Skyridge print runs

Hi all, I’m new to the forum but loved Pokémon since I got my red version for game boy at 6 years old.

My question is. Did skyridge really only have one print run or is that something that is just assumed by the community?

I know it was the last wotc set. Also would you rank a skyridge booster box behind a 1st Ed base set booster box? Or is there a set or two you would put in between?

not sure about english, but i know in jp there were at least two print runs since there is a 1st edition run and an unlimited run

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My understanding is that the English print run was cut short when WoTC was pulled from printing Pokemon cards. Bulbapedia backs this up, but I haven’t seen actual documentation.

Other consequences of the cancellation of the WOTC license was that there was only one print run of Skyridge, causing the price of the set to skyrocket.

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I don’t think “print run” is as clean a concept as people like to think. It is often said that 1st edition base and shadowless are part of the same print run. But how many days was that print run? Was it all at one location? Was it the same size as subsequent print runs? Are shadowless theme decks part of the same print run? Correcting the no damage Ninetales requires new printing plates to be produced, does it then become a new “print run”?

The second issue is that the process is so opaque. We don’t have authoritative print numbers from wotc, unfortunately.

Given the last of a clear definition of a “print run” and the lack of any information or numbers to make a quantitative comparison, I think it’s not very useful to get caught up in the specific question of exactly how many print runs skyridge had.

What is clear from just experience in the hobby is that Skyridge is definitely one of if not the scarcest wotc set. You can look at box prices, pop reports, single prices and general supply in eBay and they all point to this conclusion. The fact that each e-reader set is so massive also makes each individual card rarer. You’d have to open about 3x as many Skyridge boxes to pull a particular holo vs Base/Jungle/Fossil. So even if there were 7 Skyridge print runs, the reality is that it still translates to probably the scarcest wotc set ever printed

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To add some very limited anecdotal evidence to it being one of the scarcest sets, in mid-2011 there wasn’t a single sealed Skyridge box to be found for sale in the UK. Everything else was readily available at sub-£150 prices (1st Ed jungle/fossil/neo/gym/expedition etc). I was looking for weeks on end to find one, before giving up and ordering one from Troll and Toad and eating the import costs. This made the box approximately £300 to import from the US, which was big money for sealed Pokémon product at the time.

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In terms of secondary market value? Yes. Skyridge is the second-most valuable regular set booster box. The only booster boxes that come even remotely close are Deoxys, TRR, Aquapolis, and 1st Ed. Neo Destiny. But Skyridge is still solidly ahead of any of those.

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5 posts were split to a new topic: What languages was Skyridge printed in?