Collecting Japanese vs. English TCG Collecting

[Solegide]

Seems like an obvious question, but hear me out. I can buy a Japanese Booster Box for $34.95 (including shipping) off of Amazon. I can go to my card shop, and buy an English box for $90. Given this information is it easier for collectors to collect Japanese sets, rather than English, because of the cost? I know Japanese boxes, and packs, have fewer cards, but from what i've seen from box openings on YouTube, you still get about 4-5 Ultra Rares per box. Which is roughly the same from English boxes. I already asked the colorful people at Virbank City on Facebook, and all told me where "You can use Japanese cards in America????", and something about Canada using English, and French cards because of the metric system.
THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND
1. I know Japanese boxes have fewer cards total
2 I'd buy Japanese boxes for collecting reasons, only
3. I have no desire to play the cards.
4. Who cares if Canada uses English, and French cards because of the Metric System?


Thanks!
-Chance

 

[Athena]

I personally greatly prefer collecting Japanese cards over English for a number of reasons. Like you've noticed, Japanese pull rates are good, and you end up with much less bulk. Japanese cards are also overall a much higher quality than English cards, and there are many cute cards and products that are released in Japanese that don't get translated. Japanese booster boxes are very reasonably priced as well.

 

[Solegide]

I personally greatly prefer collecting Japanese cards over English for a number of reasons. Like you've noticed, Japanese pull rates are good, and you end up with much less bulk. Japanese cards are also overall a much higher quality than English cards, and there are many cute cards and products that are released in Japanese that don't get translated. Japanese booster boxes are very reasonably priced as well.

Thanks! I'm glad to get an opinion from someone who prefers Japanese cards over English. I've been wanting to collect full sets for awhile now, but due to the cost of a booster box, and the overall quality of English cards, that's what's holding me back. Do you think Japanese cards increase in value, overtime more than English cards, in English speaking nations, as-well, or do they stay the same as English sets?

 

[Maserati777]

Personally I think it's cheaper to collect the cards in Japanese, and yes it's very rare to find a Japanese card miscut. Also the holos are way better in Japanese, but I prefer the ridges on the English full arts to the Japanese full arts. I think the English full arts just look better. They take the small, hard to notice ridges on the Japanese cards and enunciate them, they've also made some color changes to the gold mega fa's in the upcoming set that I think make them look better, Kyorge is now black instead of dark blue.



So while it is cheaper to collect Japanese cards I don't think it's worth it for me.

 

[Solegide]

Personally I think it's cheaper to collect the cards in Japanese, and yes it's very rare to find a Japanese card miscut. Also the holos are way better in Japanese, but I prefer the ridges on the English full arts to the Japanese full arts. I think the English full arts just look better. They take the small, hard to notice ridges on the Japanese cards and enunciate them, they've also made some color changes to the gold mega fa's in the upcoming set that I think make them look better, Kyorge is now black instead of dark blue.



So while it is cheaper to collect Japanese cards I don't think it's worth it for me.

Collecting Foreign cards, definitely isn't for everyone. However I'm gonna give it a shot. My Bandit Ring Box should be in my possession on Tuesday

 

[CuriousCleffa]

I used to collect the English TCG, but then I ordered a box of Wild Blaze. After this I seriously had some thoughts on which I wanted to collect. I ended up with Japanese, and now I'm collecting those (price was definitely a big factor, because I can get 3 Japanese boxes for the price (or less) of 1 English box. And with 2-3 Japanese boxes I can just about complete the actual set (not including their SR + UR) but in one box of English I can't even pull all the rares, holos, or EXs in the set. So I love collection Japanese cards.
I still open the newest English sets, but the quality is not as great to me, because all those cards I've basically held and seen the Japanese version of it. Miscuts are so common in English, it annoys me now.

But I have been set collecting since Black and White and have all those in English, and I figured it'd be way too hard to sell those off and get them in Japanese so I'm starting Japanese TCG collecting with the XY series and it's going pretty good.

It's just a bit harder to trade for the cards I need since the majority here have English cards. However, I think the amount of people collecting Japanese TCG has been rising.

