Probably the most popular opinion in this thread. 
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Rudy is ALWAYS relevant to Pokemon. Most of his insight, even if he does an over-time price evaluation of a set is relevant to Pokemon. He clearly tells how a set can be a hit or a miss based on cards, print quality and quantity and how it has been promoted. The fact that it’s easier to track for MTG is because MTG has these fancy stats websites for years now and we have Pokemon Price for 2 years now.
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Whatever he meant in itself, he would had to have taken both ‘communities’ and grade them alongside.
The reasons @churlocker raised on what we feel of Pokémon are basic community foundations and Pokémon is mega generalistic and interculturally variable as it’s cliques within larger or smaller ones. What leads it to negative at core is it’s competitive nature at an obsessive, Machiavellian 2 faced level of dishonesty within it’s clique crowds of elitists; collectors and players. One way of understanding his stance is similar to when I attempted to *am-hem state my own unpopular opinion on his work before this thread’s existence and the backlash it followed for something I tried to say that I strongly believed was wrong. Reminds me I’ll have to get back to it.
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FWIW, there is no ‘best community’. Every community of more than ten people will have friction. There are always good people, bad people, and every grey area in between for every community. For Pokémon there are millions of people worldwide, so of course there are people who doesn’t share the same opinion (heck, look at this thread as living prove 
), doesn’t have the same morals, etc. There are loads of scammers out there, abusing new collectors by selling them or their moms fake cards, and who knows what else they’re doing. But there are also so many great people in this community.
Although I can see where Charlie’s opinion is coming from, I think both communities I’m very active in: Pokémon and Twisty Puzzles, are great communities. They may not be the best community, but they definitely are great communities. Whether they are collectors who’ve been around since the start, or starting now, there are always people within the community willing to help, and sharing information. I’ve learned so much from this forum since I came back collecting. Sure, I could name quite a lot of things I dislike about this community in general, but overall this community is a great place to be in in my honest opinion.
So I agree with the first part of Charlie’s opinion: it’s not the best community. The other part I kinda disagree with: it’s definitely far from the worse and imo above average. Although it greatly depends on what part of this community you’re active in. 
Greetz,
Quuador
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I hope you delete your browser history regularly.
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Now I’m legitimately curious if there are scammers in the twisty puzzle community and what those scams would look like.
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Tbh, I haven’t heard of much scams in the twisty puzzle community.
There are a lot of cheap knockoff puzzles from China replicating other puzzles without an official patent or permission. That happens pretty often with puzzles. Although in some cases I think those patents are also a bit bs… The company V-Cubes has patented the 8x8x8 through 11x11x11 Cubes for example since 2006 or so, but they’ve released their first 9x9x9 in 2017, and they haven’t even produced any 10x10x10 or 11x11x11s (yet). With those kind of patents I don’t mind if Chinese companies create those puzzles (the largest mass-produced Cubes are 17x17x17 right now btw).
But in other cases knockoffs are bad for the original designers. Usually those Chinese companies buy a 3D printed puzzle from the original designer, and then reverse engineer it to a mold for a puzzle. The puzzle designers who do it for a living (i.e. Tony Fisher; Oskar van Deventer; etc.) know how to get their official cut even after those knockoffs are on the market. But for designers who do it for fun and every now and then, those knockoffs can be pretty annoying to say the least. Although usually those designers are torn between not getting their cut, but still happy and proud that their puzzles are spread among other collectors.
But apart from knockoff puzzles, I don’t think there are a lot of scams. There are also less options for scammers I guess.
Greetz,
Quuador
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The eBay listing shows you a solved twisty puzzle and it arrives all jumbled up!
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Rofl. 
Ok, this made my day. Thanks for that.
Greetz,
Quuador
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In the realm of “weebdom/nintendo/nerd culture” its got to be the Kirby fandom.
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For reals? I rarely got sick watching stuff on websites like 4ch, but those Kirby fanboys really make some sick rule 34 stuff that make bronies look like infants.
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The pokemon community has more cons than pros sadly. There are people like us in the forum group that love to share the knowledge of stuff and there are those that think they know everything and are hard heads. then we got the dumb kids that believe in whatever a youtuber says about one pokemon card then everyone goes on a frenzy searching for it. Of course there are those scammers and people that buy up everything to resell but its in all card game communities. I think the worse part about Pokemon in general is how its still considered a kids game but at least a good 80% of the people buying Pokemon stuff is adults and fans.
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Unfortunately I think Pokemon will always be considered a kids game to people outside the hobby even when 99% of the money comes from people ages 18 and up.
The game was, is and will always be designed for kids.
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I think Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire were terrible…and I also think Crystal Charizard doesn’t look particularly good 
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Oh wait I just thought of another one that definitely won’t annoy anyone, I don’t like Pikachu and his ego is massively inflated
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Why Japanese cards are so low in price when they are the original cards. I understand that it doesn’t bring nostalgia like it’s English counterpart. Most people in the Pokemon community collect because of the artwork and I believe Japanese cards are of better quality. The good thing is you can get all the same cards for half the price. I don’t care for resale value and that’s not why I collect.
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@genosha, Ah, I’d say they’re the least toxic. I don’t really know anything about the rule 34 stuff.
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I feel lucky for where I grew up with Pokemon when it first started. Sure, Base English was what introduced it to me, but shortly thereafter, a LOT of stores in my area were selling Japanese packs as well. Both have that nostalgic value for me.
I think where the price differentiation comes from is primarily due to that bad quality. Having a GOOD English card is much harder to get than a GOOD Japanese card, and that’s what offsets the value.
But I digress: In most cases - Japanese sets dominate in quality and overall look than English. But I’m not sure if that’s an unpopular opinion.
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Very true about the quality difference. I could of took the unpopular opinion in a different direction. I was comparing English TR set cards with their Japanese counter-parts and I really like the holo quality better. To me, it shines more.
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This can’t be coincidental. Megazone refered op too on the SaitouFukuda thread when I thought this at the same time.
@pierce Been thinking about the Snap arts and to make another opinion out of from it, there’s nowhere near enough of arts using game screenshots/ sprites. Some of the mons displayed in the habitats from Sword/Shield (Snover, Tyranitar) captured the atmosphere ala Imakuni’s Porygon, Kinebuchi’s Gastly.
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