Charizard V, VMAX, and VSTAR Promos Revealed from “SWSH Ultra Premium Collection!”


Terrible quality, but it's Mewtwo's perspective on the same fight.
interesting, for sure.
how dare they make more cherryzord cards! i am outraged! i am boycotting pokemon until they stop printing charzaerds!
lol, did anybody say that?
 
@fleshrum @Pokemon1982

There are some subtle but important things to take note in this whole argument. First, people in the forum often seem to believe that our bubble's feelings are representative of the general public's, they very often are not. Everyone talks about "saturation", there's no saturation whatsoever, there's only discontent from a infinitely small but vocal minority from our small pokebeach bubble, if there were "saturation", products with Zards in them wouldn't fly off the shelves like they do, let alone trigger people even on this forum to complain that they won't be able to put their hands on the product because the demand for the product is too high, so saying there is Zard saturation is just objectively false.

I am also not saying people can't have their preferences and individually dislike the abundance of Zards, my gripe is with people not being mature enough to understand that the market is the most utter democratic and impersonal mechanism there is, they have to understand that if the market, I.E the people, demand Zard cards and let that demand be known to the company by buying anything with one potentially inside, them whining against it is futile. Note that I'm not saying it is forbidden, let alone wrong, just that it doesn't accomplish anything, and in my very subjective opinion, just clogs the discussions up with the same tired narratives over and over again, getting very tiresome to go through any post involving anything Zard related around here. So just as they are allowed to complain, I'm allowed to think this particular thing is not something worth investing energy into and that 95% of the takes are usually disconnected from reality and childlike, and we can all have our particular views and that's fine.
 
products with Zards in them wouldn't fly off the shelves like they do,
There are dozens of charizard collections at my local toy store, so many that they are on sale at the moment. Anecdotal, sure, but do you have any evidence to the contrary?
I am also not saying people can't have their preferences and individually dislike the abundance of Zards, my gripe is with people not being mature enough to understand that the market is the most utter democratic and impersonal mechanism there is, they have to understand that if the market, I.E the people, demand Zard cards and let that demand be known to the company by buying anything with one potentially inside, them whining against it is futile.
there's very little democratic imperative in a free market, honestly. I agree that products with charizard in them are opened more than some others, but I don't think they are opened more than all other products, or even noticeably more than most products. demand for Charizard is just as likely a product of secondary market factors, which similarly only a small bubble of the fandom even participates in. Considering how many games there have been, how many sets there are, and how frequently Charizard is printed, the 'mon is undoubtedly overrepresented compared to other Pokémon. Saying this is somehow inevitable, because that's how the market works, is an extraordinary claim requiring its own set of extraordinary evidence. None of this makes bringing it up pointless or senile behaviour.
 
I really dont understand why people are complaining about scalpers in a product that isnt a necessity to the game. These charizard cards are pretty bad in the trading card game and only collectors want them. Anything collectable is going to be worth whatever the market decides its worth and whatever the Pokemon company suggests is utterly worthless.

Also people need to blame themselves for hyping up charizard so much. Charizard has been bad since day 1. And not even an actual dragon, its fire flying in the games. Took them like 6 generations to make a dragon charizard and by now we have like 100 dragons in Pokemon that are much more interesting.

So instead of complaining about scalpers, just stop buying charizard cards if you dont like it so much. If the demand comes down then maybe they will stop making expensive charizard products. But I think some people just wanna complain for the sake of complaining, which at this point I have no idea why. Its not very productive or a useful usage of time.
 
@fleshrum @Pokemon1982

There are some subtle but important things to take note in this whole argument. First, people in the forum often seem to believe that our bubble's feelings are representative of the general public's, they very often are not. Everyone talks about "saturation", there's no saturation whatsoever, there's only discontent from a infinitely small but vocal minority from our small pokebeach bubble, if there were "saturation", products with Zards in them wouldn't fly off the shelves like they do, let alone trigger people even on this forum to complain that they won't be able to put their hands on the product because the demand for the product is too high, so saying there is Zard saturation is just objectively false.

