Greninja Star from ‘Celebrations’ Elite Trainer Box Revealed!

Greninja ☆ from Celebrations has just been revealed! It will be included in the set’s Elite Trainer Box and Pokemon Center version. Images of the Pokemon Center version were just released:

The card was partially revealed during a trade show in July. As we already knew, it can’t be used in official tournaments.

Pokemon ☆ first appeared in 2004’s EX Team Rocket Returns and continued until 2007’s EX Power Keepers.

Looks like the box itself is differently made from the normal boxes, and since the boosters have 4 cards each, you get extra.
 
Huh, I still want it but the pose is honestly kind of awkward
I think it's pretty accurate to the spirit of the original Gold Stars... I'm baffled at the price Rayquaza Star commands because he's in such a weird position.
 
I love that they brought back the artist who did all the old Gold Star cards for this- Really helps make it the final piece to this collection of cards.
 
You know what? I'm livid. After hours of errors, I was actually able to get one of these ETB's in my cart and enter my shipping and billing information about an hour and a half ago. But when I got to the last screen to finalize everything, the preorder button gave me errors. And then I pressed it too many times. And then their state of the art website thought I was a bot. And now I'm blocked.

The only thing available to "remedy" this was to send some vague support ticket. But the last one I sent didn't get a reply until about two weeks later. Golly! I'm sure glad that me preordering a single product is left up to low odds of getting it now! Because Pokemon couldn't be bothered to fix their website for a KNOWN issue throughout this year. This is absolutely unacceptable.
 
Shoutout to all the bots that managed to snag this before I could
You know what, I'm STARTING to wonder how much of this is still bots and how much of this is still people who are rushing to grab the box because of all the people telling them that they have to race against the clock to beat the bots.
You know what? I'm livid. After hours of errors, I was actually able to get one of these ETB's in my cart and enter my shipping and billing information about an hour and a half ago. But when I got to the last screen to finalize everything, the preorder button gave me errors. And then I pressed it too many times. And then their state of the art website thought I was a bot. And now I'm blocked.

The only thing available to "remedy" this was to send some vague support ticket. But the last one I sent didn't get a reply until about two weeks later. Golly! I'm sure glad that me preordering a single product is left up to low odds of getting it now! Because Pokemon couldn't be bothered to fix their website for a KNOWN issue throughout this year. This is absolutely unacceptable.
You're right. That is frustrating, and I had a similar experience when I ordered a Champions Path Circhester Pin Collection off of GameStop and it never arrived and I eventually had to cancel my order. And I never did get another box, and guess what? I afterwards decided that I was fine with spending that money on something else. But for those of you who have failed yet again to snag a Pokémon TCG product that you've had your eyes on and have not come to the same decision that I have, I have a piece of encouragement. Pokémon Center's website may be extremely glitchy, but at least they're trying to counter the bots issue. AND they've been printing more cards this year than any previous year DESPITE the COVID regulations (https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billion-cards-during-pandemic), which shows that they're trying to get product to the consumers. And so far even those record breaking numbers haven't been enough. But as COVID has cooled down considerably throughout much of the world, and as the 25th anniversary of Pokémon winds down, so too will much of the hype fade away. We've also seen several explicit instances of them REPRINTING older sets. (https://www.pokebeach.com/2020/11/new-cosmic-eclipse-print-run-next-year-in-line-with-japan, plus reprint runs of Ultra Prism, Unbroken Bonds, and Hidden Fates which are also mentioned in the article). Plus, as WPM has mentioned several times, Pokémon is a business, and businesses want to make money. The day will come when Pokémon begins to roll out new waves of all the products that have been held from us by scalpers.
In other words:
They will be back, and in greater numbers.png
(The cards, that is; not the scalpers.)
 
