Pokemon Trading Card Game Classic - Is this a trend?

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Hey everyone!

I know most of you have seen Pokémon’s announcement from yesterday (Feb 27, 2023) regarding the “Trading Card Game Classic,” but if you haven’t seen it, here’s Pokémon’s article on it: https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-tcg/product-gallery/pokemon-trading-card-game-classic/
Here’s more info on Pokébeach: https://www.pokebeach.com/2023/02/pokemon-trading-card-game-classic-box-set-announced-for-fall-features-new-and-classic-cards

I think there are a lot of people who are unhappy that there’s another Char-e-zord reprint coming our way later this year, right after they just did a reprint with Celebrations. Where’s the other vintage-era stuff? Come on! Give me Neo reprints, e-series reprints, anything but what’s been reprinted so many times before! I think it’s justified to feel that way, and this is coming from a person who is actually quite happy with the reprint announcement (more on that later).

That being said, it appears that these reprints might be better than what we saw with Celebrations. As others have pointed out, the cards don’t have that massive Pikachu symbol with the “25,” there might be a chance at getting gold borders on English cards (I seriously hope so, as the Japanese ones presented in the Pokébeach article look incredible), and it appears that the reprinted cards will not come from booster packs, but from purchasing the entire “Card Game Classic” package.

Now, I said I am happy about this reprint. Why? Am I a big Charred-Zard collector? Nah. Then what is it? While I do think the reprints could look cool (gold please), I am really excited because I never played Pokémon as a kid, I just collected. Now that I play Pokémon competitively, I find it exciting that I can experience the cards, the mechanics, and the fun from playing in the Base Set era. And while it’s true that I could just buy cards and make a deck from Base Set, it’s a big bonus to see TPCI start to give attention to expanded play in the TCG. Currently, there isn’t really a formal way to play expanded (other than GLC which isn’t a normal format, though it is quite fun). I think there are plenty of players who would like to see more interaction with expanded play coming from TPCI (myself included even though I didn’t play before the Sword & Shield era).

This is why I raise the question, “Is this a trend?” With Pokémon intentionally reprinting cards for people to play with (unlike Celebrations), could this be something that Pokémon does every year or every couple years? Assuming Pokémon reaches their target audience, whomever that may be, and that their “Trading Card Game Classic” is seen as a big success in their eyes, will they continue to do this with past sets beyond Base Set? I’m sure there are plenty of competitors who played in other eras of Pokémon, but are no longer active. If Pokémon wants to see them return, this might be how they accomplish their goal. I would love to see other sets reprinted, and I think they deserve reprinting. At some point, they’ll stop constantly reprinting Base Set, right? Right?!

Let me know your thoughts! I’d love to know what others think!

Thanks!
Noah

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Reprinting old artwork isn’t new to TCGs, Pokemon isn’t the first so I don’t find it a big deal. It gives chances to people who are unable to obtain the original and can give nostalgia for a much cheaper and affordable copy. I can see the iconic Charizard art be reprinted every now and then. I think for as long as Pokemon is alive, we’ll see that Charizard reprinted in different textures and other concoctions. As dumb as it sounds the nostalgia effect is big on the boomers who collect TCGs and reprinting a luxury set will definitely get stonkers, boomers, investors, whatever you want to call them to get skin in the game.

To me Pokemon TCG is no longer catered towards kids in the aspect of collector sets, old-era cards because they simply cannot afford them and most of the market is towards that. Modern isn’t great also because people who are buying out product are not helping the next generation be able to love Pokemon, so this set would cater to the average Pokemon “investor” and I’m sure there will be more to come in the future. I’ve had a lot of friends who are parents and I hear stories where “My kid really really wants evolving skies or my kid really wants that Eevee Vmax alt art collector boxes, but flippers just buy it all out and then sell them on eBay at 2-3x msrp.” In the future, I do see a Neo / DP era reprint along the line, there are so many years ahead of us in Pokemon TCG where it will definitely happen.

