Rare Coils and Rarecoils (and Magnezones and Beldums and other things)

[coil]

Not much on the cardboard front from me lately, but I did pull some PWCC wins from the vault last month.

These were all from the time when all those Chumlee signed slabs were getting auctioned and all but one of them will eventually be cracked. I do regret overpaying a bit for the meme label, but oh well. The Metangs are a lot more scratched up than I expected, but time bindering heals all wounds.

The Beldum is still one of my favorite Beldum arts. The Dark Magneton and Metang 21 are also highlights.

[azulryu]

The FireRed & LeafGreen with the Pokeball symbol has an added level of sauce in my opinion. It makes it more like it’s meant to be a Magnemite/Magneton symbol more than a Pokeball in the card context. Also the more I see Metang the more I love its quirky look. Metagross will always be my top favorite but I’m growing fonder of the weird metal goblin.

[coil]

Finally decided to have my CardTrader order shipped last week. Some notes:

• Paid for shipping on the 24th
• Label created in California the 24th (and the shipping label has return address as California)
• USPS received the mailer in Florida the 29th
• Shipped as normal after that

What does it mean? I dunno, I just wanted to put that out there. Either way, I managed to knock out the majority of Portuguese Magnemites I was missing in one go. I also got decent luck with the TRR ones; I got 2 out of 3 of the card codes. I have a couple more with a friend who’s been middlemanning Cardmarket for me, so once I get those in, I’m only missing about 4 Portuguese Magnemites (for now).

Bonus cheap card shop get of the [time period].

[citriina]

What a beautiful collection of new ‘mites! Congrats on getting a lot of Portuguese out of the way as well- those can be a pain to find.

I hadn’t seen that Ferrothorn yet- what a beautiful card. Grats on the pickups!

[coil]

Another day, another lot of my random odds and ends.

I was recently out of town visiting some friends. Of the two, I actually introduced one of them to the TCG as a game when I stayed with them last year, around the time of the Orlando regional. Fast forward to now and he’s pretty invested into the game now, heh.

He picked up the Play Magnezone for me a couple months ago and the Temporal forces Metang more recently. The rest were cards he didn’t need from his bulk or in general that I claimed for myself.

We also stopped by a card shop not too far from their place that he hadn’t checked out yet. Unfortunately, they were reorganizing their inventory so they didn’t have their full selection of singles out, but I did pick up a couple of bits.

Finally, he sent me this shirt as a gift. It’s pretty frickin neat.

On a different note, I recently got a bunch of both Traditional and Simplified Chinese cards from a group buy run by @nintenbox0731. I managed to get all the Chinese cards I didn’t have already, which means once I get my CHR that’s currently with a European friend, I’ll have one of all the Traditional Chinese Mites.

Same deal with the Simplified Chinese Mites too, but that’s less exciting because it doesn’t have Base set and random Legend Maker cards. As an aside, I was genuinely concerned for a moment when I was going through the Simplified cards, because I forgot how few unique Magnemite cards there actually are in the SM era. SM is absolutely littered with reprints of the MAHOU art. They also randomly skipped the stock art Magnemite, which isn’t a crime but it is weird.

speaking of MAHOU Mite, here’s Simplified’s entry into a specific variant of it. If I recall correctly, you received a Pikachu promo and a one or two card pack containing specific electric types in nonholo or reverse holo for visiting a Volkswagen dealer. There were three waves and Magnemite+Ton were in the 2nd wave, but I don’t believe there ever was a Magnezone.

And now for some of my other collections:

Picked up a couple more video game soundtracks. The leftmost CD is memória! / The Very Best of Yoko Shimomura, which features arrangements of some pieces she composed for various Square Enix games. I actually haven’t listened to about half of the tracks yet, because I want to play the games and hear their original versions first. Additionally, as I mentioned in the non-Pokemon gets thread before, I’m happy I finally bit the bullet on the Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney soundtrack since it’s been getting expensive.

It also fit a display idea I had, so pretty happy about that. Just need to pick up a protector and a stand for it.

Finally, I picked up a number of magazines and pamphlets featuring Level-5, a game developer. They don’t make genre-defining games or anything, but their games do align pretty well with my tastes, and I like them a lot.

