Interest in B&W Shiny Secret Rares

I’m just curious where people think these cards fit in regarding the grander scheme of things. I’ve started to collect them in psa 8/9 and I’ve noticed that some cards seem to pop up pretty infrequently and since B&W was a bit of a low point in Pokemon I wonder how many are out there.

I also feel like they are a bit underrated compared to gold stars/call of legend shinies(with the exception of 10’s, those are pricey!) and I wonder if the interest in them is going to increase or if they are going to stay niche for the long term.

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I adore these cards. They are some of my favorite shiny cards and definitely fly under the radar compared to others like gold stars as you said. I feel as though interest will increase overtime as they really aren’t a Pallet Town first starting out card so maybe people just haven’t learned about them yet. Along with the pockets of kids who were pulling them most likely not being big enough yet to be searching for graded copies.

In terms of numbers they are still set cards so I’m sure there are plenty out there, but in terms of high grades I’m interested to see where they go. BW era had some poor print quality so it is extremely hard to get 10s of these cards. I think they will have there time, but will probably never reach the hype that gold stars and shinings got.

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I personally like them a lot. They look better than the dp reverse shinies imo. That being said b&w is an odd era. I think supply is a LOT higher than we tend to think. A lot of people including myslef sometimes think of b&w as somewhat vintage, but in reality the print runs are pretty close to XY I believe.

Of the 4 local card stores near me that are run remotely correctly, 2 of them have massive hoards of xy and bw sealed product. Blisters mostly but still that cant be discounted in thinking of their long term rarity. As soon as these things start to gain traction that supply will douse the flames imo

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Personally I consider them the pinnacle of BW and I’ve heard a lot of people talk warmly about them. Imo they will probably remain niche, but one of high esteem.

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I love them and am slowly building my binder set. I prefer Japanese ones due to the texture.

Comparison can be seen here.

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Is there still a texture difference today with japanese and english v full art/alt arts?

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I think a huge reason that they’re not very popular is the fact that they feature a lot of Gen 4/5 Pokemon. Out of the 22 BW shinies, only 6 are Pokemon from Gens 1-3. As it currently stands, the vast majority of card collectors (on this forum, at least) don’t have nearly the same attachment to newer Pokemon as ones from the first 2-3 gens.

Regardless of how nice the card design is, I just don’t have any interest in a Terrakion or Krookodile card lol. I want cards of Pokemon that I remember from childhood.

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Not exactly a fan favorite this one but it is a lovely card :cry:

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Nice! I actually prefer those aswell but they’re very hard to track down for me since I’m not used to japanese market places and don’t know how to navigate them, that’s why I chose english. The silver border definitely looks much better!

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Yep, I echo the sentiment of everyone else here it seems. I’ve had the full set, minus zard, for a long time now. They were some of the first shiny pieces that I started out my shiny collection with. I have the zard finally, but in Japanese. Eventually I’ll get the English one to match I think. But oh well :man_shrugging:

The altaria in particular is one that catches the eye easily. Blastoise is always particularly well known. Dusknoir is one of my favorites. Now we just need a shiny dusclops card to round out the evolution line. Who can forget Rayquaza and Gardevoir as well! It actually has some pretty high brow names, just the extras are kind meh, like verizon wireless.:rofl::rofl:

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I personally am a really big fan of these shiny’s. Most of them are definitely overshadowed by the full arts in there respective sets but some of my favourite cards are these shiny’s. I really like how they focused on gen 5 Pokémon as that’s the era I grew up with. I really enjoy the Japanese silver border shiny’s and they have pull rates of about 1/10 in every booster box I believe. My favourite shiny by far has to be the zoroark from psycho drive with krookodile from dragon blade coming in a close second

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Same! Also grew up with gen 5 and it’s my favourite for sure. Those are beautiful!

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I love them, and I’ve been liking them a lot more recently. I enjoy that they’re not just a parade of the same shinies we get all the time. Especially in Japanese, the texture on them is fantastic. The art leaves something to be desired in many cases, they certainly aren’t gold stars. But given their rarity, I still think they’re overlooked and in some cases underpriced. These were 1/10 boxes in Japanese back when they were released.

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Best card of them all

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I think @zorloth is correct. Most of the valuable and desirable shinies are from Gens 1-3.

That said, I see very little downside here. I don’t suspect that they will drop significantly in price over time. If anything, Poketubers’ continued interest in Black and White may draw more attention to them.

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Gotta love them eggs :sunglasses:

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I think without a question the Platinum shinies are the most underrated shinies from a set atm. The pops are laughably low in both English and Japanese. And the artwork is just pure chef’s kiss. One of the few shiny sets that has the Pokemon drawn in an actual environment.

I wouldn’t say B&W is underrated. Would say it’s more niche than anything, like most shiny cards/sets. The pops are interesting, but I wouldn’t categorize it as something that is just waiting to rev and take off. As a shiny collector I love the set though and think the texture throughout the cards are beautiful. And as someone else has stated I think the silver border on some of the Japanese cards is great. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I think the POPs on these are deceptive because for almost a decade after release they really weren’t worth grading. Couple that with the terrible print quality and even if you had a potential 10 candidate, it would likely get a 9 or 8. Normally this would work in the favor of speculation, but I think this case is an exception.

The POP report for the Charizard SR (and by extension, the total SR POP from the Plasma Storm set) is leaps and bounds above any other SR single or set from the era, which should give you an idea of just how much supply is out there potentially waiting to get graded. And it gets even worse when you start comparing the SR POPs to the FA POPs within each set - few sets have close to a 2:1 ratio of FA:SR to reflect the different pull rates between rarities. BW is still highly speculative and likely won’t ever come close to optimizing the POP. Your safest bet for long-term value would undoubtedly be PSA 10 copies of these cards - anything below that is extremely risky.

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