I’ve been really interested in the call of legends set recently so I’ve started collecting all the holos and shiny cards. Did the set have a smaller release? It seems like call of legends sealed product is much more expensive than all of the HGSS/BW sets around it. Is the high price just due to interest in the shinies, or is it due to a limited print compared to subsequent sets?
This would be my guess. They were hot on Instagram for a moment
I think the 11 Shiny Scret Rares in a small set of 106 cards in total are indeed the most contributing factor. Because it’s a rather small set with nice artwork, it’s pretty popular to collect. And the 11 Shiny cards make the booster packs/boxes more expensive as well, just like we see with the Neo Destiny sets containing the Triple Star Shiny Secret Rares and the sets containing Gold Stars or Crystal Pokémon.
Luckily for me these shinies aren’t as expensive as the Gold Stars and Triple Stars, since I recently completed my National Index collection including all forms and Shiny Pokémon available on TCG cards (of which the last 10-15 are incoming). 
Greetz,
Quuador
Yup, definitely a smaller scale release…and the SL shinies were somewhat on the harder side to grade (I was the first to complete the entire CoL SL shiny set in PSA 10, still have them).
For reference, I sold an entire PSA 9 set of the SL shinies for $1,000 in late 2017…it probably cost me about $2.5K to acquire the entire SL set in PSA 10 that year as well.
Can’t speak for the other cards in the set, but the SL shinies should see a steady increase as time goes on…after all, it’s still the only set so far that has shiny variants of some of the legendaries like Deoxys, Dialga and Palkia, and the artwork is phenomenal overall. Have received offers over $5k for my entire PSA 10 set but have no plans to sell them at all (they will live happily next to my completed English PSA 10 Gold Star set).
Speaking strictly from my impressions/experience being in the collecting scene when it was released:
Not only was this set less printed, it was utterly unpopular. At the time, we came off a ton of Legend Pieces and were anxious for the Black and White era. CoL felt like a filler set to stall for more time to make BW. The shinies look like shit compared to the artwork on the Legend Pieces.
Stores barely ordered CoL. That’s why booster boxes weren’t around long. No one wanted the product. The demand remained a fat zero until a year or two after the YouTube Box Opening Mania ™ took place and people were just desperate for anything that fit in the budget of what a successful YouTube video could largely offset in price, given so much of the lower priced boxes had been cannibalized and you can’t get views with modern without an existing following. CoL found some interest there and that translated over into Instagram popularity and whatnot.
CoL shinies and really most of the cards from the HGSS era are cheap enough to take a few whacks at the 10 without breaking the bank. They look okay, but not spectacular. And if you want something more than a Holo rare but less expensive than vintage or desirable ultra rares, the CoL shinies are going to fit right in. They’re budget ultra rares with a niche following.
And none of this is to down play them. There are people that love them and they should go after them. But I think I’m giving a fair assessment of where CoL has historically fallen in the eyes of the broader collecting community since it’s genesis.
Which leads to prices today. There’s less product, it was kept around less, and the singles don’t have the movement that keeps availability high over time due to limited interest. And I think a lot of people don’t even think about them. Certainly they blend in with a lot of holos in the collections of people who don’t know what they have. Kids could easily open a shiny and not realize it’s an ultra rare. Primes had the same issue.
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This sums it up…I think the shinies in particular seem to have spiked a bit with the release of Shining Legends, and then subsequently Ultra Shiny GX, particularly to newer collectors. Totally agree though that the CoL artwork just wasn’t that attractive or desirable at the time…they were certainly an “in between” set, and most people passed without a second thought. Could make the argument now though that a few of the CoL shinies in particular really do have gorgeous artwork and their prices tend to reflect that (talking about Shiny Lugia, Ho-Oh and to a lesser degree the Rayquaza, but that just may be due to Ray’s immense popularity).
Those who don’t care about shinies at all typically don’t bother with ANY cards from this set, period, from my experience.