Hey all, I was wondering if anyone has suggestions for ways of doing fun openings and searching for good pulls without paying tons of money. In particular, I love the ex-era sets and it would be so awesome to open booster packs and hunt for ex’s and gold stars but it would just cost way too much. Also in general I find it more fun to search for rare cards than to buy them directly. Does anyone know of any good mystery boxes/other fun and moderately cheap ways of hunting for rare cards?
Dollar-tree packs can also contain ultra rares
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Tag team all Stars!!
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This might sound stupid but…any modern set? Pull rates are great, cards look great, boosters incredibly cheap. Or are you looking for specifically vintage products? If so, prices are bound to be high.
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Ooh I don’t know much about this set, is it a Japanese set with lots of secret rares?
That is a good point, I will look into modern sets for sure. It would be amazing if there was some way to pull from something with a chance of vintage rare cards but I guess anything like that will definitely cost a lot…
Yep lots of great chase cards in the set. You have the chance the a gold Tag Team GX as well. If not this set, I’d also recommend Legendary Heartbeat for a guaranteed amazing rare + beautiful secret and hyper rares
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Just be aware that unless you pull a ‘god pack’ (a pack where every card is a secret rare, occurs roughly 1 in 250 packs), each booster box of GX Tag All Stars will only contain one secret rare. Legendary Heartbeat booster boxes will also contain only 1 amazing rare and 1 secret rare. That said, there are plenty of great cards from both sets to pull and enjoy
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I second this suggestion, 10 packs with each containing multiple holos, a guaranteed Tag-Team GX Card in each pack, guaranteed secret rare Energy and Secret Rare GX/FA Trainer in each box. The high-class Japanese boxes are the most fun I have with modern Pokemon.
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Pull a zard in evolutions
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Evolutions all the way.
Chase a holo zard, and once you pull it get excited and send it to PSA to get it slabbed expecting a 10.
But in 6-8 months you will get it back and it will be a 8-9 and then you will cry before realizing that even a 9 sells for $100+.
Now that’s exciting.
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im only vintage and just getting back into things, but from my pov, they hand out charizards like candy now and modern is probably fun. go for champions path
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Evolutions and shining legends are great bang for you buck options. I love opening both.
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Japanese sets are pretty awesome. I recommend Dream League (JPN Version of Cosmic Eclipse), you get a guaranteed full art, several GX cards, and a couple of the beautiful Character Rares which look much better in Japanese.
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I see, thank you all for the input! I will check out all of these modern sets. As for vintage/ex-series cards, does anyone know of a mystery box or something with a chance of pulling them? Maybe the solution is just to look for old collections in garage sales? That could be fun too…
Hidden Fates. Shining legends. Evolutions.
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Evolutions is still dirt cheap. You said you like ex series well you can buy Spanish ex ruby and sapphire packs super cheap on eBay still as well as Chinese ex legend maker… Non English sealed product is still significantly cheaper than its English counter part, I always like to recommend things like Japanese gym and neo series packs. Great cards and still very cheap while also offering a holo in every pack.
Cheap sealed English vintage isn’t a thing any more, if that’s want you want you have to buy foreign or pay the massive premium for English.
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Sacari beat me to it… Chinese Legend Maker and Spanish Ruby Sapphire. Both are worth like 1/50th of what English is worth. Very affordable and the closest you’ll get to opening English EX Series packs outside of actually opening English EX Series packs.
That said, I’d also recommend buying some heavy EX Series packs. As a fellow EX Series enthusiast, opening English EX Series packs is a truly magical experience. There’s nothing more exhilarating, nostalgic, and just straight-up fun than opening them. And when you see that silver border pop up over the edge…amazing. You can get heavy FRLG packs for $275 on eBay, which is a pretty decent deal. Yes, you will usually lose money. But the EV actually isn’t that terrible if you can score some 10s. For instance, I opened ~15 packs within the past month (FRLG, TMTA, Sandstorm, Hidden Legends, Holon Phantoms, etc.), and some of the highlights of my pulls were a reverse holo TMTA Squirtle, a TMTA Swampert ex, and a holo Sandstorm Mawile. If the Squirtle comes back a 10, it will be the first one in the world (and there are like 10 PSA 9s…). I have to imagine that being a Squirtle and a pop 1 will make it worth at least a couple hundred bucks… And the Swampert ex is also pretty low pop in 10 and is definitely worth a decent amount as well (not sure of the exact amount because of low sales volume, but probably somewhere in the $500-$1000 range). The Mawile is probably only like $100 in PSA 10, but that’s still more than the pack cost me lol. Of course, you probably won’t want to sell what you pull (I know I’m not going to…except maybe the Squirtle if it gets a 10). Plus, putting aside the EV, the experience itself is DEFINITELY worth it. It was honestly a priceless experience, and I definitely will be opening many more packs in the future for that reason alone.
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Gonna throw out another suggestion and say Cosmic Eclipse if it’s in your budget? Prices doubled since I last bought a box but it’s a ton of fun as there’s a lot of things to pull from the set.
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Shining legends is great but ive never got even close to making my money back on evolutions backs. Maybe im just unlucky but I thought the pull rates for most were bad for this set
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