Water Pokémon Master
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‘Brilliant Stars’ is February’s English Pokemon TCG Set!
- Thread starter Water Pokémon Master
- Start date
Great, cant wait to see how many cards this set ends up being. I think im just about done with Pokemon cards now, its just got so expensive this past year and coupled with god awful pull rates makes it completely unrealistic to collect. All these secret rares are just near impossible to pull, its becoming such a cash grab, and im working full time with good income, must be awful for children who collect. I feel im no longer getting any fun from Pokemon cards, let alone value for my money, it really makes me quite sad. Also having to actually chase down product because its its such high demand, makes it a full time job just trying to get hold of product.
Won’t this be one of the smaller sets in the SSH block? At least it isn’t as big as Fusion Strike. The whole set will likely be low 200s or high 190s which isn’t too shabby. Could be a lot worse.
It's 172 card that's not bad guys
I haven't been able to buy a Pokémon in a while, some of the fact due to money, but mostly lack of product in stock. I really wish Pokémon would mass produce celebrations or a newer set like they mass produced evolutions...
Genuine question- Have you considered just shopping for singles you like? I've been doing that for years, and it's made the hobby a lot more chill and fun just filling out binders of older cards I enjoy getting.
I've noticed nowadays, it's less about the packs being fun (because they aren't fun anymore lol), but rather sort of making your own fun and enjoying the cards you like. There's frankly way too much with modern TCG stuff (Gen 7 and 8, to me) going on, so I'm never going to seriously collect it. So I just get singles of whatever I enjoy, and more seriously collect older generations. It's made the hobby a lot more geared towards my own interests rather than having to suffer through the not fun parts of it.
So maybe, consider doing that. Find what you enjoy most. It's still a real pain to know that products are just not fun anymore, and I'm a huge proponent for Pokemon changing the formula of pulls and set sizes (But they never will. lol) but as of right now, it's just a lot more chill knowing hey, I don't really want to participate in this new-fangled overload of cards. I just kind of enjoy collecting what I collect, getting a few singles here and there, filling out little collection goals of my own.
I suggest looking into that for anyone who hasn't considered that before. It's a lot more fun and cost-effective.
Before Secret Rares, it will total to more than that.
Yeah i have been thinking about buying singles, problem is many of the alt rares, using Evolving Skies as example, are upwards of £40-£50 a pop and double that and more for the really rare alt arts. As much as i hate the idea of spending £40+ on an ETB and potentially only getting like £5 worth of cards, spending £40+ on one single card, i struggle to justify it. Doesnt help that Evolving Skies has been so under printed prices are ridiculous. Im sure they are doing there best but Pokemon really need to print more podruct to try and keep up with demand.
I mainly collected back in DPPt, HG/SS era and 4th gen with Sinnoh among my favorite times in my pokemon fandom. I have decided to go back to the roots and sell most of my modern cards to fund my quest to complete some of the 4th gen sets. I heavanly dislike the Rare > Ultra Rare > Secret Rare > Full Art > Secret Art mayhem TPCi has been pushing the last few years and it makes me dislike collecting modern cards, that being said, Arceus is my favorite and I am aiming to complete this set whatever it must cost. rip wallet.
Klinger Vmax has been revealed to have the F block regulation mark, so I don’t think Vmaxs will be gone, the same way GX’s weren’t erased when Tag Teams came out.
I'd give anything to go back to BW/XY size sets, with their lower amounts of high rarity cards
Entire BW block EX+ rarity total: 156 including Legendary Treasures Reprints
Fusion Strike: 67
Evolving Skies: 104
Sets are impossible to complete realistically.
Entire BW block EX+ rarity total: 156 including Legendary Treasures Reprints
Fusion Strike: 67
Evolving Skies: 104
Sets are impossible to complete realistically.
Well, my best advice is that sometimes you've got to sometimes let go of certain cards. Believe me, there's plenty of rare and shiny cards I'd love to get- Rayquaza Star is my number one most wanted card ever. But it's... Hundreds, often thousands of dollars. I know unless I get extremely lucky, I'm never going to get it.
So you just kind of have to work with what you're comfortable with spending. Make some sacrifices, or find some alternatives- Maybe there's an old Lv.X or ex you want, but it's a lot of money. Well, sometimes there's a good chance a Japanese version of it will be cheaper. Or getting LP cards, etc. etc. It's sort of about balancing what you want, and what sacrifices you're willing to make in collecting.
