Ex era Holo rares are almost always overshadowed by the gold stars and ex ultra rares. This is simply the result of the introduction of new rarity/chase tiers. It is a shame because the ex sets have some of the greatest Holo rares in the tcg. I’m a big ex Holo collector myself so I am very much interested in what people think is the best Holo.
Holos in the ex era came in 2 main types: regular holos and delta holos. This poll will be part 1 of 2 and focus on the best standard Holo (non delta) card. I also have included a lot more options this time since an argument can be made for many cards.
There is a major change for this poll compared to the others I have held:
voters can vote for multiple cards, simply due to the amount of candidates. Keep in mind, you should only vote for more than one card if you personally view both as equally iconic. The more cards you vote for, the less impact your vote has on your main choice.
In an attempt to keep this list from being too massive, I have decided to exclude theme deck Holo exclusives and box topper holos. Maybe one day we can do a poll for those separately, but as you’ll see there are already too many options
This is, like the other polls, only a poll to determine the best/most iconic ex Holo rare. It is not an attempt to rank all of them so please only vote for the cards that you feel are equally number 1!
3 cards had to be removed due to a max of 25 poll options. RIP altaria and Lapras we hardly knew ye
It’s a limitation of our technology, the world is not ready yet for 28 option polls. Honestly there’s probably more cards I could have added too. It’s hard
It’s unfair when you give Nishida a chance for an ereader rookie card. I’m personally quite biased towards ereaders ex stuff but I love every card shown here so much
Kizuki’s Jirachi is the greatest Pokemon card of all time, let alone greatest gen 3 holo. I will be utterly devasted if it doesn’t do numbers on this poll.
I’m going for EX Ruby & Sapphire Blaziken. From the first set, the final evolution of the most popular starter, and also a very playable card back in the day.
Emerald Rayquaza is amazing. Also how did nobody vote for Team Rocket Returns Dark Steelix / where is Kingdra? Team Rocket Returns and Unseen Forces reverse holos are simply the best. All the EX era stamped reverse holos are good, but those 2 are
When I think Ex era, my mind goes to the early E-Reader releases, so Sceptile and Salamence get joint first place votes. There was also something about the LM Mew at the time, finally having a set focussed around the first mythical, so I gave that a vote too.
May come back and throw Flygon a vote, as it’s probably on par with Salamence at the end of the day.
I can’t speak to the playability, but for gen 3 all the starters are very popular. I would not be surprised if blaziken was least popular even. At least in the tcg, the sceptile is T17 caliber and swampert is an arita masterpiece.
I think those 2 species peaked right there but blaziken had some room to grow a little
i would say as far as grail regular holos go, the Arita Absol deserves it more than the Dragon Absol (even though i like the dragon artwork more). You mentioned some stipulations, so i’m not sure if that card breaks one of those rules. Definitely one of the more sought after regular holos tho. Even just getting a decent raw copy is pretty pricey relative to most regular holos from the era.
i voted for absol because it is my favorite of the options. I’m not sure i could answer which one embodies the era most since i focus on japan for this era and the releases were so different. (unironically i feel like shedinja would be a good candidate tho)
Yeah the arita one in TMTA is the box topper. The list was getting really long unfortunately.
Dragon definitely is overrepresented here, but I suspect a portion of the dragon love comes from e4 generally being WOTC collectors, therefore an eseries Holo may speak to those specific people more than a non ereader holo because it could be reminiscent of skyridge or aquapolis.
This is a guess though, are there any genwunners or WOTC purists that could weigh their opinion on how an early ex compares to a mid ex Holo to them?
