Great points, as a few of us have said what IS “greatest”? I like your approach: If we’re going to aim for an objective greatest, it might be the one that has the most replay value.
BUT a caveat to that point: Will the future valuation reflect that, or will the greatest era of pokemon be one of the cheapest eras of pokemon? Would that ironic pairing be acceptable?
@xileets yeah that is an interesting question for sure.
My answer is that there is no answer. Objectively speaking, we can’t be objective. The way I see it is it depends on how many of the children who partake in SwSh era stick with it or return down the road to collect.
Right now eFour is filled with thousands of wotc-HGSS people. I’d venture a majority of us are mostly Wotc-Ex, but collect other eras just because we all understand the market and like cards regardless. We’ve all gone down deep into the rabbit hole.
Will the future be 100’s of thousands of 18 year old Timmies? Or will it continue to be primarily us dedicated veterans from the early days.
If it’s the latter, I think it speaks volumes about how SwSh wasn’t engaging enough for younger generations to continue their voyage with Pokémon.
Real talk though, with how accepted Pokemon, and anime as a whole has become, I see SwSh going down as the best era. I think people will likely continue buying in and be less likely to take a break. We adults will continue to do so and our kids will have a higher chance of staying involved.
I’d actually be interested in a poll to see what gen people started with. Not sure if that’s happened once before or if the mods can make that happen now. Also not sure if I can tag mods or not, so I’ll refrain, but if one of you reads this, I think it would be cool to know the current eFour breakdown. Maybe frame it as the most involvement in an era personally. For example, I was tangentially involved in wotc due to siblings, but came into my own in ex era.
Sword & Shield isn’t even better than Sun & Moon IMO. At best, they’re tied. Tag Teams are one of my favorite concepts ever in the Pokemon TCG. Sun & Moon also had alt arts. The mania surrounding SWSH was amazing and still has lingering effects but I still prefer Sun & Moon.
The alt arts are better in SWSH but still, seeing multiple Pokemon’s name on a single card is quite sick.
So perhaps a poll that should be asked is:
If you could open one booster box or era of boxes, ignorant of the value/cost (taking the need to buy or possibility to sell out of the question), what would that box be? Or does this not even get at it, as it doesn’t include the nostalgia of what went along in the era WITH that box?
ex era is my favorite as well. There’s one big blunder from the ex era though: none of the ex cards are hand drawn, all are CGI.
It was a criticism of early SWSH, that all the V and VMAXes were CGI. I remember seeing something like Incineroar V from Champion’s Path and it was very refreshing.
there was actually an exact thread that asked this question on old efour lol
I thought there might have been, but I wasn’t sure if it specified, “Ignore any monetary value”. I really think that’s the indicator, and well, I think eevee heroes wins. 
@knotchi yeah, I figured that type of thread/poll already existed somewhere. It still feels like a good one to update every few years though 
Get a good snapshot of the current “meta game” in eFour 
Maybe it should be “what set would you rather have fully completed, ignoring prices?” If it was opening boxes, we would get that other thread’s topic involving pull rates and what not into the mix. We all know a single box of eevee heroes is probably not gonna net you the card you want and we would then choose an older generation box by default. 
If it were full complete set ignoring value, I’d say eevee heroes as well. I have nostalgia for days towards anything ex, but I’ll be damned if I don’t say those alt arts in eevee heroes are something special.
But that still doesn’t answer the question of best generation, only best set.
It seems era is mostly synonymous with each era’s gimmicks so that would probably be the best way to phrase it. Sets have been a mess for a long while now so that wouldn’t be very fair.
Then you could have a separate question asking about art for holos and non-holos.
The last year of Sun and Moon starting from GX Ultra Shiny ending with Tag All Stars (two AAA-tier sets) and the sets in-between with great chase cards was a hell of a lot better than the first year of Sword and Shield which had no chases until the Amazing Rares and then finally an okay set in
Shiny Star V. But even SSV was mediocre in the end though.