 

[PieterPie]

So I collected english cards only, until worlds 2010 when I bought a box of heart gold for $38, and it had 19 packs (only one pack was sold), and I believe every pack had a holo at that time, and they had 10 or 11 cards back then. I bought a few more loose packs and blisters which I was very happy with. The price was unbeatable and every pack (I think) had a holo. I didnt get any more japanese boosters until worlds 2013. Although, in 2011 I bought a few decks, because those have also always had more than our theme decks in terms of cards, such as primes back then. And I was able to trade a collector all of my japanese primes for the english versions at the time, which is when cards such as magnezone were worth a lot, so I stopped with japanese stuff again until 2013. Except for the japanese reverse holo primes, which I think are one of the hidden treasures that I rarely find. In 2013 I was mostly just looking for the sleeves and deck boxes that I had missed out on in 2010, such as the umbreon espeon, charizard, and walking starters merchandise, which are all very rare now, and I am still searching for them. And at worlds, I had known the 15th anniversary pikachu set would be for sale from japanese players, and I only managed to get one set sealed and one pikachu full art for $5. I later realized the value of these sets, and decided to get into japanese cards. I got a few here and there, until more recently when I bought in bulk. For collecting, I think japanese is the best way by far to get your value. Instead of $90 for a booster box, buy a 12 rayquaza jumbo pack box, worth so much more than $90 anywhere besides Japan. You just have to buy enough to make shipping reasonable, so I would recommend buying sleeves, to trade or sell. The rayquaza packs contain 6 boosters and a sealed blaziken ex, so 12 sealed ex, and 72 packs. The blazikens sold for enough to pay half of the box of 12 jumbo packs, so $40-50 ish for 72 packs is what I ended up with, which is totally worth it if you ask me. And in single jumbo packs, I would open a box worth of ultras, for examples one jumbo pack contained shaymin ex fa (i got $55 for), gold switch, and mega aggron ex. These packs have about a 1/2 holo rate, and considering they are less than $2 and half size of US pack, holos/EX/SR are about 3 times more likely. This got me to buy more japanese cards, personally I dont really buy boxes, I buy these special packs, because I also sell some stuff to get my money back. I am still bigger in collecting english cards because I feel that the prices are more consistent, but I would say from only a collectors perspective, japanese cards are better to collect, except for the secret rares, which can be extremely expensive, such as m rayquaza fa from emerald break, for the first month or two. I think they hold their value decently well, especially because the cards are higher quality, and stay mint. Also Japan has cool exclusive stuff like the two pikachu sets, illustrator cards, awesome promos, and more. Hope I helped a bit, feel free to ask me anything.

 

[whirlpoolm51]

Personally I think it's cheaper to collect the cards in Japanese, and yes it's very rare to find a Japanese card miscut. Also the holos are way better in Japanese, but I prefer the ridges on the English full arts to the Japanese full arts. I think the English full arts just look better. They take the small, hard to notice ridges on the Japanese cards and enunciate them, they've also made some color changes to the gold mega fa's in the upcoming set that I think make them look better, Kyorge is now black instead of dark blue.



So while it is cheaper to collect Japanese cards I don't think it's worth it for me.

Really?? I think the japanese full arts are much more detailed than the english. I used to say the same thing until I actually got into collecting japanese a day then you notice that all they do to the english full arts is raise the texture , they don't use the texture to accentuate the background like the japanese full arts do with the texture. The jap full arts are definitely more detailed though. Compare the newest sets mega ttar and hoopa full arts to the english ones and you notice a huge difference In detail. IMHO the english version dumbs down the background detail by raising the texture so much. A couple cards to compar that make this very noticable is the mega and primal from primal clash. Put the primal kyogre full art japanese next to the english one and the detail just outshines the english one. Not to mention compare cards like reshiram FA , zekrom FA , mewtwo , etc etc and you will notice. That's why I switched to Japanese full arts , because once is saw how much more detailed and articulate they were co.pared to English I just had to have them. Not to mention japanese quality just destroys english quality.
It's funny how you can almost gurente a psa 10 on a japanese FA but bearly hope for a 9 on an English full art straight from the pack haha

 

[whirlpoolm51]

I think when it really comes down too it , while pokemon is a money business just like anything else , Japan takes pride in their cards and it shows. They set the bar for everything pokemon because that's where it was born. Over here in the states it's just all about money. They don't care about their quality because they know most of their customer base is little kids who beg their parents to get them a pack here and there while grocery shopping. And no 8 year old is going to open a pack and carefully inspect the cards like the older peeps do lol

 

[Jaaaaay]

Wouldnt getting singles (to finish sets and what not) be significantly easier if collecting English? Its easy to trade at a local league or buy off major card sites. I am under the impression that sourcing Jap singles would most likely need to be imported as well and prices can be a bit iffy for some cards??

Keen to hear suggestions about acquiring foreign singles if any peeps have good ideas.

