I did not know this was a thing! Thanks for sharing. Have they always/are they still doing these?
Is it possible this was a population data issue? Perhaps the slabs already existed but for some reason weâre not being recorded or counted correctly in their system. If they went back and cleaned their data then itâs possible they all jumped up on the same day.
I realize this is unlikely but itâs not as if grading companyâs have a legal obligation to have accurate pop reports for our convenience.
Iâm not sure. TPCi likely runs their ship differently from MTG. To my knowledge, these Pokemon complete sets would only be available to employees.
The MTG equivalent are called MOL (Magic Online) Complete Sets and come in Regular and Premium (i.e., foil) versions. Youâd have to collect one of each card online to redeem the entire set in physical copy within the allotted timeframe. That led to bot farmers who have businesses collating online cards to redeem the physical ones and sell them for profit. Some of the older foil complete sets are worth tens of thousands of dollars in 2023.
I believe WoTC employees could take these complete sets on occasion (e.g., holidays, work-related redemptions).
Magic Online includes an innovative feature that allows players to redeem a complete set of digital cards for a complete set of physical cards, which will then be shipped to the address associated with the Magic Online account. As a general rule, Magic Online sets will be available for redemption roughly one month after they are released.
Redemption Policy
In order to participate in the redemption feature and redeem a Magic Online card set, the following restrictions apply:
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- Only cards in the Main Set component (the Collector Numbers listed above) are redeemable. Bonus sheets are not redeemable.
- All cards must be regular to redeem a regular set.
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- For The Lost Caverns of Ixalan, standard-frame basic lands are neither required for nor included in the redemption set.
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I think its data issue, I assume itâs because the pokemonprice.com pop chart was not updated on a regular basis.
If they update every month, the whole month will be the same number until the next update.
Thatâs why there is a huge jump â then next huge jump.
Pokemetrics updates every week, so it might be better to see the trends.
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This might explain why the jump occurs, but it doesnât explain the magnitude of the jump. Clearly, someone or a group of individuals graded a lot of EX Delta Species PSA 10s that month. At least, significantly more than in recent months.
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Being one of those people for another set, I can confidently tell you it is definitely possible that the owner of these cards had this line of thinking. The opposite is definitely also true, but I can say there were people who were incredibly bullish on the entire delta species concept back then - a fire type Milotic was an incredibly fresh and a new take on Pokemon cards.
And again, because these cards were not worth much back then and only started becoming more valuable during the past few years, it wouldnât surprise me if more PSA 10s come out of peopleâs closets during the next few years.
Hope this helps,
cpbog1
But fire milotic was not delta species it was dragon frontiers. Maybe this guy is bullish on delta species as a concept. Why skip holon crystal or dragon?
Ahh okay. Thanks for the detailed response!
Oh I misunderstood - thought the conversation was referring to the entire delta species genre, not the delta species set.
The Delta Species serie for players was fantastic. So I really understand opening cases and cases of them. I also did.
Most holo/rares became left overs.
I recently went through some boxes with reverses from that period and I alone have 20+ of some reverses ungraded (however most of them used in decks)
Grading them in 2018 also makes sense, that time holo cards started to really be worth it.
Getting 10âs on them, in that period perhaps way easier.
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So do you think itâs likely that whoever is responsible was just a delta species fan who likely did buy hoards from all delta species sets but due to the worsening print quality of later delta sets only influenced the gem pop in the original set?
Side note, how could they have the print quality right for ex delta species and then mess it up so bad for later delta sets? Youâre supposed to get better with time not worse!
No I think it was a shop/website owner who had acces to many players. It would make perfect sense to open a lot of product to provide them their needs for decks.
At that time the other reverses/holo were not worth much, so I think those were stored untill later (2017) when you had a sudden interest in graded holo/reverses and they become worth way more than at release.
I remember they changed printing companies a few times.
The worst change was at Deoxys, damaged cards all over.
But you will not get all 10âs when sending in DS right now. while you might have gotten them 5 years ago.
Donât you think that ship owner would also have stashed other sets to similar degrees? Why just delta species? If theyâre a delta fan why not get the other sets. If theyâre a store itâs not like theyâre gonna stop ordering other Pokemon sets
To me if Iâm gonna believe it was a store owner Iâd expect them to have done the same with at the very least the other delta species sets. If they did that then maybe those later sets print quality could explain the fact that their gem rates are nothing close to the first one
Perhaps the other sets were also opened but simply not submitted to PSA or not submitted at once.
There are sets I opened way more boxes due to need to have enough playable cards. The market was a players market not a collectors
Holon Phantoms had only 1 card everybody really wanted, Holonâs Castform (uncommon)
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This isnât specific to EX Delta Species, but itâs pretty telling. Iâm guessing that someone contacted the store with a huge offer before the auction could end.
3000+ Pokemon EX Unseen Forces Reverse Holo Vendor Lot Over $30k TCGp Market
This auction is for a vendor/dealer lot of Pokemon EX Unseen Forces. There are over 3,000 reverse holos from the set included.
All of the rares have been inventoried and can be seen listed at TCGplayer market price in the last 3 photos. The rares account for about 1/3rd of the total lot. They account for 1 of the white long boxes and the smaller black box in the photo.
The cards are in amazing condition. We were told that they had been kept in a closet since the original purchase. There is a very slight curve to the cards (extremely common for older holofoils), which can be seen in the top down photos.
Since they were stored so well, the vast majority of these are in what we would consider to be gradable conditions. Going through these, we pulled out about 6 cards that had some slight damage. The rest are all Mint.
These will be securely shipped. Insurance will be included if the auction goes over $5000.
Please donât hesitate to ask any questions you have in regards to this rare collection.
Thanks for looking!
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I know the guy who owns those, and know he was actively trying to sell them outwide ebay as well. Iâm guessing youâre right he got an offer he was comfortable with. He has a lot of the holos from unseen forces too, and had quite a few gold star dogs for a while
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Thatâs interesting. Does the owner also have stacks of EXs from EX Unseen Forces? I would guess not, but who knows.
I donât think he does. He was asking around if anyone had them to complete some sets
I would love to buy a lot like this. Something that I could grade a handful of each card every year and sell a couple each year for the next 5 to 10 years while I build a PSA 10 set of my own. Would have loved to bid on it. Wonder how much it went for.