It’s official: Sword and Shield is DEAD. Long Live Scarlet and Violet!
Well…not quite. We’re on the eve of the release of Crown Zenith (Sword and Shield’s farewell special set) and from the looks of it, CZ will be full to the brim with unbelievable cards for collectors and TCG players alike. However, with last month’s announcement of a raft of changes to the Pokemon TCG, it feels like there’s still quite a bit to unpack in relation to Scarlet & Violet, now that the dust has settled and we’ve had some time to think about what this means for our beloved hobby. We posted about this last month but I think a more in-depth rehash is in order, as we’ve seen new cards leak and had time to mull over our thoughts, feelings, opinions, hopes, dreams and other nouns that aptly sum up our abject overinvestment in a children’s game.
So what do we know and what do we think about it?
Let’s start with the big one (in my opinion). It’s a cosmetic change but it’s one that collectors have been crying out for, desperately, for years. That’s right, folks! SILVER BORDERS!!!!
Let’s take a moment to stop and smell the roses. We’re involved in a wildly fluctuating, extremely volatile hobby that can crush a person’s dreams or make a person’s month in a split second. It’s a global phenomenon and one that most of us are using to reconnect with or desperately cling to the youthful days our balding heads and the bags under our eyelids keep reminding us are long gone. A company like The Pokemon Company isn’t obliged to listen to its customers on minor cosmetic changes and I, for one, was almost certain that the pipe dream of silver borders on English cards was a long way off, if ever coming. That’s not to be! Our collective wish has been granted and if you’ve paid any attention to what’s happening at Hasbro right now with Magic: The Gathering (if you haven’t, I highly recommend checking out ‘Alpha Investments’ on Youtube), you’ll know that the people have revolted over mass reprints, price hikes and a constant stream of unnecessary sets, Hasbro’s stock price has crashed and Magic: The Gathering is in disarray on multiple fronts. Hell, Hasbro (and WOTC by association) could end up being taken over. It’s a good time to be a Pokemon TCG collector and we’re lucky to have at least some of our prayers answered.
CARD CHANGES
Enough patting ourselves and our Lord and Saviour, Pokemon on the back. Let’s get into it! In line with the Japanese version of the TCG which switched over years ago, Scarlet and Violet marks the death of yellow borders internationally. This is huge news from a mainly aesthetic perspective but it makes cards printed from S&V onwards immediately more pleasing to the eye. Silver has always made Japanese cards look cleaner and less contradictory in their colour pairings. Yes, I’ll be the first to admit that the yellow borders on WOTC-era cards strikes a particular nostalgic chord in me. However, the cards of old were all yellow-bordered, making holos special and with the introduction of full-card-printing, it feels as though there’s nothing special about yellow borders and they simply exist to throw back to the good ol’ days and keep some of us nearly-40’s happy. Not to mention that they REALLY, REALLY clash with about 80% of the amazing art pieces they house. This change gets a BIG tick from me. It might seem small, but I think on multiple fronts it’s the biggest development in the TCG since I started collecting again, 18 months ago.
Right – Reshiram (Black & White Era)
Set codes from the Japanese game also come into play, with SV1 replacing the typical set symbol. This is a minor change but probably helpful from an ease-of-identification perspective. I enjoyed the set symbols but man, my poor eyes struggled to see them and work out what the hell they were half the time… I, for one, welcome our new math-based overlords.
Scarlet and Violet also welcomes the return of EX cards which was honestly quite a shock for me to hear. My love for vintage Pokemon cards knows very few bounds but I think E-Series and the dawn of early EX cards might be my 2 favourite eras of the game. However, EX lived a long, happy life and saw many iterations and going back to the well would need to see some serious cool-factor added. As you can see below, one of these things is not like the other and we appear to be getting more of the thing that doesn’t look like the other….you know what I’m getting at…. CGI-laden ‘Mons with generic colour-to-type coordinated patterning and not a lot of holo flair. I hope we see some aggressive nods to the vintage bangers of old, is all I’m saying. There’s so much room to work within, so trotting out a full generation of Miraidon-and-Koraidon, base-level, XY-style cards (pictured below) would be a shame and a waste.
There’s a lot to unpack here, regardless. The new borders for regular EX cards are silver and may potentially contain some slight holo patterning but the EX era of old extended through different levels, rarity and value from regular EX cards above to the beautiful silver-holo-bordered EX Ruby and Sapphire era cards, to the absurdly cool Mega cards with contrasting English/Japanese move names strewn across them depending on the card’s base language. I never even collected during this period but just a sniff of a harkening back to any of the below artworks gives me goosebumps. I doubt we’ll be seeing old tropes like Mega Pokemon return, especially with the move into Terastallized Pokemon as the main form of battle upgrades in both video game and TCG. However, what’s in a name (or a stupid chandelier hat)?
There are further changes to cards coming, with energy cards seeing a shift in energy logo location to the bottom right and a few TCG-player changes made for visibility purposes when a player constructs a deck, such as a move in location of the subcategory of trainer cards from top right to top left.
