I’ve recently been getting into pokemon cards again, and I’ve started to like holo rare’s more than some full art holos or secret rares. When I was younger opening pokemon cards their were only a few full art cards which made getting them really cool, but now their is like 30 full arts in every set they seem almost overdone. Does anyone else feel this way?
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I don’t think it’s an unpopular feeling at all. By far I prefer the original card design over any modern full art / rainbow rare / etc. design. But there have been some neat cards… The cosmic eclipse trainer + Pokemon full arts were nice, and the newly released amazing rares also look good. I liked some of the full art and alternate full art tag team gx designs, too, but some were just too much.
Good use of full art:
pkmncards.com/wp-content/uploads/muk-alolan-muk-gx-unbroken-bonds-unb-197.png
I’ll never understand why someone would want this:
i.ebayimg.com/00/s/MTAwMFg3NDk=/z/eRUAAOSwPcVVy3v1/$_57.JPG
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full arts are life!
Most full arts don’t do it for me at all… there are some I enjoy the art style
Probably my favorite full art in terms of artwork, I don’t think much compares to this
Defiantly not anything like the first picture, but I think it’s not bad
Same as the second card nothing special, but I can appreciate the character art
vr
odds
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Yeah, I wasn’t trying to say I didn’t like any full art cards. I love the top and bottom full art Ho-oh and Lugia from the hgss base set. I just think that the minimalistic design of regular holos are usually a lot more aesthetically appealing
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You’re not alone on this. There are many exclusively vintage collectors here for this and other similar reasons. Another of which is CG and repetitive art style/designs. Of course, there were some newer post WOTC cards that have fine regular holo design that I can appreciate, but they belong to sets full of the stuff in question here.
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Ever since starting my Shared Artwork collection (which I’ve since sold a lot of cards on due to people paying silly prices for them now) I’ve began to appreciate common and uncommon artworks significantly more than holofoil or full art cards.
For me the big problem with holofoil cards is that they hide the artwork completely and full art cards just go a bit overboard. The Vileplume GX @odds shared above is probably my favourite full art card, but the other two in that post are similar to my issue with holofoil cards - they’re just renditions of the Pokémon without much else going on and are kind of boring to me.
I’ve mentioned on E4 before that my favourite card from Champions Path is Swablu:
The artwork is so simple yet it has so much to offer: a stream, a meadow, a tree, a rainbow - a way of painting a picture in my imagination of where in the real world this may be. Meanwhile the full art format in Champions Path is pretty much just the Pokémon being very close to the field of view doing some attack which means everything around it is blurred out or on fire - it’s boring.
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I agree the other two cards in my post are my “eh” as it’s not the worst… I find myself in terms of artwork collecting more trainer cards. Pokémon Breeder Fields is probably my favorite artworks and I’m a big Ken Sugimori collector. Honestly only thing I’ve picked up from CP is Gardevoirs (big gardevoir fan). I can appreciate the Swablu artwork happy little bugger!
vr
odds
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I like cosmos holos (even modern ones) more than full arts, but the only post-wotc non-cosmos holos I like are the plasma holos from Plasma Storm/Freeze/Blast, especially the psychic and dark types.
I like that full arts exist and, just like regular holos, there’s great ones and terrible ones, but the downside with them existing is that regular holos are dissapointing when you pull them now, I liked it more when there were not as many and the holos were still desirable/chase cards!
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I personally think Full Arts are trash, especially when the “Hyper Rare” variants are literally the exact same artwork except with a rainbow pattern. If you held up 100 Hyper Rares from across the room, I wouldn’t be able to differentiate between them.
Not to mention the fact that there are just too many Full Arts in each set, which has essentially rendered holos worthless. They seriously aren’t much better than Commons and Uncommons these days.
Neo Revelation did chase cards the best, in my opinion. Two Shinings and then a bunch of holos. The Shinings were the chase cards, but they didn’t detract from the holos whatsoever.
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This! A million times this! I feel like very few people understand my struggles. Take this Tapu Lele for example. It doesn’t even have the most elaborate background, but on the holo all you can see if white spots and shiny rainbow colors. Side by side with the reverse the lack of holo enhances the artwork so much
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This 100%. Holos aren’t desirable at all now thanks to the 6 different rarity tiers above them. Neo and early ex series did ultra rares perfectly, but after ex dragon things went downhill for holos
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I appreciate both full arts and holos, comparisons between the two are natural given the evolution of the hobby but I think each has something to offer. Holos offer an artistic appeal that full arts mostly do not and when people talk about treating Pokemon cards as pieces of art, this is where I can see it happening. On the other hand, full arts generally offer a more “ooooh, shiny!” factor if that makes sense. Given the differences in what they offer, I think it’s natural to heavily prefer one over the other since they really don’t overlap much in terms of what they bring to the table.
I will comment that I think full arts have a lot of potential in terms of artistic appeal. It’s been seen in this thread already but Cosmic Eclipse gave a glimpse as to what full arts CAN be. However, as of now Pokemon seems content going for more of a “wow, shiny!” appeal to them which I understand. I do wish they used alternate pictures for the rainbow parallels but that would cost more so that’s probably why we don’t get them haha.
@arkhive, you said it perfectly. Full arts have so much potential, I think to be the most desirable cards in a given set. There are far too many of them in each set which drops their value, and so many go to one extreme or the other…either too bland, or too busy. The Cosmic Eclipse full arts might be my favorite cards released in a long time, they’re just amazing.
On the other hand, they have seriously depleted the value of a holo. Not just monetarily, but the “wow” factor as well. It’s a little sad to think back on how excited you would be as a kid pulling a holo in your Fossil pack, compared to the feeling of a “wasted” pack now in modern sets.
Obviously, everybody has their own opinion on what they like to pull. Some, as evident from this thread, are perfectly happy pulling modern holo cards. But with so may tiers of rarity now it just feels like a let down most of the time.
I would love to see more effort put into full arts because they really do have the potential to be the “collector’s chase card” in a set, I think. If you collect for the art, a card with more space for more art seems like a slam dunk. But more often than not it’s a static picture of a pokemon on a random color background. Yawn.
Unfortunately, Pokemon is beyond the point of no return with the full arts and rainbow cards, in my opinion. I agree with what others have said on the holos becoming equal in value to the commons and uncommon cards. It’s to the point where I would rather see holos removed and reverse holos being the norm so that the actual art is visible properly.
I would also love them to order the cards in the sets like they used to. I’d put Full arts/hyper stuff in the front, then the holos and other variants following after. I wouldn’t mind the number of crazy shiny cards per set if they were in the first 1-20 or so slots of the set only.