Two issues of Weekly Famitsu with specials about them, one from 2011 and one from 2018. The specials are both about 40 pages long and feature subarticles about specific games, various interviews with staff members, tours of their offices and other things. I have negative Japanese reading ability, so I’d love to actually read them one day.

The left pamphlet was handed out at Tokyo Game Show 2009 and unsurprisingly covers their upcoming games for that year. It’s neat because some of the games featured were pretty heavily reworked after they were revealed that year. The right booklet was handed out at Tokyo Game Show last year and goes over all their major franchises/games past and upcoming.

If anyone wants pictures from any of these, feel free to let me know. I just assumed no one would want to hear me froth about them lol.

[nintenbox0731]

Glad to see your group order stuff arrived safely!

[joponnes]

Congrats for achievement on chinese mites, also the shirt looks just lovely! I’m really enjoying this thread and how the mahou magnemite keeps on appearing again and again and again

[coil]

One part of me is looking forward to the day where I get my last MAHOU Mite in and I get to take one big picture of all them together, the other is screaming about w h y are there so many. I know why, but still.

[coil]

Not much of a Magnemite update today, but I wanted this info to not be spread across five different messages in a Discord DM lol.

I did however buy this charm while grabbing today’s topic of interest. I think it was a promo for the 8th anniversary of the Pokemon Center stores? It’s cute.

In my last post, I talked about a bunch of things I picked up related to Level-5, one of my favorite game devs. One thing they did back in the Nintendo DS era was distribute demo carts of their games at their Tokyo Game Show booths, which was a pretty uncommon move. North America and Europe wise, demo carts were only limited to store kiosks, but in Japan, it seems companies occasionally distributed demos to the public on carts. I’m not aware of any other DS public demo carts, but I think there’s at least two 3DS carts?

They produced three demo carts:

• Level-5 Premium Silver, distributed at TGS 2007. Contains demos of Inazuma Eleven 1 and Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
• Level-5 Premium Gold, distributed at TGS 2008. Contains another demo of Inazuma Eleven 1 (this one is marked ver 2.1) and a demo of Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box.

Both of these were distributed in a standard DS case and can be pretty easily found for 1000-2000 yen each or so. However, for TGS 2009 they mixed it up. Instead of just a cart, they distributed an envelope containing either Level-5 Premium Diamond, a DVD containing trailers and other promotional stuff, or Level-5 Premium Platinum, a cart containing demos of Inazuma Eleven 2, Professor Layton and the Last Specter, and Ni no Kuni, plus a demo of Professor Layton’s London Life that unlocked once you played the other three.

I’ll admit here for the longest time I thought Platinum also came in a DS case, due to the black background and indentation of the envelope in the picture on this blog, but unfortunately, that’s not the case.

I suspect due to how it was distributed, Platinum is much rarer than Silver and Gold. I checked Mercari for a long while and I never saw any carts pop up. The main reason I got that TGS 2009 pamphlet from the last post is because someone actually had a listing with all of the stuff they got from the 2009 booth, including the plastic bag, a couple of pamphlets, a clear file, a card thing and a keychain for Level-5’s mobile service thing, but most importantly, what appeared to be a sealed Diamond/Platinum envelope. For 900 yen, I said screw it, let’s gamble. Unfortunately, while it was sealed, it definitely feels like there’s a DVD in there.

About a month later, I checked my saved searches and discovered I had missed a cart with its sleeve, but someone else had listed a cart. After some hemming and hawing, I decided to pull the trigger on it, especially since it was only about twenty bucks and who knew when another one would pop up. Kranz graciously picked it up for me as part of his Buyee order and I thought that was that.
…Except a week later, someone listed yet another cart with its sleeve, likely dredged up by the recent sales. I deep sighed and so yeah, here we are. I’m glad I’m done searching for one though.

[davidspokemon]

Figure you’d appreciate this. I collect BW and XY full arts and found these raw randomly at my LCS.

So sent them to PSA for grading and was pleasantly surprised at the results.

