So kinda struggling with something here. I love Roaring Skies, one of the few sets I actually think is nicer in English. I want to pick up a booster box, but for the $100 or so that it costs, I could pick up all the main cards I want from the set.
Has anyone here been to a prerelease and if so, how do the cards look straight from the packs? Primal Clash really burned me, I got a fantastic box (2 FA EX, 1 FA M-EX, 2 M-EX, 1 Gold card, 1 EX), but all the cards were damaged, only one looked like a possible PSA 9. If I’m going to drop $100 on an English box, I want the card quality to be good.
Or should I just pray for mint cards off of eBay, hoping I can resell them if they don’t fit my standards?
From what I’ve seen, centering doesn’t look like a big issue (like it’s been for Flashfire and other XY sets) but whitening right out of the backs is still common. No other noticeable printing defects that I could find.
PSA 8.5-9s shouldn’t be too hard for this set, but 10s will still be difficult to obtain (though probably not as difficult as Flashfire/Primal Clash).
Pretty sure he’s talking about the back of the FA’s. There are like white lines/specs on them. About 12 or so of the 20ish FA’s I pulled from the set are like this…
This is ridiculous. There is inequality in the quality of Pokemon merchandise. Japanese Pokemon merchandise are very well produce meanwhile English variants are lacking in proper presentation. If you want PSA 10s your better off just collecting and grading the 1st edition Japanese cards.
i highly recommend collecting Japanese sets if you are going to be wanting to pull open whole booster boxes, they come in at like 3-4 times cheaper than English sets, and the card quality isn’t just like a bit higher, it is very noticeable. The only downside is the smaller amount fo cards in each pack but i swear it just evens out so you get less commons and uncommons than usual and if anything better rates on stuff like Ex, FA and SR cards.
With regards to OP, if you are wanting to try get all the cards from the set then go for it IMO, opening boxes is so fun! Though im only saying that for say full sets, if you only want like a few of like the FA or SR cards then i wouldn’t bother just because who wants to be pulling open packs looking for say 2-3 rare cards and then finding it and turns out its gonna grade at 8.5, thats just bad crack!
I opened some Blisters packs from Retail today (GameStop + Walmart). I cut the blisters open with scissors, then cut the packs open with scissors. I would say probably only 3 of the 10 Ultra’s I pulled today would grade PSA-10’s. The rest have small amounts of edge-wear on the edges or corners of the cards…
Picked up some cards from good old Rusty so I know they’re pack fresh. Probably PSA 9, edgewear sucks. A 30% 10 rate isn’t bad though, might pick up a box thanks to some new income.
You think English collectors have it bad? Poor Koreans get shafted on card quality. Centring etc is fine, but just…the printing is poor. Dulled colours, no shine to them.