PRICE AND PRODUCT CHANGES
Now, on the announcement front, we move to the bad news. Pack prices are going up. Pokemon have announced that the standard RRP of Pokemon packs in the USA will move from $3.99 to $4.49 ea. For Australians, this means a change in pack price of roughly 70c-75c depending on the exchange rate. I expect this will normalise for our market once the change is in effect and we’ll have a better idea of what RRP is moving forward. Spreading this change out over a booster box adds an extra $27.00 AUD to your booster box RRP, with the top end (you know which stores I’m talking about) looking roughly like they’ll be charging $280 a booster box (seriously, yes) and who knows where the rest of the market will land.
It’s not all bad though. Pokemon are doing things to mitigate the extra cost and they sound appealing. Each pack now contains 3 guaranteed foil cards with a rarity of ‘rare’ and non-holo rares are a thing of the past (Non-Holo rare Tropius from Evolving Skies still haunts my dreams, so I love this move). Again, this is an example of The Pokemon Company not wanting to take without giving and I can’t see this move doing anything but removing the need for a TON of extra filler cards in a set and allowing for a whole lot more full-card artworks, whether they are V’s, EX’s, Vmax, I can’t keep track of this anymore…
Regular set ETB’s will also contain an extra pack, pushing them to 9 and all ETBs will now contain a full art promo card, not just special sets. This is another move people have been calling for, for some time, so it’s good to see it finally happening regardless of whether it’s out of obligation. It’s an easy way to add more promos to a commonly purchased item and will hopefully help dry our tears when the inevitably and historically awful ETB pull rates rear their ugly head.
The NEW NEW
As of yesterday (06/01/2023), we had some big news regarding more set inclusions for Scarlet and Violet, with the Japanese arm of the game announcing Art Rares and Special Art Rares will be returning in the next generation. Several Art Rares and one Special Art Rare were announced and they feature below:
Pachirisu, Slowpoke, Riolu & Greavard Art Rares from the upcoming Japanese S&V set.
We’re just unpacking everything in this post, aren’t we?! Where to begin?! Let’s start with a point I’d intended to make if these cards hadn’t dropped today. Alternate Art cards are the collector’s dream. I know a lot of purely TCG players don’t love them but they are everything a solely collecting-focused Pokemon enthusiast could have wanted and to see them immediately continue into Scarlet and Violet makes a big difference right off the bat.
Historically, base sets have been a let down, to say the least. They usually focus on the set’s main legendaries and a few scattered Pokemon from Gen 1 or 2. This trend has continued in every set after what I believe was about 2004 with Ruby and Sapphire when, ironically, the EX era first began. Sword and Shield Base Set was underwhelming and modern alt arts as we currently know them didn’t begin until Battle Styles, so it’s safe to say that S&V base set is trending in the direction of being a substantially better set than SWSH’s first iteration.The AR cards in this set are already stunning. My personal favourites are the Greavard which appears to fit seamlessly in amongst its ghost-pokemon brethren and that Slowpoke is some god-tier stuff isn’t it?! We’ve already been graced with an EX SAR, which is the equivalent of SWSH’s V Alt Art and I can’t imagine that this Gardevoir will be the major chase of the set. All of a sudden, the coming few weeks look like they’ll be packed with reason for hope.
The Ralts line cards also feature a through-story similar to the one we saw with Emboar in Legendary Treasures and Pokemon have been sneakily repeating this theme throughout sets like Silver Tempest with Litten/Torracat/Incineroar (go on, check the art out if you haven’t) as well as in Crown Zenith or more specifically, VStar Universe with the god pack forming a 9 card picture and the Lunatone/Solrock & Magmortar/Electivire cards mirroring each other. This is a fun thing for collectors to see and I hope it continues.
My biggest question off the back of today’s announcement is: what sits above the EX SAR? We know that VMax previously held the mantle for the big hitter alt art, with art pieces like ones displayed on cards like the Umbreon, Espeon and Gengar Vmax Alt Arts seemingly covering the whole card, with minimal border to speak of. Not to mention being stunning works of art that define modern Pokemon cards and re-ignited the passion of hundreds of thousands of collectors around the world. Vstar Alt Arts were border-heavy and whilst they had some incredible artwork, they lacked the impact of a Vmax Alt. We know that VStar is no more, as of Scarlet & Violet, we also know that the first Secret Art Rare announced is an EX, so what do we get as the level up? Will this be the godly chase collectors crave in a set, the way the Moonbreon was and continues to be?
Will (what can only be described as) Gold Alt Arts continue? I eat my words immediately on VStar Alts being less impactful, as these were literally works of art. Pokemon has been known to dangle an incredible cherry in front of its customers only to never return to it again. Maybe it was the one and only crowning jewel of Sword and Shield; a limited run of the pinnacle of what cards can be. I feel there is more water to pass under the bridge here, on the chase card front. Will Terastal Pokemon factor in? Honestly, I hope not!