There is nothing wrong with making old art work more available to newer generations to grab and I hope it does become more abundant where the next generations are able to enjoy the cards I enjoyed today and 10 years ago without having to look at jpegs online. I see it a good thing to reuse popular art so it can be enjoyed by many. The old cards will still carry the premium of being old and idolized in the hobby, so I don’t see an issue with reprints and the only people who are upset with reprints just want to create a higher barrier of entry for young collectors or collectors on a budget.

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I’m fine with reprints and a low barrier to entry, but I also like some originality.
Therefore it just feels so underwhelming.
I like the golden borders and the fact that they aren’t stamped though.

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Reprinting old artwork is obviously not new but doesn’t mean its good or we should just accept it as okay. Look at the (well deserved) backlash to mtg 30th. I understand providing old artwork to new people for a more affordable price but we already did it with stormfront, evolutions, the UPC promo and then again with celebrations and now again less than a year and a half after the last charizard reprint. And as you’ll notice there seems to be a trend of it happening more frequently which is concerning.

And spoiler alert, the evolutions charizard is still like 60 bucks near mint, cheaper than the celebrations one actually. So the base set charizard artwork is still affordable. In fact this new print is almost certainly going to be worth more than the evolutions one I bet.

So I don’t think this reprint is actually serving to provide the base set artwork at an affordable cost and shows signs of pokemon trending towards the mistakes of MTG that have pretty much been universally panned as terrible ideas.

At the end of the day, this is nothing more than pokemon squeezing as much money from collectors as they can and pretending that this is anything other than that is foolish.

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Great points!
I really wish there wasn’t such a barrier for the younger generation to get more involved with Pokémon/to get the cards they really want. As a kid, it wasn’t nearly as hard to get a Charizard as it is to get something like a Vmax Umbreon (either from getting one in a pack or buying one). I love the artwork they have been bringing to the table, I just wish it was more easily attainable.

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You can’t have eveyrhing easily obtainable to keep it a collectable though. There needs to be balance.

Ooooooohmmmmmm

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I certainly hope it is a trend. These are the only releases from TPC that I am somewhat excited about. I doubt we’ll get full set reprints other than Base and, since whatever reprints we’ll get will be 100% down to what makes TPC the most money, I think one can speculate with some accuracy about what we will eventually get down the line. Personally I wouldn’t mind another 10 Base zards with different holo/borders/whatever.

That said, the only thing I hate more than searchable 1-card boosters are deck boxes stuffed with filler shit, so my interaction with this product (and probably future iterations) will be the same as last time, buying singles of the few cards that I do enjoy on eBay from japanese scalpers. Which is fine, because the alternative is having absolutely nothing new to be excited about.

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I feel really bad for anyone where a new base set charizard is the only thing you could possibly get excited about in the hobby.

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For sure! And at least you don’t have to get the Alt Art in order to have an Umbreon Vmax, as it is just that, an alternate art.

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Exactly this. The amount of money in the secondary market for vintage and non-standard cards is massive. Pokemon currently gets 0% of that dough. It’s not like they can just reprint sets from 20 years ago, so the next best thing is to reprint their biggest cash cow, Base Set, over and over. They want a piece of that vintage $$$ pie, that’s all this is.

At this point, players are the minority market group for Pokemon cards. Expanded format players are a percentage of a percentage. If TPCi was really trying to support expanded play, they would organize and sponsor expanded format tournaments. And they certainly wouldn’t sell cards meant to be used in tournaments as ‘premium products’ marketed towards collectors at exuberant prices. Coincidentally, the Classic set is marked as illegal for tournament play - because contrary to what anyone says, they really aren’t meant to be played with if they are a “collector’s item”. I’m really confused as to what this product is trying to be. TPC just gaslighted an astonishingly high amount of people into wanting something they never knew they wanted. This product sets a dangerous precedent for the future, imo.