You're right. That is frustrating, and I had a similar experience when I ordered a Champions Path Circhester Pin Collection off of GameStop and it never arrived and I eventually had to cancel my order. And I never did get another box, and guess what? I afterwards decided that I was fine with spending that money on something else. But for those of you who have failed yet again to snag a Pokémon TCG product that you've had your eyes on and have not come to the same decision that I have, I have a piece of encouragement. Pokémon Center's website may be extremely glitchy, but at least they're trying to counter the bots issue. AND they've been printing more cards this year than any previous year DESPITE the COVID regulations (https://www.pokebeach.com/2021/06/pokemon-tcg-sold-3-7-billion-cards-during-pandemic), which shows that they're trying to get product to the consumers. And so far even those record breaking numbers haven't been enough. But as COVID has cooled down considerably throughout much of the world, and as the 25th anniversary of Pokémon winds down, so too will much of the hype fade away. We've also seen several explicit instances of them REPRINTING older sets. (https://www.pokebeach.com/2020/11/new-cosmic-eclipse-print-run-next-year-in-line-with-japan, plus reprint runs of Ultra Prism, Unbroken Bonds, and Hidden Fates which are also mentioned in the article). Plus, as WPM has mentioned several times, Pokémon is a business, and businesses want to make money. The day will come when Pokémon begins to roll out new waves of all the products that have been held from us by scalpers.
In other words:
View attachment 16096
(The cards, that is; not the scalpers.)
I was talking about the Pokemon Center website being a broken dumpster fire, not product availability and reprints. Though, who knows! Maybe there's an additional issue of product availability and a lack of foresight on top of their known website traffic capacity issue! It seems I'm no longer blocked, my cart still recognizes that I have the ETB in it, and I can get to the last screen again, but I still get errors and the availability now says out of stock at the checkout screen. So glad I was erroneously blocked somewhere in between it being available and out of stock.

I fail to see why this capacity issue still happens for a billion dollar company in the 8 months to a year that this has been an issue. And I really fail to see why these are not OPEN preorders so that TPCi knows how much product to make and every customer gets what they want. You can be optimistic all you want, but there's no excuse for any of this. It's just a collection of terrible decisions and a lack of care for their customers.
 
I was talking about the Pokemon Center website being a broken dumpster fire, not product availability and reprints. Though, who knows! Maybe there's an additional issue of product availability and a lack of foresight on top of their known website traffic capacity issue! It seems I'm no longer blocked, my cart still recognizes that I have the ETB in it, and I can get to the last screen again, but I still get errors and the availability now says out of stock at the checkout screen. So glad I was erroneously blocked somewhere in between it being available and out of stock.

I fail to see why this capacity issue still happens for a billion dollar company in the 8 months to a year that this has been an issue. And I really fail to see why these are not OPEN preorders so that TPCi knows how much product to make and every customer gets what they want. You can be optimistic all you want, but there's no excuse for any of this. It's just a collection of terrible decisions and a lack of care for their customers.
I partially blame it on the lack of Captchas (especially those that are more hands-on, IIRC the ones that are the usual type-what’s-on-the-screen captchas CAN be cracked by bots) and the lack of ID verifications involved with the ordering process, I was able to file an order containing two ETBs with only one minor hiccup near the end.

That said, while the PC-exclusive ones are currently unavailable (and possibly sold out, the PC-exclusive Evolving Skies and Chilling Reign ETBs never came back once they did) the regular Celebrations ETBs should be more commonplace after a few months like the SHF ETBs did.
 
I have a High reason to believe that the pokemon celebrations "Lance Charizard" and "Dark Sylveon" Will be available at GameStop. If you look at the available products for celebrations on GameStop you see the Mini Tins, ETB, Memories Collection, Zacian Box, and (Pikachu V-Union Box.) If you go into the search bar after clicking the V-Union box you can scroll to the end of the link and see a series of numbers that say (11150635) by typing the next number below it (11150634) nothing will show up. Then type it again (11150633). Then again (11150632) this will give you the ETB. Then from there if you keep repeating the process it will show all of the other Celebrations products next to each other. So I believe that those two empty slots can fit the exclusive tins. If they really even are exclusives.
 