I am also not saying people can't have their preferences and individually dislike the abundance of Zards, my gripe is with people not being mature enough to understand that the market is the most utter democratic and impersonal mechanism there is, they have to understand that if the market, I.E the people, demand Zard cards and let that demand be known to the company by buying anything with one potentially inside, them whining against it is futile. Note that I'm not saying it is forbidden, let alone wrong, just that it doesn't accomplish anything, and in my very subjective opinion, just clogs the discussions up with the same tired narratives over and over again, getting very tiresome to go through any post involving anything Zard related around here. So just as they are allowed to complain, I'm allowed to think this particular thing is not something worth investing energy into and that 95% of the takes are usually disconnected from reality and childlike, and we can all have our particular views and that's fine.
Thats very true what your saying. I was saying about too how charizard is not really a necessity to play the game and how nobody getting it doesnt really affect anything, but some people just like to complain about nothing it seems like. Also mentioned how charizard is the most overrated pokemon in general and people just need to stop buying the products in it since the reason the Pokemon company keeps making these things is because thats all people ever want to buy now a days.

And its the same thing with most TCG sets now a days. New set doesnt have charizard or tons of legends or eevees? Set is bad. Set ends up having tons of charizards or eevees, then its like "omg scalpers are going to ruin the game!!!". No, its more like people just dont buy the products with most of the non charizard, non legends and non eevee cards and people keep hyping up charizard even though its a terrible Pokemon. Too many people wanna have their cake and eat it and dont realize how hypocritical they come off nor do they care about changing their behavior.
 
I collect entire sets including the promos and I have since 1999. TPCi shoving Charizard into every other set is tired and contrary to my goals as a collector. There's no hypocrisy there.

It also reveals their strategy is poorly thought out. They want this premium product to sell, so they put three Charizard chase cards in at a time where the secondary market for anything Charizard is out of control. The product is immediately scalped for well over 2x the MSRP. It's hard to say right now but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see each of the promos selling for the cost of the box itself. Who wins? Nobody. TPCi doesn't get as much money as they want (or could feasibly get to be honest!). Casual collectors get nothing. Scalpers sit on product for the rest of their natural lives. My SWSH promo set is incomplete unless I feel like paying price manipulated sellers on TCGplayer for the cards. Losses all around.

Special Delivery Charizard's rollout being a lottery system despite it being a single card they could have printed to the moon while it also being an incentive to drive sales to their online store especially showed they don't know what they're doing. A shiny Charizard being forced into every special set every year when they're often impossible to find in the wild (partially due to Charizardmania) helps no one. Charizard is just an unavoidable entity that makes every release that includes it a nightmare, whether you collect Charizard or not.
 
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I collect entire sets including the promos and I have since 1999. TPCi shoving Charizard into every other set is tired and contrary to my goals as a collector. There's no hypocrisy there.

It also reveals their strategy is poorly thought out. They want this premium product to sell, so they put three Charizard chase cards in at a time where the secondary market for anything Charizard is out of control. The product is immediately scalped for well over 2x the MSRP. It's hard to say right now but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see each of the promos selling for the cost of the box itself. Who wins? Nobody. TPCi doesn't get as much money as they want (or could feasibly get to be honest!). Casual collectors get nothing. Scalpers sit on product for the rest of their natural lives. My SWSH promo set is incomplete unless I feel like paying price manipulated sellers on TCGplayer for the cards. Losses all around.

Special Delivery Charizard's rollout being a lottery system despite it being a single card they could have printed to the moon while it also being an incentive to drive sales to their online store especially showed they don't know what they're doing. A shiny Charizard being forced into every special set every year when they're often impossible to find in the wild (partially due to Charizardmania) helps no one. Charizard is just an unavoidable entity that makes every release that includes it a nightmare, whether you collect Charizard or not.
Its not poorly thought out since they always sell out of their products and thats their whole goal. If the products just sat on the shelve and they had excess or they were poorly selling, then that would be bad, but no collector wants to admit that. Pokemon does not care if every single person gets their luxury products, since thats what these premium collections are, just luxury reprints. They dont print alot of those premium collections since they are mostly fancy products that are made to make lots of money and arent designed for mass production. Nobody needs these new products, theres just people who think they need to have everything that Pokemon makes for very cheap and thats just not realistic.

