Ex Sets Tier List (RESULTS)

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Dragon frontiers is easily the best set of all time. Its based goat tier

Agreed. Love it so much

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Ranked by illustration so that Kusajima’s Growlithe or Kizuki’s Jirachi has as much to say as Fukuda’s Latias

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Idk 80% of emerald has artwork from my favourite artists Saitou, Nishida and Himeno. Fukuda and Kusajima art from this set is also peak. Team rocket is just cool in general. Unseen has a ton of amazing art and the best reverse holo pattern of all time.

Hey don’t diss the Steelix :sweat_smile: Steelix ex was my childhood card I carried around everywhere. Still easily my favourite ex artwork in unseen forces to this day…it is played beyond oblivion though :melting_face:


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I’m a big fan of the card myself! Definitely one of the highlights.

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Do you guys think ex era Holo rares will ever be worth anything? Right now unless it’s a 10 it’s worthless. Often like 40$ or less in 9s. I think they look amazing and comparable to WOTC holos. I know the rarity creep brings them down. But will we ever see collectors build master ex graded sets like everyone does with WOTC?

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Nope ex bad dont buy. Keep the holos cheap please thank you :saluting_face::pray:

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The market absolutely agrees. I don’t think anything I could say will change it, but it’s weird imo

Good question! With the Pokèdemic boom, I expected to finally see the Ex era collecting scene catch fire, but it never really did…and if that didn’t finally get people interested, I don’t know what will?!

I wonder if the huge lack of interest in the hobby at the time means that there just isn’t enough of a childhood nostalgia base for driving demand as that age group of collectors get hold of more disposable income?

I think most post-WoTC eras will struggle as time goes on for mostly the same reason, until children massively exposed to Pokémon over the SwSh era hit adulthood, then it’s anyone’s guess where the values for Gen 8 will go.

There has been movement in ex sealed product but I suspect it’s mostly from investors who are WOTC kids or don’t care about Pokemon and just see scarcity stonk. This is just my opinion obviously and I can’t prove it. But I follow this era and type of item closely and feel comfortable claiming that.

As for the cards within the sets, we haven’t seen similar growth outside of gold stars - again pretty obvious high stonk cards that would get the attention of the people.i mentioned before. So where does that leave ex?

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I feel like a lot of the wotc movement comes from the many openings with lots of good pulls/pull rates for nostalgic cards and pokemon. I dont think ex era has that. Harsher pull rates for ex cards, less iconic holos, basically nonexistent goldstars, incredibly rare boxes/sealed product that make openings very uncommon. Theres like a billion base boxes but 50 Holon Phantoms :skull: HP may be more expensive, but that doesnt translate to the singles/graded cards. More demand for wotc > ex scarcity/rarity

Yeah, I think you’re on it with most of the movement being due to people just seeing opportunity with sealed & GS stonks.

The ex’s are a funny one. You’d imagine such a cohesive bunch of premium looking cards (and being the first ever ultra rares in the TCG), would make them already highly desirable across the board.

I could understand if regular holos were suffering due to being overshadowed by the draw of ex’s, but as it stands, there’s either a huge lack of knowledge on the Ex era from the collecting world outside of E4, or it could be a worrying sign that the franchise is really just living off WoTC & modern stonks…like a hollow sandwich.

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The era we are in right now is a million times harder to navigate than COVID. I expect some liquidation in the coming years of ex stuff, demand will not be what it was in COVID for anything and everything. A lot of eras are just running on fumes from COVID rn if you ask me

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I suspect that PSA 9 copies will be worth more than they are now in the long run, if only bc that is a low bar to clear.

It’s really hard to say exactly how much more though. Future Demand for EX era is unknown. Even if demand grows similarly to how demand for WOTC sets have in a sort of cascade as the next generation ages into collecting, it’ll be diffused across more cards that people want to collect.

Fossil has 15 holo rares (I’m not counting unlimited as it’s own set)

Compare that to EX Dragon (which is the EX counterpart imo)
You have 12 Holo Rares, 3 Holo Secret rares, 9 EX cards AND any reverse Holos of interest, including commons and uncommons.

Basically there is just more competition between individual cards within the era, and regular holos suffer competing with the rarer EX cards and the flashier reverse holos (which are also technically rarer).

All that said, certain holos will fair better for sure. Popular species and cards with popular art are already doing better than “10 or bust” in many cases.

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RESULTS!!!

Below is the average tier list based on everyone else’s tier list as well as some other fun facts and tidbits.

I calculated the average score for every set based on each persons tier list (26 in total) using a point system (F is 1 point, D is 2 points etc). The results skewed upwards given many people did not use their bottom one or two or even three tiers so I proportionally spread them to fill out all the tiers. The results are ordered with higher scoring sets to the left and lower scoring sets to the right if on the same tier (although a couple tied).

The e4 ex Tier List

Fun Facts
While the highest scoring set was TRR and lowest was Power Keepers (surprise surprise) TRR also was put in peoples top tier the most consistently at 17 times out of 26 (dragon in second place with 7) and power keepers was most consistently put it peoples bottom tiers at 13 times (second place TMTA at 8 :rage:).

The only sets not in anyone’s top tier at all was Ruby and Sapphire and Hidden Legends (since @needszeebs put power keepers in his S tier as a joke, what a funny guy).

The only sets not put in anyone’s bottom tier were Dragon, TRR, Deoxys, Unseen Forces, and Legend Maker.

And now for some awards

Runner Up Award: The set put in peoples second highest tier most often
Delta Species at 14 times

Most Controversial Set: Given to the set with the highest standard deviation among all its scores
Sandstorm with an sd of 1.55

Least Controversial Set: Opposite of most controversial obviously
Deoxys with an sd of 0.85

Most average set: The set most often put in people’s middle tier:
Deoxys at 15 times

I’m glad we all unanimously agree deoxys is an average ex set.

Data

RS mean: 3.38 sd: 1.10
Sandstorm mean: 4.19 sd: 1.55
Dragon mean: 4.85 sd: 0.88
TMTA mean: 3.38 sd: 1.48
Hidden Legends mean: 2.81 sd: 0.98
FRLG mean: 4.10 sd: 1.09
TRR mean: 5.46 sd: 0.86
Deoxys mean: 4.19 sd: 0.85
Emerald mean: 3.23 sd: 1.17
Unseen Forces mean: 4.77 sd: 0.91
Delta Species mean: 4.54 sd: 0.95
Legend Maker mean: 3.77 sd: 1.14
Holon Phantoms mean: 4.08 sd: 1.32
Crystal Guardians mean: 3.73 sd: 1.25
Dragon Frontiers mean: 4.35 sd: 1.30
Power Keepers mean: 2.5 sd: 1.50

Comments
Although RS does have the highest sd, sandstorm is a close 2nd (which is what I thought would win most controversial). Looking at barplots of each, the data seemed more skewed left vs right for TMTA vs RS but I’m not going to argue with the sd so RS still gets the controversial award. Figured I’d be neat to see it visualized below though.

Barplots


Overall, I’m very surprised how high ex Dragon scored getting second highest! I also thought FRLG would have scored higher given how much it seems to be praised on e4 when talking about ex sets. I’m also pretty surprised at how consistently people voted Deoxys near the middle, I thought it’d score higher for sure. Overall I’d say I agree with the average results save for maybe TMTA and Dragon Frontiers being a bit lower than they should imo. I hope you guys enjoyed this, it was a ton of fun for me!

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All is right in the e4 universe. Sandstorm should be a tad higher but everything is basically as it should be.

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This is awesome, thanks for doing the hard work!

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an acceptable result. i definitely don’t agree with it, but i can understand it ending up that way