Ex Ruby & Sapphire
Ex Ruby & Sapphire is the first set released by Nintendo, after WotC lost their licence to produce the TCG outside of Asia. Nintendo (and its successor, TPCI) are a lot more strict with information control than WotC, so there aren’t many images of uncut sheets around for the post-WotC era. However, I did manage to gather enough information to get a pretty good idea about how the cards were printed:
- While I didn’t reconstruct any sheets for Ex Ruby & Sapphire, I did reconstruct two commons sheets for other Ex Series sets, namely those for Ex Sandstorm and Ex Unseen Forces (as well as those for a handful of more modern sets). They are 121 card sheets, so I am assuming all other non-holofoil sheets are also 121 card sheets (though of course, exceptions are always possible - look at Neo Destiny for example). I don’t have any plans to reconstruct any more commons sheets for the moment, but may do so if I find the time and interest.
- The only holofoil sheet of this era for which I found images online which showed the sheet width is the Italian reverses sheet for Ex Team Magma vs Team Aqua. It is a 110 card sheet. By contrast, the reverses for Stormfront (released in 2008) were printed on a 121 card sheet, as were Promos DP08-DP10 (Torterra LV.X, Infernape LV.X and Empoleon LV.X, released in 2007). The most likely point at which the switch from 110 to 121 card sheets happened is in my opinion at the beginning of the Diamond and Pearl Series, allowing all 119 reverses of Diamond and Pearl base set to be printed on one sheet. I plan to look at the reverses from at least some of the sets, in the hope that the share of reverse commons, uncommons, rares and holos from sample (Youtube) data will help indicate if a 110 or 121 card sheet was used - similarly to the way I tried to figure out how many sheets were used to print the reverses for Aquapolis and Skyridge. As to the other holofoil sheets - holos, Pokémon-ex and Gold Stars, I will for the sake of simplicity assume that they used the same sheet size as the reverses, i.e. if I think the reverses sheet size goes from 110 to 121 cards, I will assume all other holofoil sheets do at the same time, though of course this is by no means assured.
This said, it is time to get to the rarity table. The set had an “error” print run (I use the quotes since I don’t know if the error was intentional). This “switcheroo” was discussed on the PokeGym forums:
- Nintendo's BIG R&S Switcheroo Snafoo! | The PokeGym
- Weird Ruby and Sapphire collation... | The PokeGym
The error affected the first print run and was corrected for later print runs. Instead of inserting 6 holos and 6 Pokémon-ex per box (all of them in the common slot, just like the holos for the e-series sets) it inserted 12 holos in the common slot and 12 Pokémon-ex in the rare slot. I don’t know if it is possible to tell which print run a box was from by its outside. The rarity tables look as follows:
Both print runs are weird if you think about it. First of all, by making holos (14 different cards) and Pokémon-ex (8 different cards) both 1:12 packs, the Pokémon-ex are actually more common than the holos, which kind of devalues them. Second of all, for the “regular” print run, the rares are more common than the uncommons (1 of 13 rares per pack, vs 2 of 34 uncommons per pack)!
Basic Energy cards are printed on a separate sheet and take up the last common slot in every third pack.
I only found one video of an “error” box being opened on Youtube. The 12 Pokémon-ex appearing in the rare slot aren’t in any way correlated with the card in the final common slot - it can be a common, a holo or a Basic Energy card.
The raw data for the holos, rares and Pokémon-ex is as follows (dashed lines denoting where transitions from H8 to H7, R10 to R9 and EX14 to EX13 would occur):
The small sample size (only four boxes in total) means the data isn’t statistically significant. In general, there aren’t that many Youtube videos of early Ex Series boxes being opened.
The reverses in the sample were 12% reverse rare holo, 11% reverse rare, 35% reverse uncommon and 42% reverse common/Basic Energy. The sample is too small to say for sure which reverses have RE2 rarity. It may be 9 reverse commons (which would yield a distribution of 13% reverse rare holo, 12% reverse rare, 31% reverse uncommon and 45% reverse common/Basic Energy) or maybe the RE2 cards are a mixture of reverse commons and reverse uncommons (which is against my standard working hypothesis, but is definitely possible, as is shown by the reverses of Ex Team Magma vs Team Aqua).
I did not look at the commons and uncommons. For the Basic Energy cards, Lightning Energy appeared the most often, just like in Gym Heroes and Neo Genesis.
Edit 23/04/11: edited text on reverses to reflect possibility RE2 cards may be a mixture of reverse commons/reverse uncommons
Edit 23/04/16: edited text on reverses again to highlight that the RE2 cards being a mixture of different rarities has occured in a different set