The issue is that you have alot of hypocrisy with people who talk about how great these new generations are yet the new sets with the newest Pokemon sell poorly. The only way Pokemon makes alot of money off new sets is by printing the same exact Pokemon over and over again from gens 1-3 since the new ones just dont sell very well. They have to always print charizard, some fancy pikachu, legends/ mythical ones (like mewtwo, rayquaza, lugia, hooh, mew, etc.) and eevee evolutions since nobody wants to buy anything else. But the irony is that the hardcore pokemon fans never want to admit when there is a bad generation when the sales are bad and then complain when they just reprint the old pokemon and they sell out.

People dont want to complain when Battle Styles just sits on shelves barely selling yet there is outrage that they cant find Vivid Voltage, a set that is easily worse gameplay wise and outside of a giant Pikachu, has nothing to offer. I think this is just becoming more of peoples personal problems than it is a real problem.
 
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@fleshrum

You're right, my bad, the free market mechanism of prices and supply X demand are indeed superior to a democratic one, it's not a win/lose, all or nothing situation. If more people like something there will be more demand and more supply for it, but other fringe preferences will still be met with supply, even if in smaller quantities. If the supply of cards was strictly democratic, then if 51% of people liked Zards, the other 49% would be shit out of luck, which doesn't happen in reality. And again, Zard is only "overrepresented" as much as the demand for it is bigger than for the other stuff. It's like I already said, the extremely small sample size represented in this forum can complain all they want, out there the demand for it is high, and it will keep selling product, so they will keep making it, that's not a moral or value judgement thing, that's just concrete reality.
 
@fleshrum

You're right, my bad, the free market mechanism of prices and supply X demand are indeed superior to a democratic one, it's not a win/lose, all or nothing situation. If more people like something there will be more demand and more supply for it, but other fringe preferences will still be met with supply, even if in smaller quantities. If the supply of cards was strictly democratic, then if 51% of people liked Zards, the other 49% would be shit out of luck, which doesn't happen in reality. And again, Zard is only "overrepresented" as much as the demand for it is bigger than for the other stuff. It's like I already said, the extremely small sample size represented in this forum can complain all they want, out there the demand for it is high, and it will keep selling product, so they will keep making it, that's not a moral or value judgement thing, that's just concrete reality.

That person is also ignoring that Pokemon and Nintendo do not like printing things into oblivion. Their print runs are generally conservative due to the simple principle of them not wanting stuff to sit on shelves. They already saw issues with XY + early Sun & Moon sets. They had to put all that stuff on discount at one point since none of it was selling. Ever since Ultra Prism, they have cut back on print runs. So far in the Sword & Shield era, outside of Battle Styles and Fusion Strike, most sets are not staying in stock and are selling, which is what Pokemon wants and is understandable since thats a pretty sound fundamental of doing business.

And its fine since the cards that are relevant to the TCG get reprinted and everything else is an afterthought, which is how most games are supposed to be ran. The stuff for collectors is supposed to be rare. If it wasnt rare, it wouldnt sell well. I dont know why alot of people on here want to not accept this as reality, but thats just the way things are. The amount of people who get emotional about me just stating the facts is borderline embarrassing at a point.
 
Where are you guys pre-ordering this thing? I've looked everywhere online and can't even find a place to find them. I've kept an Eye on pokecenter with no avail. And you guys are saying people already have them marked way above MSRP. Where do I go to even buy them?
 
Where are you guys pre-ordering this thing? I've looked everywhere online and can't even find a place to find them. I've kept an Eye on pokecenter with no avail. And you guys are saying people already have them marked way above MSRP. Where do I go to even buy them?
eBay or any local card shop. Alot of the people complaining have no concept of EV, which is short for expected value. The expected value of the contents inside these products is high, hence why its never MSRP. 3 alt art charizards, 16 packs and the accessories isnt ever going to only be worth $120. I really wish pokemon would get rid of MSRP like MTG since its just giving people false hope of what the market is supposed to be.
 
Charizard is far from my favorite mon and it is a bit silly how often he's featured in special cards...but that's some gorgeous art. The VMAX is just, wow! It feels really different from most PTCG art.
 
Grab your pitchforks! Grab your torches! Say what you will about Charizard, how outrageous this whole thing is, whatever par-for-the-course whatnot happens anytime this Pokemon gets mentioned.

But you can't deny that these have some fantastic artwork.
Yeah that's just facts
 
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