Hi all! I have a few questions about this product that I haven’t been able to find answers to elsewhere. I’d love to hear peoples’ input:
Based on the pop report, the Latias and Latios from the kit seem very difficult to grade in 10. But sometimes pop reports don’t tell the full story. Can anyone who has opened the kit speak to quality of the holos straight from the kit?
Is there any sales data on the PSA 10 Latias/Latios that people are aware of? Does anyone have a sense of what a reasonable offer for these cards would be? PSA 9s are cheap and raw NM copies are like $1, but they are only each pop 3 in PSA 10.
Is the pack that the kit contains always EX Dragon?
In addition, if anyone has any further info about these kits (outside of what’s available on Bulbapedia), please feel free to share!
I have opened three of the EX Trainer Kits; two of them being the “Trainer Kit 1” - Latios/Latias kits and there was an EX Sandstorm booster in one and an EX Dragon booster in the other. I’m unsure if there’s a possibility of an EX Ruby & Sapphire booster in some, but I know for a fact the “Trainer Kit 2” - Plusle/Minun has the possibility of a TRR, Deoxys or FireRed & LeafGreen booster in them.
I’ve yet to grade any of the Latios/as holos because I didn’t feel they were 10-worthy, but I would say they’re on par with the quality of the theme deck holos in the mid ex era. This is not to say they’re easy grades - a bunch of the theme deck holos are among the lowest population PSA 10 holos of the time period, but I think there’s a lot to be said about the overall appeal to collecting them. I love the Latios/Latias artworks personally, but I think the lower pop has more to do with no one really caring about them than the possibility that they’re very difficult to grade.
Yeah they’re definitely low considering the 8 and 9 pops, and the sheer amount of them still sealed and floating around. Fingers crossed we’ll see some 10’s slowly trickle in with the backlog clearing out more and more
Someone on YT pulled a FRLG out of theirs, which is most likely explained by multiple packaging runs.
I’ve only opened one of the 2004 kit but it was such a long time ago. I think mine came with a R&S or Dragon pack. These come tightly wrapped with little to no purchase to open gently like the pre-EX Dragon theme decks, so I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them got butchered when they were first opened.
I just found another opening that I hadn’t seen, and it had a Legend Maker pack, which is even weirder than FRLG given that Legend Maker came out in 2006 lol. So I think you’re almost certainly correct about multiple production runs.
Looking at eBay, there are multiple different back layouts/serial numbers. For instance:
The box opened on YouTube that contained a Legend Maker pack had the second configuration. The earlier EX packs appear to come from boxes with the first configuration.
The barcode differences relate to North american version (first photo) and an International version (second photo). Cant say when the production runs happened but there are also “Trainer challenge sets” which were bundled product that included the trainer kits with a couple ex era packs. Those might have been through a separate production run as well.