FINAL MUSINGS
With a new Pokemon generation comes a small window of hope where anything you’d dreamed up in your mind for the hobby is possible. It’s my first time ever transitioning between generations. I got out of collecting after a horror story I’ll write about some other time back in 2001 and I didn’t get back in again until 20 years later, in 2021. Who’d have thought at age 36 I’d be seeing brand new Pokemon milestones, of all things…
If I could hope for any changes, small or large in the way we see the Pokemon TCG evolve, it would be for code cards to be completely rendered moot when being pulled from packs, with cards of intrinsic value to both players and collectors alike available in multiple slots, not signaled or potentially spoiled by the border on a code card. 3 hit slots makes this more likely, so we’ll see how this plays out.
Rainbows seem to be a thing of the past and as someone who now pays close attention to trends in the second hand market, very few of them retain any real value to players or collectors. They have seemed for a long time to be a way to pad out sets and include more of the same card, with a different colour and texture. Meeting someone who likes rainbow cards might be one of the rarest occurrences in a Pokemon collector’s hobby experience. Surely, they go, replaced by what seems to be a growing trend of art rare and special art cards, which may not all retain value but are sure as hell a lot more fun to look at and pull from a pack. Pokemon haven’t formally announced this but if the whispers are true, they’re going the way of Vstars and non-holo-rares.
If Gold Alt Arts aren’t retained and our big hits end up being whatever Terastallized or Vmax version we’re in for, I’d love to see a further lean into the current nostalgia kick we’re on, with a small number of incredibly rare cards such as hyper rares that actually hold intrinsic value. Gold cards might have been the hardest to pull in all of Sword and Shield but they fell flat outside of a very select few such as the Gold Snorlax. That might be literally the only one of consequence. On stream the other night, our community discussed a question posed surrounding packs from which you could obtain cards of astronomical value and whether they existed in recent sets. Apart from modern alts, which still don’t hold a candle to the big hitters from 2003-2004 and prior in terms of their value for multiple reasons, the past 4 or 5 generations haven’t contained cards that really set themselves apart from the pack unless they were a Charizard. I feel like a return to Gold Star cards in a small, end-of-set run would be a perfect way to make you feel like you’d pulled something special, to keep for years to come and treasure. There’s a certain joy in opening a pack and pulling a card that you know is rare enough to make you one of the select few owners in your community. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and speak for everyone when I say a Gold Leafy Camo Poncho or Boost Shake doesn’t quite spark the type of joy that pulling a Gold Star Alakazam, Gyarados or Pikachu once did or could again. I feel that one’s a hail mary when it comes to hopes though.
Set sizes can definitely be reduced. One of my biggest disappointments in the Sword and Shield era was the monumental task attached to mastering a set. I only did it once, with Fusion Strike and I may never do it again after the hell it put me through. There’s no need for a 250+ card set. We don’t need reprints bulking out set numbers. I think it’s fair to say that we all hope for smaller sets, some of us even if it has to be partially at the cost of the number of secret rares and full arts.
The second hand marketplace for Pokemon cards is booming and has never been stronger. Ebay and Facebook Marketplace are packed with cards and there are deals to be had wherever you look. The 2 big price changes in the past few years have been at the top and bottom. As a result of this, competition is fierce and hype (more-so overhype) is even more fierce. As a result, you’ve never had to pay more for the biggest cards in a set. The flipside of this however is that the drop off in value to lower end prices happens quickly and aggressively. You can pick up most full art cards from the SWSH generation on eBay for around $10-$15 and this price belies its pull rate substantially when you consider that 4-5 full art cards from an entire case is about the rough average. I, personally, don’t mind the current state of affairs when it comes to the second hand market. I think one of the unfortunate parts of having so many people in this space right now is that there’s always someone willing to pay top dollar for the cards they want or the big cards in a set. I don’t see this component changing any time soon, so to find the silver lining we look at Trainer Gallery cards as an example. Almost every full art Trainer Gallery card from SWSH is worth a pittance and if you’d shown me those cards 2 years ago, before modern Alt Arts came on the scene, I’d have been blown away. Cards with incredible, unique, themed artworks containing beloved Pokemon like Pikachu, Gengar and Charizard are all available right now for under $15-$20. That’s a remarkable turn of events which I don’t think anybody could have seen coming and I think is good for the hobby, when you consider that at the end of the day, this is a game…for kids… I’ve given away multiple Trainer Gallery cards to kids in the Pokemon Store I work at and they light up like Christmas trees. They mean something to a lot of people and they won’t break the bank. It’s a win/win.
And last but unequivocally not the least!
BRING BACK THE DAMN FAIRY ENERGY!!!
Champy.
What did I miss? What are your thoughts on where S&V Base Set is heading? Do you have any questions or points you’d like me to raise/investigate for my next blog? Let me know in the comments below.
