What’s the deal with holo swirls?
Nobody cared about them in 2018. Everybody cares about them in 2020. People put it in their eBay listing titles to add a few dollars to the price of the card.
What PichuFan described is probably true because I entered the hobby in 2018. I care about the swirls, I put them in titles for the memes.
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So are some cards printed with swirls and some with? Why the discrepancy?
I think technically the cards aren’t ‘printed with swirls’ but rather ‘printed onto an area of the holo sheet that has a swirl on a convenient spot’.
I guess almost all (cosmos foil) holo cards would have a swirl somewhere on the card if you’d remove all ink. It has to be on a specific spot on a card to be seen. They aren’t rare per se, but sometimes they complement the artwork as a whole. That’s when some people are even willing to pay a small premium for it. Look up the thread ‘God tier swirls’ here on e4 for good examples.
Just another variant like misprints, offcenter, miscut etc that some people enjoy. Everyone else is free to ignore them. I don’t know why, but it seems that swirls get quite a bit more hate than all other novelties.
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They look sweet
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I’m not to bothered if cards i buy have a swirl or not but they do look awesome. I have two foreign base set holos that have a swirl, one is more noticeable that the other.
Some holos even have a big holo blob.
I cared about them in 2019, but I was probably in the minority back then. I personally enjoy them and have always chased them.
Swirls are nice but I don’t really see myself paying extra for them unless they add to the artwork
The question is, how much would you pay for a fart swirl?
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they look cool but i wouldn’t pay a premium for it.
I enjoy them. Though they are not a facet of my collection, it is always a pleasant surprise to find them sprinkled into my collection. It’s like adding a slight rarity to it’s already intended rarity. It’s been highlighted before, but it’s very much like how Tootsie Rolls used to showcase a Native American shooting a Star - people felt like it was an added rarity if you found a candy wrapper with one. It makes it more interesting in the meta-sense.
I call those “orbies” and put them on a similar platform of interest as swirls.
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i hyped them and manipulated the market ur welcome
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I read this in Seinfeld’s voice 
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Idk about paying a premium yet but if there are two options at the same price for a card I want, I will opt for the swirl most of the time.
Gives the card a little something extra imo
I would pay a buttload.
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They can really add to the eye appeal of a card. Not always, but sometimes.
For example, I picked up this Politoed recently. Possibly my favorite example of lucky swirls. I love how the swirls in the holo play with the swirl of his little antenna thing:
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I’ve never really collected swirls, but I do enjoy them and can see why other people would go after cards with them. I think they resemble the Fibonacci Spiral quite a bit.
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You’re not wrong, and this is most likely why they’re printed with them. In design the golden ratio is used all the time to make things look more appealing. Most company logos will make use of this or the simplified “rule of thirds” version, and once you’re aware of that you’ll notice it everywhere even in simple things you’ll have laying around at home. Having a subtle reminder of it, even if you don’t know what it is, definitely can’t hurt.