasting and powerful feelings that nostalgia can drum up; hunting for these amidst packs of weird trading card sets – boy, it really seems like every random, short lived 90s comic book had a trading card series to accompany it, no matter how obscure – I was transported back in time.

If only the cost of the packs hadn’t shot up so much; it was certainly more than the pennies I would have originally paid for them in the early 80s!

Despite lots of exciting stuff seen and discussed at the London Card Show, these two packs were the highlight of my day.

They’re perhaps one of the highlights of my year so far, given how long I’ve kept the memories of these things tucked away in my mind.

Maybe one day I’ll give in to temptation and open them.

But today is not that day.