Ideas for improving the Pokémon TCG experience

  1. Decrease the number of cards in a set. Got no time for 300 new cards every four months.

  2. Give Charizard a break.

  3. Less content about InVEsTIng and more content about collecting and history of the hobby.

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  • Run a sustainability audit on existing merchandise and consider alternative packaging methods. Too much modern product is intentionally large to draw your eye on the store shelf / look exciting/impressive / be harder to steal, but that doesn’t mean it needs so many plastic layers.

  • Replace line holo / oil spill holo pattern with almost anything else. If we don’t want to go back to Cosmos then cracked ice or snowflake would be good.

  • Bring back sparkly borders for V and reduce glut of ultra rares.

  • Remove rainbow rares. An inversed color rarity would be neat depending on legibility.

  • Remove basic energies from booster packs. Does anyone actually need these? You can get every basic every you need for pennies. Especially in Japan, how many different holo basic energies every special set do we need?

  • Invest in online tournaments like MTG is capable of.

  • Before designing new sets, go through the Pokedex and make notes of which Pokémon have been in a drought for new releases. For example, Crobat and Gengar are great Pokémon but I was surprised to see them in the Dark Phantasma set when they each already have multiple holos and V arts in SWSH Era and other Pokémon would’ve fit the theme as well.

  • Align international rotations. The format in Japan should rarely be wildly different than elsewhere. Rotation marks are an excellent first step. Not having an alignment limits the sense of international community. There were times last year when new cards would be revealed and I wanted to talk with Japanese players online about them, but their perspective on cards was almost irrelevant to me because they could still use cards like Dedenne GX in decks.

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I want to add one, instead of rise of booster box price because the price of raw materials and energy increase, riduce the number of cards per pack. Maybe 5-7 instead of 10. No one cares about all those common cards.

+1 for doing reprints in a way that doesn’t take away from the existing cards. I got back into things at the end of last year. I would not have if my friend hadn’t pulled a Classic Collection Venusaur in front of me. And if it weren’t for the other CC cards I would have no idea what a “Gold Star” or any of the other things are. They were all fun for me to collect and I’m assuming that since they were so different they took nothing away from the original cards they represented.

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I have a few Zimbabwe Dollars, I’d like to sell…

Really love that last one!

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Pokemon does a great job with their reprints. I know so many people over the past 5+ years who had the same experience. Picked up a pack at the store, saw some familiar art, and then went down the rabbit hole collecting the originals.

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Please actually try to make the online game enjoyable for the people who play it. Yes, it’s niche, but there’s so much potential there. I think the whole Live thing might be what it needs, but some of the stuff they got going on in there seems kinda weird.

Also please stop doing the stupid international sets with 300+ cards and leave it as the Japanese set format. Sure it’s nice when you manage to pull your chase card, but it’s so discouraging when you start looking at odds and how much money you’d have to spend to pull.

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In regards to the photos on PWCC, does anyone else think they could take the time to clean off their scanner before scanning cards? There is always dust or hair on the images and sometimes it is hard to tell if it is on the card, the slab, or just on the scanner.

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Yesssss please! I have a clipped fingernail in one of my slab because I thought it was some kind of dirt from outside.

Several complaints about creators making financial/investment videos. Two points, people want to watch them and the creators profit through views and their patreon’s. If you got rid of them, people like Scott couldn’t create content because it wouldn’t be worth it.

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For Pokemon Japan:

  1. No more print lines
  2. Up the guaranteed SR to 2
  3. End rainbows of all cards
  4. End 5ban/CGI full arts - all ‘full art’ cards should be alternate arts. Please make this change when SCVI release or else it’ll be another 3 years of more CGI Charizard, Mewtwo, Lucario etc against empty coloured backgrounds. So boring.

For TPCi

  1. Match the Japanese calendar, end bloated sets.

  2. Get rid of “rare” as a rarity and make proper tiers. The JP rarity logos make sense C-U-R-RR-RRR etc. whereas ENG makes 0 sense with one black and one white/silver star representing so many different rarities.

  3. Guaranteed rates. 0 excuse for being unable to do so besides being shady AF.

  4. Less bulk, getting rid of rare and making smaller sets would help.

  5. Reprint booster boxes of old sets & stop making useless deck products. Forcing distributors to take on crap product that doesn’t sell but refusing to print actual sets to demand is idiotic. They don’t see the $ from inflated prices, encourage scalpers and also undermine their downstream support. Dumb all around.

100% this. Patreon is the entire reason why I am still making public videos today. Speaking of, where you at Gary?! Everyone else is already in Patreon. :wink:

To give people some perspective who don’t create content, I’ve made numerous history videos, japanese mail opening videos, binder videos, and videos of rare cards you won’t see on any other channels. Their views all pale in comparison to market discussion videos.

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We need more history vids! The info you provide that you can’t get anywhere else is the most valuable thing, people just don’t realize it

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:open_mouth: :open_mouth: :open_mouth: Nooooooooo! That is the stuff of nightmares.

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** Input crowd clapping gif

I will never understand why people think everyone should do things for charity. The best info isn’t free :wink:

The best cards are tho :blush:

The UK desperately needs a PSA hub for the future of all card hobbies. I know it’s a huge ask to set up and get the consistency right but they should have the money and help of AI.

It would also benefit the USA since the backlog (can’t see it going away anytime soon) wouldn’t include all the EU cards. Being able to grade cards at a fair price and without an 18 month+ wait should help everyone overall

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PSA center on the east coast of USA should make it easier for Europe to grade and alleviate your backlog. While it would be nice, I believe its more efficient to put one on the east coast of america since the majority of the market is here while also being closer to Europe.

Bumping old thread for continued discussion.

Pokémon should give credit to the illustrator on card sleeves, same way they do for cards.

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