Outside of the artwork quality, Sword and Shield still has a lot of problems, and a bunch of things I really dislike about the sets from the cards themselves to the ill-thought out distribution here in Japan. I really like the art of the regular cards but the boring holo pattern, and tacky reverse patterns ruin any fun that might be had from getting them. And Full Arts and rainbow cards urgh why?
I will enjoy collecting the alt arts for a long time, but it has been far from perfect, and there are plenty of cards from other eras which are as fun to collect IMO.
Best art imo. Can’t wait to see how they end off the era.
SWSH has been amazing, the alts, the CHRs, even the regular c/uc have been great, the V’s are mostly awful to look at, even the VMAX mostly are just meh. It feels even better after coming from XY and S&M, though S&M did have the Tag teams.
WOTC will always have a place as a top era just due to nostalgia for me.
EX is an incredible era as the reverse foils were actually amazing and added something to the packs (for most, I hate the Holon Phantoms type foil) along with GS and some great artwork. Almost never disappointed opening a pack with that reverse pattern imo.
Anyone who wants to bump it, feel free
It’s close but I wouldn’t say greatest. Pokemon is on the right track with the alt arts and character rares, but things like large set sizes & rainbow rares negate it. If the latter were resolved (smaller sizes, remove rainbow/hyper) it would be up there for greatest.
I hope alts & character rares are included in the new era.
Greatest Era= The era that you started with
I returned to the hobby for the first time in two decades because of SWSH – the beautiful and tasteful alt arts of this series in particular have been a huge boon to the hobby IMO. My first booster box purchase ever was Brilliant Stars. I pulled that Alt Art Zard and the rest is history.
It could be a lot of different external factors, but the main two are that I’m now 30(ish) with disposable income and the nostalgia for the WotC era never truly died for me. It just took a banging series (and passionate, just-the-right-amount-of-snobby collectors) to stoke the flames a bit for me.
It also contains arguably the greatest set ever (or at least in the top five) in EX Dragon (shoutout @zorloth). Gorgeous regular holos (with big names like Absol, Salamence and Flygon), phenomenal EX cards (Dragonite, Latios, Latias, Rayquaza, etc.) and the Charmander/Charmeleon/Charizard secret rares. The set design was absolutely brilliant.
That’s where the EX era separates itself from most eras. You had chase cards like EXs, Gold Stars and Secret Rares, but the holos still meant something, and each set was different with how it was organized. Not every set had Gold Stars. Not every set had Secret Rares. It kept you guessing.
If you stretch the meaning of the word greatest and read it as biggest (which might happen with non native english speakers), it for sure is.
A lot of collectors will say that their nostalgia era is the best, but I think on average sword and shield is the best era, because a lot of people will place it top 3 at least (while the other eras might not be consistently high placed)
ex era is my favorite as well. There’s one big blunder from the ex era though: none of the ex cards are hand drawn, all are CGI.
I’ll be the first to say hand drawn > CGI anyday, but calling the ex cards a blunder because they were CGI doesn’t feel fair to me. While CGI art runs the risk of looking dated due to advancements in technology, many of the ex cards were given an amazing amount of care with their art direction: lighting, framing and the pose of the Pokemon. Sure, the models are absolutely dated but I find many of them hold up remarkably well if you view them as a snapshot of the early 2000s where some of Pokemon’s most-well known artists were experimenting with new technology.
Not to say there aren’t some ex duds (looking at you, Power Keepers), but these are a far cry from the lifeless CGI models we get today.
Do I think the Sw/Sh era was great? Not really, the sets were meh to me and I was not a fan of the V or VMAX card art. It did give the CHR which I loved but other than that the card sets were alright and SSV/Shining Fates was a boring as heck set that I never cared for.
Best era in my view besides WoTc is probably original ex era and the legend-bw era is my favorite. The artwork on those era’s were fun and loved collecting the gold stars. LEGEND era had some interesting stuff and those legend pieces just looked amazing as a whole. Plus playing during those era’s were stupid and fun to see decks