 

[Athena]

Ebay is actually a pretty good market for Japanese singles. There are enough people that collect the cards internationally and buy/sell them to keep the market somewhat stable. Prices generally are a bit higher outside of Japan, but that makes sense due to transport and import costs. For anything that's significantly different you can always buy from Yahoo! Japan through one of the many middleman services that exist for these purposes. We also have a pretty healthy Japanese TCG interest in our Marketplace here with a good number of active traders and sellers dealing in these cards. There are a few regular online retailer sites as well that sell these cards, and a member here on PokéBeach who lives in Japan is also working on getting his site ready for business too which will be very useful once that site goes live.

So you've got options.

 

[Cubdo]

When I first started collecting cards I generally stuck with the English version but as of late my Korean and Japanese collections have been growing, the Japanese cards are also alot cheaper to purchase which is much easier on my bank balance, pokemon cards here in Ireland can go for 7 euros for just one pack so I always try and make sure I am getting as much value for my money as possible. As previously said I also think the Japanese designs are much better then the English versions

 

[CYL]

I personally greatly prefer collecting Japanese cards over English for a number of reasons. Like you've noticed, Japanese pull rates are good, and you end up with much less bulk. Japanese cards are also overall a much higher quality than English cards, and there are many cute cards and products that are released in Japanese that don't get translated. Japanese booster boxes are very reasonably priced as well.

I agree completely. Being in Hong Kong, I have both languages readily available, but I still prefer the Japanese boosters. For example, I bought 11 English Tins in the last year; not a single of the packs within yielded an EX, and the rate at which I got a holo was just under 1 per tin. You can attribute it to horrifying luck, but I'd disagree; on the other hand, I bought two Ancient Origins packs in Japanese yesterday, and pulled the Mega Rayquaza-EX FA Shiny etc etc card in the second.

I'd attribute that to different mindsets. In Japan, they have much higher pull rates, much lower prices and better quality (as Athena stated); I think it's because they actually care about the 'customer experience', and believe that if you enjoy pulling a few EX's once in a while, you'll buy more. In America, however, the mindset leans towards squeezing more money out of customers; if the pull rate for rarer cards is low, the customer will buy more.

Or take another example; English tins sell for around $160 HKD (around 20 USD) in Hong Kong. (I understand that shipping costs are added, but it also applies to Japanese ones.) The boosters usually sell for $28 HKD, so that's $112 off the total; essentially, I'm paying $50 for a card, a tin, and a digital code.
The Japanese ones sell for much less. The Shiny Metagross-EX pack, though having every reason to charge you higher - shiny, mega, and whatnot - sold for less than $10 HKD above the prices of the 3 packs included, having included 3 promo cards.

The comparison is clear.

Ebay is actually a pretty good market for Japanese singles. There are enough people that collect the cards internationally and buy/sell them to keep the market somewhat stable. Prices generally are a bit higher outside of Japan, but that makes sense due to transport and import costs. For anything that's significantly different you can always buy from Yahoo! Japan through one of the many middleman services that exist for these purposes. We also have a pretty healthy Japanese TCG interest in our Marketplace here with a good number of active traders and sellers dealing in these cards. There are a few regular online retailer sites as well that sell these cards, and a member here on PokéBeach who lives in Japan is also working on getting his site ready for business too which will be very useful once that site goes live.

So you've got options.

I tried using Yahoo!Japan as well, but I didn't understand the language, and their translated page didn't have a lot of details of each auctioned item as the original page had to offer. When one of my friends won a bid, his bid just got cancelled for no particular reason. Rather confused by the experience still.

 

[Athena]

I tried using Yahoo!Japan as well, but I didn't understand the language, and their translated page didn't have a lot of details of each auctioned item as the original page had to offer. When one of my friends won a bid, his bid just got cancelled for no particular reason. Rather confused by the experience still.

Y!J is for domestic use only. If you don't live in Japan but want to purchase products from Y!J you will need either a middleman service or a forwarding service. This guide that SR and I wrote up here talks a bit about some popular and established middleman services. All such services do charge a fee, however, so it's best to only use for things that are too difficult or expensive to obtain otherwise.

 

[CYL]

Y!J is for domestic use only. If you don't live in Japan but want to purchase products from Y!J you will need either a middleman service or a forwarding service. This guide that SR and I wrote up here talks a bit about some popular and established middleman services. All such services do charge a fee, however, so it's best to only use for things that are too difficult or expensive to obtain otherwise.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the article.