Neo Discovery
Last Saturday, when I last updated this thread, I thought this post on Neo Discovery would not involve any lengthly discussion. After all, three of four sheets (commons, uncommons and rares) are documented, there don’t seem to be any artificial rarity differences, and the only information to add would be the raw data for the holos based on Youtube videos.
I was wrong.
When looking at the sheets on Uncut Sheets in order to check individual card rarities, I noticed two things about the commons sheet:
- All 20 commons appear six times on the sheet; one Grass type Pokémon appears seven times, but it is unfortunately obscured by a purple sticker.
- Some commons appear in such close proximity that if you assume sequential collation, you could get duplicates in one pack (for example the two Poliwag on the last row, two Sentret on the tenth and two Unown E on the eighth). That is highly unusual and, having watched a few box opening videos on Youtube, I didn’t recall seeing this (though I wasn’t paying much attention to the commons).
The uncommons and rares sheets also have these purple stickers, but none of the uncommon cards is completely obscured, and the one rare which is completely obscured can be assumed to be a Scizor, since it only appears in five other places on the sheet which ought to contain R6 and R7 cards.
My next step was to re-watch some videos with the hope of seeing a pack getting opened which included the obscured common card in the top left corner of the sheet. And this is when things got even weirder: It was immediately obvious that the packs opened on Youtube were using a different commons sheet layout entirely!
I reconstructed this sheet (see further below - the C7 common is a Caterpie), but the big question was: Why did Neo Discovery have two different commons sheet layouts?
The most plausible explanation was that the “purple sticker” sheet was used in a different print run which used striped collation (see The Collation Project for the explanation on how this works).
While re-watching the videos, I also noticed that the uncommons sequence couldn’t have come from the uncommons sheet over at Pokemuseum. And to make things even more complicated, I stumbled over the image of a German rares sheet with different layout and different card rarities over at Hansons Auctioneers (Pokemon: An uncut Pokemon printers sheet, 'Property of Wizards of the Coast - Pokemon - German - Neo 2 - card faces - Form 3 of 5 - Rare'. Comprising an uncut sheet of 121 cards including various uncut Neo Discovery cards. Measuring approx. 39.5" x 28.5".).
Now, if you look at my post on Base Set, I pointed out that the French commons, uncommons and Basic Energies sheets differ from the English ones but the German rares sheet does not, and stated that the use of striped collation may have been the reason. But why change the rares sheet for Neo Discovery, since with only one rare per pack getting duplicates in one pack isn’t a possibility? This is probably because since Team Rocket, the sheet layout has also been designed with the intention of minimizing duplicates in booster boxes. If you look at the “purple sticker” rares sheet, it avoids placing duplicates above each other with only one row in between; the German rares sheet does not.
This leads me to the hypothesis that the three “purple sticker” sheets all belong to the same (striped collation) print run, while the German rares sheet may be the same as the (undocumented) rares sheet which goes together with the commons sheet I reconstructed from Youtube videos. The German packs I saw being opened on Youtube featured the same commons sheet as the English videos, with striped collation.
In any case, based on the Youtube data, the “purple sticker” print run seems to be quite small compared to the other one. But, I did find one video of such packs with striped collation being opened (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EA3BOKsiSJY)! In this video, PokiChloe explicitly states that these packs are from a Belgian variant box, which fits well with what is written over at the Collation Project about Magic: The Gathering, namely that print runs from Belgium used striped collation.
Addendum from January 31st 2024: since then, PokeRev has recently uploaded a video opening such a Belgian Neo Discovery box.
I visualized the commons from the four packs opened on the video (one has a break in the sequence, an Unown E has gone missing):
The three packs marked in red probably came from the same sheet, that one in green from the one before or after.
After this lengthly discussion, it is time for the rarity tables (I took over the name “Belgian variant” from PokiChloe, instead of “Purple sticker”):
Second addendum from January 31st 2024: I was able to acertain that the obscured card on the Belgian commons sheet is a Caterpie from PokeRev’s recent video opening a Neo Discovery box printed in Belgium.
The reconstructed commons sheet for the 1st Edition/Unlimited variant is as follows (the dagger marks indicate that it is not known where the sheet begins or ends):
† Kabuto, Caterpie, Poliwag, Unown O, Teddiursa, Wooper, Omanyte, Hoppip, Sentret, Unown E, Larvitar, Pineco, Unown I, Dunsparce, Mareep, Spinarak, Energy Ark, Natu, Weedle, Tyrogue, Poliwag, Caterpie, Kabuto, Wooper, Teddiursa, Unown O, Sentret, Hoppip, Omanyte, Larvitar, Unown E, Energy Ark, Unown I, Pineco, Dunsparce, Weedle, Mareep, Tyrogue, Spinarak, Poliwag, Kabuto, Caterpie, Natu, Omanyte, Teddiursa, Wooper, Unown O, Larvitar, Sentret, Unown E, Hoppip, Unown I, Energy Ark, Pineco, Dunsparce, Mareep, Weedle, Tyrogue, Spinarak, Kabuto, Poliwag, Caterpie, Natu, Teddiursa, Omanyte, Wooper, Unown O, Sentret, Larvitar, Unown E, Hoppip, Dunsparce, Energy Ark, Unown I, Spinarak, Pineco, Mareep, Tyrogue, Kabuto, Weedle, Caterpie, Natu, Poliwag, Unown O, Omanyte, Teddiursa, Hoppip, Wooper, Sentret, Larvitar, Unown E, Energy Ark, Pineco, Unown I, Dunsparce, Weedle, Tyrogue, Mareep, Spinarak, Poliwag, Caterpie, Kabuto, Natu, Omanyte, Wooper, Teddiursa, Unown O, Larvitar, Unown E, Sentret, Hoppip, Caterpie, Dunsparce, Unown I, Pineco, Energy Ark, Spinarak, Mareep, Tyrogue, Weedle, Natu †
The raw data for the holos is as follows (the dashed line is where the transition from H7 to H6 would occur, assuming all boxes in the sample used the same holos sheet; since they all used sequential collation, I assume this is the case):
Third addendum from January 31st 2024: The above raw data naturally excludes the PokeRev video, as the Belgian print run seems to have used a different sheet at least for the non-holo rares, and probably also for the holos. The raw data should thus be kept separate from the “main” print run.
The raw data for the rares compared with the nominal rarity based on the sheet layouts is as follows:
It seems to correlate marginally better with the rares sheet from Hansons Auctioneers than with the one with the purple sticker, which supports the hypothesis that the Hansons version was used for the main print run.
To conclude, while there is nothing remarkable about the card rarities in this set, this is further proof that a lot can be learned from looking analyzing the uncut sheets.
Edit 2024/01/31: Added some notes based on the fact that PokeRev opened a Neo Discovery box printed in Belgium on one of his livestreams, and I was able to figure out the obscured commons cards on the uncut Belgian commons sheet from it.