And I really fail to see why these are not OPEN preorders so that TPCi knows how much product to make and every customer gets what they want.
You make a good point about Open Preorders, but given that TPCI is ALREADY spinning its wheels to try and get cards off the printing press (as I previously mentioned), hitting record printing numbers to no avail, I extremely doubt that Pokémon would be able to print enough boxes in one round to put off scalpers AND satisfy all the customer requests. The backlog would still be significant, with the difference that the frustration of missing out would be replaced by the frustration of waiting indefinitely. Although, perhaps scalping wouldn't exist in an open preorder system since products would be made to demand?
Regardless, you know who the pre-order system DOESN'T satisfy? Kids. Kids who don't play the TCG competitively, know where to find the best product or how to get the best value, but just collect casually. Kids, who choose what cards they want to collect based off of simple personal preferences and not off of a long experience with the franchise or because a set is "rare" or "high value." Kids, who may give their parents a birthday or Christmas wishlist with a few TCG products on them, never suspecting that those products will not be readily available. The best case scenario for the small fry of the Pokémon universe is more product appearing on store shelves (and on websites for retailers like Target and Amazon), and as for the store shelves, we've seen some improvements lately.
It's just a collection of terrible decisions and a lack of care for their customers.
I wouldn't say they don't care about their customers. I've ordered off of Pokémon Center several times and always gotten good results.

As I mentioned before, businesses want to make money, and if too many people slip out of the Pokémon market, TPCI is going to want to try and get them back. Recently Pokémon GO players boycotted the game because Pokestop ranges were reduced to what they were before COVID; now they are as large as they were during the pandemic, presumably to stay that way indefinitely. Granted that was Niantic and not Pokémon GO. TPCI doesn't want to lose a significant portion of customers, and TPCI wants to make money, so TPCI is going to want to print as much product as can be sold and ensure that it gets into the hands of customers.

As for the current dilemna, all I can say is, the product is out of stock now, and unfortunately all that remains to be done is to wait. Waiting never comes easy; I know that myself. As I mentioned before, I once ordered the Champion's Path Special Pin Collection [Circhester] on GameStop and had to cancel the order when it never arrived. Now, if I want to, I can go to my local target and buy a couple of Dubwool V boxes and order a Lapras promo (which was the main draw of that specific collection) off of TCGPLAYER for $2.50 if I really want to get the Champion's Path experience. And guess what? I'm perfectly fine without that option. But it's there if I'm interested. This is a major inconvenience, and one might reasonably say an outrage, but it isn't the last opportunity to open a Celebrations Elite Trainer Box. Who knows? You MIGHT even find the ordinary one in-store on release date.
Couldn't you still get this Greninja in a booster pack?
No, because it's a PROMO, but for all we know the PROMO might sell for $5 (or it might sell for $15. It's too early to know how much any of the cards will retail for).
 
I have a High reason to believe that the pokemon celebrations "Lance Charizard" and "Dark Sylveon" Will be available at GameStop. If you look at the available products for celebrations on GameStop you see the Mini Tins, ETB, Memories Collection, Zacian Box, and (Pikachu V-Union Box.) If you go into the search bar after clicking the V-Union box you can scroll to the end of the link and see a series of numbers that say (11150635) by typing the next number below it (11150634) nothing will show up. Then type it again (11150633). Then again (11150632) this will give you the ETB. Then from there if you keep repeating the process it will show all of the other Celebrations products next to each other. So I believe that those two empty slots can fit the exclusive tins. If they really even are exclusives.
GameStop doesn’t guarantee tin designs when you order ’em so only one of those listings could be for the tins.
 
The hype is real. I can't remember the last time a set was this exciting.
I've been saying the same thing. I don't think i've been this excited for pokemon since Fossil came out. I don't know why. But im am thoroughly excited for this. I've allocated $1500-2000 just for this set.