If anyone wants to play WotC formats, they should just buy on the secondary market. There’s really no barrier to entry other than having a bank account and a valid address. Even then, proxies are available to those who only want to play the game.

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I guess I don’t see why this is a bad thing, if it’s not for you just don’t buy it. Of course Pokémon wants to cash in on all the nostalgic collectors and players, they are a business after all and this sort of product does well for them. Is there a fear that future reprints will tank the value of vintage cards? Becuase I don’t see that happening any time soon.

But to answer the original question, I suppose it depends on how well this sells and if they have an interest in expanding the older formats.

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Believe it or not, these people definitely exist. I’ve sold to many individuals locally that only care about the newest Charizard or Pikachu card - many of which have the naive hope that they’ll be able to retire off of Special Delivery Chorizos in a couple years.

I feel E4 members and their preferences represent a small % of the overall collector base. For each of us here that is bummed about the umpteenth Base Zard reprint, there’s gonna be 100 other people that will fawn over it. The product definitely seems as though it’s targeting a couple of different groups (stonkers, boomer nostalgia bait) with the side effect of converting some collectors into players.

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The thing is, enabling this sort of product will encourage TPC to print more Charizards and more Base Set at a more frequent rate, as they’ve been doing across recent years. In the past 1.5 years alone, we’ve gotten 4 different Base Charizard prints. And how many sets have featured Charizard in the past 5 years compared to any time between 2003-2013? What happened to moderation? How much will finally be enough? It’s not about the value of vintage cards, it’s about exhaustion, fatigue. Charizard is one of my favorite Pokémon, definitely within my top 10-15, but I just can’t be excited for every new release when it’s had so many already. That’s really what it is. I’m not going to buy this product precisely because I don’t like it. But I’m not going to feign excitement over it either. And I’m definitely not going to act like reprinting Base Charizard and Pikachu for the 4th time in under 2 years has me looking forward to what TPC is planning for the future of the hobby.

Should they release more featuring later eras? Absolutely, that would be sick. But will they? Hell nah. Charizard brings in the big bucks. Supporting this product with the expectation or hope that TPCi will reprint other sets in a similar manner will only encourage them to repeat the same Base Set milking formula for the rest of the company’s life.

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I got the same vibe as you did. Seeing that this was a high end base cards reprint made me think this is the start of more of these to come for future generations or maybe that is the just the copium talking. I like the release regardless, but want them to branch out more.

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This set/game could be far more modular. Sell the decks seperately and let people buy the game accessories if they want them. Instead they bundle them all together and charge a premium and then sell through a lottery months before the final product has even been revealed.

The discussion about this is pretty much entirely about how much people want the reprinted cards because while they do look great, I’m guessing 90% of people will just take the cards they want and the rest of the game which is supposed to playable forever will just end up in a landfill somewhere.

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I hope not. I mean, I love the Base Set and the cards in it. It’s my favourite set mainly due to nostalgia and what not. But, I really hope it doesn’t become a recurring thing every few years like this. This one is especially close to Celebrations. At the very least, it looks like there are a couple nice tweaks to some of the cards, like gold borders and things.

Anyway, I understand what they’re going for here. It would just be nice if they re-use the art or cards to somehow do it in some new or unique fashion. Alternatively, they could at least re-release more cards/sets aside from the Base Set to change it up more.

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I hope the packaging does end up on ebay, i dont mind high pricepoint items being opened in my deck collection. The look is sleek but the pricepoint seems too high for casual gaming with new deck releases every so often.

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What you’re saying makes sense to me, but I still hope that TPCi will eventually come around to reprinting things besides Base Set Zard. But these are some good points that I didn’t think about, and I appreciate you sharing!

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I agree that it would be really nice if they sold the decks/game accessories separately. I was thinking that if TPCi continues to make products like these in the future, they might split up the accessories from decks, as they may consider that people will already have all the accessories from past releases. One can hope, but you never know…

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Especially when the art just gets better and better.

If they can’t appreciate that, it’s their loss.

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