[coil]

Not much from the cardboard front from me lately since I’ve been picking up various video game related stuff. I do have some interesting things brewing for down the line. But I did recently pick up a set of the Korean Dialga half deck Magnemite line from @citriina recently.

One of three Korean 4th gen Magnemites I needed. Interesting thing about this set is unlike the similar Japanese ha;f deck or Stormfront, which had the Imakuni illustrated Magnezone, the Korean half deck used the Magnezone from the 11th Movie Commemoration Set. This also makes it the only nonholo version of this Magnezone, since the 11th movie set used the Lv. X holo and English/Eurolangs got it as a promo.

[citriina]

Glad they got to you safely! I didn’t know about the Magnezone, that’s really cool!

[coil]

coil coil coil

Visited my friends again and the one who plays the TCG had another bunch of odds and ends for me, including some past gen cards he had bought and then promptly misplaced in a deck box. The full arts were dupes he ended up with and the rest he went out of his way to get for me but either way, I really appreciate the fact my friend thinks to pick up cards for me.

The Atlanta regional also happened and I picked up a couple random cheap cards from the vendors. I’m only realizing just now the Archaludon and Manaphy are off center though, oof.

I also met the illustrious @cyberurchin and had a very good time hanging out with him.

Also got an order from Japan in recently, but nothing Pokemon related. I did pick up some gaming magazines that I posted about here.

I finally caught a cheap listing of the SMW card from the history wafer set, which is the final card I needed to complete the set. From what I’ve noticed, the Super Mario Sunshine and later cards are much more common than the earlier cards; I think the cards were released in two “sets” so that might be part of the discrepancy. It could just be some sort of selection/popularity bias though.

And here’s the full set. Still procrastinating on finding sleeves and a display set up.

Some more soundtracks as well. The Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn soundtrack is a cope buy since I had the opportunity to buy a new copy of the English ver, decided to wait till a sale to buy it, and unsurprisingly it sold out by the next sale. Haven’t seen a copy for a price I’d pay and the Japanese ver has most of the tracks I want, so might as well grab it.

[coil]

wowee

A long while ago, a friend generously offered to help me pick up various Europe exclusive things, both cards and non cards, and so I took him up on that offer. With all the shenanigans going on now, I figured it was finally time to stop procrastinating and get the stuff shipped out to me. I procrastinated a bit too much and he had real life stuff going on, so he ended up narrowly shipping before Italy’s cutoff date and I spent a good amount of time feeling like I should’ve held off and waited. Luckily it sped through shipping and customs, all is well, and I get to make long, drawn out posts. Now for the card side of things:

Starting off with WOTC, a 1st ed Portuguese, UED Dutch and then a random Italian Skyridge. While I already had a UED Portuguese Base set, I’m not really sure why I bought only a UED and not a 1st ed Dutch Base set as well, considering Dutch’s card count.

Jumping to ex era, more Portuguese Mites including a TRR reverse, which I think is a relatively big get. The nonholo is unfortunately a code I already have, so still on the hunt for the last one. And a random Magnetilo of course.

And for the first of the big milestones in this post, Polish! It’s been so long since I asked my friend to buy these that I don’t remember the full details, but I think I bought the nonholo Mite and Ton together, then the reverse from someone else. I’m pretty satisfied with just the Magnemite pair, but I may pick up a Magnezone or a reverse holo Magneton if I ever see those crop up. First of the super niche languages to be checked off.

No gen 5 here; gen 6 wise is some incidental Spanish and German and…

My first Russian cards, indirectly bought from @Fusion! This would’ve marked one of every language for me if it weren’t for Latin American Spanish existing.

For gen 7, starting off with more Portuguese and this really red/orange Italian reverse holo.

And the first French cards of the post, good ol’ McDonalds confetti Magneti. I did ask my friend to buy one of the rarer Belgium McDonalds one, but unfortunately it got lost in the mail and I didn’t make up my mind on another one to buy because they’re all janky LP to HP. even though I’m a binder collector and it’s only like 5-15 bucks lol

Then both Chinese vers of the CHR and a Portuguese one as well. I think this marks the end of the SM stuff I need for traditional Chinese, but I could be wrong.

