It’s been a hot minute since I did one of these. The random picker’s choice this time is:
Shining Legends bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Shining_Legends_(TCG)
Discuss:
Favorite cards in the 'set’Worst cards in the 'set’How you feel about this ‘set’ in general
Shining Legends is a special smaller set released during the Sun & Moon era, which contains 78 cards (excluding Reverse Holos). This set featured several Mythical/Legendary Pokémon, and also marked the return of Shining Pokémon, which were last seen in the Neo Destiny set of the WotC era, more than fifteen years prior. It was released on October 6th, 2017 as the fourth Sun & Moon era set, and was only available through separated products, like ETBs and pin collections (no booster boxes were made for this set).
Whenever I see this set it reminds me that I’m still super butthurt about how good Scott’s pulls were in his ETB opening video.
Love the fact they brought back Shining Cards, I remember picking up a bunch of the collector’s chests in early 2018 thinking ‘why does nobody even seem bothered about this set??’. The shining cards are executed fantastically, pull rates aren’t too aggressive (my personal count was 1 Shining every 13 packs, but I think that was even leaning towards the unlucky side to be honest). MewTube is great, as are the full art rainbows, I just wish they hadn’t recycled the FA Rainbow Mewtwo as the Shiny Mewtwo GX in Hidden Fates.
In my scummy conformist opinion, best Shining has to be the Mew closely followed by Arceus.
Disappointingly, Rayquaza is the worst - at first quick glance I thought I was looking at a big curly old dog turd. To be fair, I think Evolving Skies is more than making up for that…
This was one of the two sets that brought me back into collecting early 2020! Was wandering a Walmart and saw some of the pin collections bundled together and on clearance, and thought, what the heck, it’s like $15. Big fan of the shining cards. Unpopular opinion, but do not like the test tube Mewtwo. Part of that could be that I’ve never really liked Mewtwo to begin with.
In late 2018 I got really into Pokémon Go and tried so damn hard to get an EX-Raid invite so I could finally catch Mewtwo. When I finally received my raid invite I wanted to celebrate, so I went to Target to buy one of the blister packs that came with a Mewtwo pin. I strictly wanted the pin for my sling bag that I take with me to play Pokémon Go. I wasn’t collecting the cards actively at the time and had no idea what Shining Legends was. I pulled the Shining Mew and that was it… I was back baby!! I dove in head first and haven’t stopped since.
I just got that Mew back from PSA recently and it’s staying with me till the end. Very sentimental about that card for brining me back into the hobby
Shining Legends is up there in my fav sets. I opened so much of it and pulled every shining except rayquaza and volcanion. I really like Rayquaza and I’d love a graded copy of him one day. I heavily regret selling all my shinings, only one i have left is my lugia from the super premium collection. I’ll have to pick them all up again one day
I think like a lot of people, this was the first modern set I actually completed and it caused me to dive deeper into everything back to XY since that was available at the time.
I was always upset as a kid that there wasn’t a Shining Ho-Oh, so I was really excited to finally get one. Definitely one of the most beautiful shining cards IMO!
This is the set that made me really ‘come back’ to the hobby. I had already been kinda back but the shining cards in tis set (mew in particular) really made me start cracking boxes at a rate I would never have thought i’d be opening packs at. No regrets, amazing set
Shining legends really stands out as one of the best sets from the sun and moon era. Among 200+ card sets with pages of secret rares, shining legends just about had it all in an ideal set. It was relatively small so it was actually realistically completable. It had a unique set of cards (Obviously shinings aren’t unique but unique cards compared to other sets from the same era) which were pretty tastefully done imo with some texture, not full art and similar to the OG shinings in art style. And then it of course had the test tube mewtwo which is hands down one of the best cards from entire sun and moon era. If it weren’t for the tag team sets, this would have undoubtedly have been the highlight set of the entire sun and moon era.
Compared to a lot of other sets in the SM era, it’s certainly not a Crimson Invasion tier set but also not something as good as like Cosmic Eclipse. Such a small set with maybe 6 or so chase cards. I do love opening the set (at least did when it was cheaper) and the art of the holos though, more or less a decent overall set for SM, certainly one of the better sets in the early era of SM.
Not the same tier, and tbh, I don’t really like the chases in Shining Legends as much as I do in Cosmic Eclipse. At least it’s not Champion’s Path with its paltry 1 chase card LMAO