Believe me, I used to want to collect everything. Ever. But... That was an unrealistic goal, and I sure don't (and didn't before, especially) have the budget for it. So now I've made little goals for myself that fit within my abilities. I've collected every Full Art EX. I'm growing a collection of older Ultras, holos, etc. Both in English and Japanese. And I'm making it work within my budget by making some of those sacrifices I've mentioned. While there's plenty of cards I'd love to own, I'm pretty content with where I am now, and where I'm going with it. You just have to find that balance.
We'll see if they print any VMAXes in Star Birth, Kingler is from starter decks. And of course, the name "VMAX Climax" is extremely suggestive (for many reasons). It might be the Prism Star situation, with a couple of odd stragglers remaining post-rotation.
N's Rhyperior
Aspiring Trainer
I think you forgot that FAs are part of the main set meaning that like 50 or 60 cards are probably from Starter Deck 100. The SWSH9 in Japan might have 105 to 110 cards in the set since FAs were SRs in Japan but main set outside of Japan
Don't you mean Fossil size sets?? 62 cards with NO ultra rares or higher. Just 1 booster box gets you like 95% of the set complete.
But I agree, sets are near impossible to complete nowadays, so I would just buy (played) singles like @AshCo suggested.
You can partly blame Japan for this. They release new sets like every month, whereas English sets has to always play catch-up because they release every 3 months.
Japan wasn't like this when they first started, I wonder why they changed?
I don't feel like this was the question, but what changed was they realized collecting sets is an anomaly, not a thing that should actively be encouraged and tank the price of cards. Before Sun & Moon drastically increased the amount of secret rares, the single Secret in XY sets wasn't usually worth more than a couple of bucks. By putting more cards into that slot they can drastically dilute the rarity and increase the value.
And that's good. These are collectible pieces, they make opening packs more exciting and they siphon the EV away from regular cards. People that collect full sets are in a massive minority here.
Technically they have already changed the formula. They keep making it harder and harder to pull. I decided to dig into the data recently after someone casually dropped that 61% of Evolving Skies can only be found in the rare slot. That's 144 cards. And we all know there are rarities within that slot. That's disgusting to put it plainly. For comparison, the original Base Set was 31%.
Jungle was actually 50% but with only 32 rare+ cards, technically one booster box (though who bought by box back in the day) could theoretically net all but 4 holos. The next time it breaches that % is the second Sun & Moon set with Guardians Rising. In total 7 of the 12 Sun & Moon sets are above 50% and they range from 64 to 121 unique cards that can be found in that slot.
In the Sword and Shield era, 5 of the 8 sets are above 50% whilst 2 of those are even above 60% - Chilling Reign and Evolving Skies.
It's not sustainable.
Rainbows contribute to this and getting rid of such pointless cards would help, but there's still too many.
I need to check out how the Japanese sets have evolved though since TPCi is somewhat hamstrung by what happens in Japan. Yes, the Japanese have broken up into smaller sets, but their SRs also continue to grow and you can only get 1/box, so I think it might have become just as bad as internationally. They have lotteries for every product and still release more every month.
Only positive is that their Vs and VMAXes - basically unique playable cards - are pretty much guaranteed in your box so you could argue that in terms of the playing part, they've done their job. The collecting part is just further and further out of reach for everyone but the uber rich.
I guess that doesn't necessarily stop TPCi from changing the make-up of the packs. At the very least get rid of non-holo rares. I'm not sure that even existed in Japan at all, though in practice having an uncommon in a rare slot doesn't really solve the problem. Maybe they can make 2 reverse holo slots instead of 1 and one of those can contain the rainbows and gold cards. And then either still get rid of non-holo rares or change most of them to holos and update the bloody holo design so it looks premium like the WOTC days and not this crappy line bs.
People used to collect full sets in the WOTC days, no? That was definitely a thing. 'Catch 'em all' etc. during the height of it all.
Definitely the Base-Fossil and first 3 Neo sets. I wish I wasn't so lame as a kid, and collected the others which I deemed irrelevant as it was repeating Pokemon and had weird distinctions like -'s Pokemon and Dark and Light that weren't in the GB games.
Maybe it started with the massive e-series sets where both popularity was going down and then they shoehorned so many cards into a set.
But definitely in the SM and SWSH era it has been practically impossible to complete sets, and that's a good 5 years of behavioural modification.
However, look at how many people want to complete Celebrations because it's feasible to do so. I think feasibility is the main hindrance of collecting full sets and I think more people would if the sets were smaller, had better pull rates and themed better. Of course Pokemon is probably selling record numbers of cards, so why would they change? But I think they'd sell more and have a happier consumer base if they did the above. Right now, you'd say that a portion of sales is driven by scalpers and all the markup isn't earned by them anyway, so it seems pretty dumb.