New here and just got back into collecting last year with 151.
I’m wanting to buy some e-series-era cards and a lot of the pictures I’ve seen of the holos make it seem like the background art isn’t visible through the holo layer/pattern. Just wondering if this is the case when the cards are in-hand because I’d like to see all the background art on, say, the Umemoto cards and others. It would also allow me to save a lot of money since the holos are pretty expensive.
Thanks for the info
If the background art is important to you, I would recommend getting the non-holos. The cosmos holo layer can often mask the background art.
To get a pretty close perspective of the cards, I would recommend using this website and typing in the sets that you are interested in. The darkness of the background is pretty accurate to what you would see in person.
That’s great, thank you.
Too bad about some of the holos, I’d love to have some sparkling cards, but the styles of Umemoto and Komiya don’t suit it, to me. I really would like to see all the line work and background lighting. Also, the really delicate wheat field on the sides of the Mew card are totally drowned out.
I think the only holos I’ll go for are Clefable and Dragonite.
Thank you again
It’s also very much dependant on the lighting of the photograph. I think my current setup makes the holo completely overpower the background for some of these cards, but when you have them in hand it’s not as bad. Here an example you can compare to the pkmncards version:
It’s totally different looking at the art on the holos from scans, compared to having them in hand.
Here are three random E-Series holos I’ve got to hand. You can easily see all of the backgrounds clearly, if you just hold them at the right angles:
@quibble is absolutely right. Nearly all cards’ art can be viewed from an angle, unless it’s a very dark background.
Thank you for the photo, that makes things more difficult because of course I’d rather have the holo cards, but the Japanese ones are much more expensive on ebay than their non holo counterparts.
You’ll always find holos to be more expensive than their non-holo counterparts, especially from sought after sets like E-Series.
A good middle ground might be to have a look at English reverse holos; they still have some shine, but are a lot cheaper than regular holos and give a clear view at the artwork.
