I agree with newer cards. However the older promos have unique art and that style is very nostalgic. For example, if someone sees the original pika trophies today for the first time its going to be hugely nostalgic. Along with tropical wind, 9th staidum, unikarp, players promo etc. That style is a time capsule. However, newer promos I agree. Sticking with the pika trophies, I feel like I have to convince myself to enjoy the new pika trophies awarded at worlds.
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Thank you for taking the time to go through each of my points. After reading your analysis, I realised that we can eliminate the species popularity assumption from our discussion by instead analyzing the JP rayquaza 
pop and comparing it to other rare, shiny rayquaza cards.
| Card | Total Pop | PSA Graded Pop | PSA 9 avg | PSA 10 avg | Market Cap Rank | Market Cap | Release Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JP unlimited |
??? | 330 | $3000 | $7166 | #152 | $1,546,890 | 2004 |
| JP 1st |
??? | 306 | $4160 | $11969 | #197 | $1,229,080 | 2004 |
| 075/L-P | 5000 | 328 | $400 | $1290 | #962 | $241,714 | 2010 |
| 145 BW-P | 1000 | 113 | $3225 | $4550 | #828 | $270,975 | 2012 |
Looking at the table I would say limited mid-era promos share similar rarity to their gold star counterparts but sell for considerably less. The reason being that demand is less. Wild to see how much variance nostalgia can introduce.
It’s a different market because modern alt arts don’t share the fundamentals that goldstars and limited promos have, i.e. age and rarity. Rather, the modern alt card market is fueled by popularity and speculation.
Thank you for sharing. I’m curious how much competitive play accounts for gold star damage, I plan to do some pop analysis on this later. Is there a reason why Alakazam was meta in Japan but not internationally?
I think @Dyl had a post somewhere about the latias relatively low 9 pop. Could be due to playability.
It’s definitely not one that I see sold as a 9 very often. Or at least compared to other gold stars
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Alakazam’s playability was entirely based on it being playable in the same format with Blastoise ex. By the time Alakazam was legal in the western world, Blastoise was no longer in rotation. In Japan, there was a time when they were playable together.
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Playability may have contributed, but I think it mostly comes down to Latias being a light holo.
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The perfect storm for a chase set card
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I would argue the opposite! Specifically the charizard could easily be a 50-100k card in the coming years given the pop is so low… You have to remember magnitudes more people collect eng pokemon cards only and ignore japanese cards all together (myself included).
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i don’t think it’s too hard to understand which of these is the most sought after
rayquaza was one of the earliest polled pokemon in the e4’s favorite series. granted, the formatting was different, but regardless, the L-P barely cracked top 10 and the lottery SR alt placed lower than the regular BW5 set SR.
to your original hot take - i agree, but i also think wotc is over priced (because i think it’s overrated). however, i can understand why many are willing to pay the premium to own those cards in certain conditions.
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Arita’s base set pikachu is horribly drawn 
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Now this is a good one
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What about the drawing is bad?
I personally wish he didn’t use the same purple for the subject and the background.
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Tbf
Charizard always has the highest total pop in every set. Maybe not litterally, but im guessing in 90% + of all sets charizard is featured it will have the highest total population among its rarity level
Even kids understand that charizard is special, and often hide and store their charizards and remember years later that they own one
Now that is an unpopular opinion! I do remember as a kid thinking the jungle pikachu was more what most people thought pikachu looked like
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I think it’s no disagreement that 5ban Graphics would not be missed if it suddenly disappeared from being an “Artist”.
However, the one Pokemon I think they do WELL at is Rayquaza. But I think that’s mostly due to the Pokemon’s design rather than their ability to do quality work.
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Hottest take imaginable maybe but I believe the game and community overall would be healthier if tpci printed all sets going forward to hell and flooded pullrates.
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There is already a set where pokemon does this, energy cards. And no one collects them because there isn’t a challenge.
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Yeah but like real life is challenging enough, and I think a lot of the worst actors would find some other hobby to scuzz up if the artificial scarcity inherent to collecting just went away
I see what you are saying, but the bad actors in pokemon are only relevant in small niches of the market, like sheet cut cards. Where most if not all of modern is already printed so heavily making it accessible to everyone.
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As Smpratte pointed out; some ´bad actors´ would indeed be lost, but Pokémon would also lose a lot of people who genuinely care about Pokémon, but specifically like the ´rare item´ aspect.
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This. It´s always scarcity vs demand. This is why I hold the unpopular opinion that Evolutions is a very interesting set. The PSA 10 holo´s are popular cards and very scarce.
I also like the set because it is a joy to unpack, but that isn´t a thing anymore since they cost about 1 k.