The Portuguese 151 was a focus buy, Spanish rev was an incidental buy and a seller apparently threw in the Korean Violet as a freebie, which was very nice since I needed one still.

And then to cap off the Magnemite gets, most of the My First Battle versions. I’ll pick up the English ver on eBay eventually; Portuguese is uhhh I’ll get back to you on that.

Rest of the post is all video game things. For whatever reason, Nintendo of Europe is really into putting steelbooks in collector’s editions or making them preorder bonuses compared to Nintendo of Japan and Nintendo of America; I presume this is partially because the company behind steelbooks is European. Thus, the obvious move for me here was to pick up a bunch of them.

Got all of these in the same auction for about 100 euro, which was very good considering how much the Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire and the gold USUM steelbooks go on their own. They’re not in the best condition, but I really can’t complain considering I paid about 20 euro each. With these, I’m just missing the US exclusive SM steelbook to complete the 3DS Pokemon steelbook set, barring wanting to upgrade a couple with better condition.

The European Switch Pokemon steelbooks are still pretty commonplace outside of the dual packs and they’re not on the top of my priority list in general, so I only really went for Subito grabs here. Shield is a replacement for one I already had.

Moving outside of Pokemon, some Marios. Brothership is one I’d be mildly tempted to get another of due to the design.

And both of the Xenoblade Chronicle Definitive Edition steelbooks. The right one was exclusive to the European collector’s edition and is expensive due to that. As I extremely vaguely hinted, Nintendo of Korea also started offering steelbooks as preorder bonuses and unsurprisingly they’re even more of a pain to get. My friend did a proxy order from Korea and asked if I wanted to grab anything so I went with the steelbook, but I kinda regretted it after because paying VAT sucked, and I should’ve just waited to do a big order of steelbooks myself.
As an aside, I actually did ask him to buy the original Wii U Xenoblade Chronicles X steelbook as well, since it didn’t look like NoE was gonna do a steelbook preorder bonus or a new CE. A bit after I did, NoK proceeded to announce a steelbook preorder bonus and then the steelbook he bought also got lost in the mail, so now I have to make up my mind on whether I want the Wii U steelbook, the Switch steelbook or both.

Last of the shiny metal. The Fire Emblem Fates one is again a European collector’s edition exclusive; I found someone auctioning it by itself. I’m actually waffling over whether I want to go for a full set of the 3DS steelbooks or not since the Pokemon ones make up the bulk of the set. I believe I’m missing about five of them, but I know at least one of them is expensive now, and they’re all games I don’t own or have strong interest in.
The Baten Kaitos thing is actually a metalpak, similiar to a steelbook but generally considered to be worse quality. For whatever reason, Bandai Namco Europe offered this as a preorder bonus only in Italy and Spain as far as I can tell.

European and North American My Nintendo rewards generally overlap, but they both also have some exclusive stuff. I found out you can actually redeem rewards in the stores that don’t match your account’s region, so chucked silver coins at these and just paid for shipping. I actually really like the silhouette pins.

NoE’s also pretty big into knickknack bundles. For the release of Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD, they notably remade the previously Club Nintendo exclusive LM2 diorama, which has gradually gone up in price and I of course bought one a couple years back. They also used the Luigi mold from that diorama (which I was kinda annoyed about but I bought anyway; I am a species collector after all) as a separate wiggly figure preorder bonus. Surprisingly, they actually did add texture to the overalls compared to the Club Nintendo diorama. I didn’t learn this till I got it in hand because Vinted photo quality is bad.

Final thing I got was the preorder bonus mini shikishi for one of the soundtracks I picked up a while back. The company that published it does full size preorder shikishi for their vinyl releases and minis for their CDs. As usual, I’m a tiny bit annoyed they picked this art and not the other that were used for the preorder bonus stickers for the equivalent Japanese release, but beggars, choosers, all that.

[Ratequaza]

That’s one hell of a shipment, very cool update!

[bbobrob]

Great update! It’s always fun following all-language species collectors. Congrats on the Russian and Polish cards too (and whatever other rare language variants there were in there ).

Awesome other game things too. I don’t know too much about the items, but it was neat looking through them! The watercolor Ni no Kuni shikishi looks especially neat.