I actually love all these sets… Consider my rankings as S++/S+/S/A++/A+/A
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Again, F is by no means bad. In fact, I prefer the Cosmos Holofoil of Base Set 2 over the Galaxy Holofoil of Base Set. Both don’t rank too high in terms of artworks for me though, unlike Jungle/Fossil (and I’ve ignored nostalgia).
Greetz,
Quuador
3 Likes
I love my WOTC cards so it was difficult to rank them. Mine’s mostly based on artwork and theme
Team Rocket - The introduction of dark cards was so cool. The artwork is amazing and the first secret rare was included. From this point on, Pokemon cards really beacame what they are today.
Neo Revelation - The introduction of shining cards and both were amazing. Stunning artwork all round, especially the Ho-ohs.
Skyridge - Although I don’t like the E-reader borders, the crystal cards from this set are beautiful. Some of the best. The art from the other cards are also solid.
Neo Destiny, Genesis & Discovery - Beautiful artwork and the card layouts complement them perfectly. The light and dark Pokemon also add to their appeal
Gym Heroes & Challenge - I feel like these sets so lack a little cohesion however the artwork is lovely. Some of the holos are up there with the best.
Aquapolis & Expedition - Some of the artwork is beautiful however I feel the E-reader borders are way too busy and distract from this.
Jungle & Fossil - I love these sets and I also love their themes. Especially Jungle. I do however find some of their artworks to be pretty bland, especially the holos. They are also very small sets and leave me wanting more
Legendary Collection - The reverse holos are really cool and look great together. But this is a reprint and not as exciting as other sets.
Base Set - The classic which many of us are nostalgic for. I love this set but the artwork for the most part is pretty bland and the holo patterns are also quite plain.
Base Set 2 - A reprint which isn’t seper exciting. The holos however are nicer than the originals in my opinion.
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My opinions align with a lot of the people on here, but because these are the sets that really hit home.for me I’ll still elaborate a little bit:
Neo Destiny is my all time favorite set. This is a set I opened a lot as a kid, so it has a heavy dose of nostalgia combined with an incredible set identity and great artwork. I DO really like the shinings, but this set doesn’t need them to be amazing, as others have said.
Skyridge and Aquapolis have some of the best art in Pokemon. I’m sad that I didn’t ever get to open these cards, but there is no denying that you can feel the story jump out of the ink in these sets.
Team Rocket to me is the first set where a true theme really started to come out of the woodwork. Neo revelation is just a great set and has stupendous shining cards that really jump it up that next level. Expedition was hated by me as a child and deserves a long lengthy apology for me not seeing past the borders into the amazing artwork and awesome Pokemon selection, haha. This is the set I regret selling off for sure! 
Genesis and Discovery are both fun sets, but have less top tier artwork in my opinion (but they both still have good chase cards). As others have said, Base is king being the first set, but here I’m ranking it lower because for me personally it’s just a bit boring.
Jungle and fossil are just a bit bland sometimes, but they are still good sets! They just don’t stack up to the others. Base 2 is base 2 and while I have grown to enjoy the reverse holos in Legendary Collection it’s still not for me.
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Couldnt have agreed more
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Mine. Probably a bit unconventional but here it is anyway.
Disclaimer: Even the lower-rated sets here aren’t “bad” or “boring” in my view. Something just had to be there. I like 'em all!
S Tier - Rocket and Neo Destiny, for me, have some of the greatest sets of artwork along with the Japanese Vending series. The mix of the classic artists and those with more quirky, unique styles (Komiya, Kizuki, Masago, Yoshida, Kusube etc.) really make these sets a joy to collect and look through. Both sets have something in common in that the commons/uncommons are often just as amazing as the holos in terms of art. In Rocket for example, the Arita Dark Golduck is by far my favourite card in the set.
A Tier - Neo Rev also has amazing art but I put it at A-Tier purely because I know I favour Destiny over Revelation. Still, it’s close, especially with some of my favourite WOTC holos of all-time in Ho-oh, Raikou/Suicune/Entei, and Shining Gyarados. Importantly, the lower rarity cards are also excellent art-wise.
B-Tier - The dumping ground for most of the sets. All three E sets have incredible artwork but they are here in the third tier down purely because I’d stopped collecting by this point first time around and so, as much as I have come to truly respect and enjoy the unique art in these sets, I don’t have the same nostalgia for them. Also, they must go together because - Crystals and a few cards I own aside - I do struggle to remember which cards come from which set so the whole lot feels like a single mammoth set in my head.
Neo Discovery and Genesis are here purely on logic, because I love them but not as much as Revelation (although my favourite card of all-time is Neo Gen Lugia).
Gym Challenge is not as far away from my top favourite sets as it’s position here might suggest but, like others have said in reference to Base, the dominating stock Sugimori art isn’t preferable to the variety found in the sets I have rated higher. The holos are incredible for the most part though and it is - ironically - the Sugimori holos that I like the most…
C-Tier - He put Base 2 above Base?!? Yes he did. Why? Because the Cosmos foil pattern is infinitely better than that in Base imo. Base 2 'zard is visually better than Base 'zard. There I said it - go ahead and lynch me but let me finish my tier justifications first! That said, I 100% agree that Base 2 was NOT an enjoyable booster to buy back in period. I said the holos were nicer but getting heaps of commons/uncommons with a different set symbol was no fun.
Jungle/Fossil - I love 'em and they are hella nostalgic but they are like a comforting, warm fuzzy nostalgia, and don’t hit me with the same wow factor as sets higher up in the tiers.
Gym Heroes has to be here because it is factually inferior to Challenge. Do I like the set? Yes. The abundance of Sugimori (as with Challenge) is a weakness, but it is also still original Sugimori and therefore beautiful. But it’s crazy how much more stacked the holo slots are in Challenge compared to Heroes. It’s just so unbalanced, it’s crazy. Challenge didn’t NEED two different Gyarados’…the Misty’s variant should have been in Heroes. Then, if there had been a Misty’s Blastoise and perhaps one other big card in the holo slots, Heroes might have stacked up closer. Additionally, the way that commons from Japanese decks were made RARES in the TCG version was a terrible decision. Getting a Goldeen or an Onix (to name just 2) as a non-holo rare and initially assuming you’d opened an error pack with no rares was an utter s*** move by WOTC.
D-Tier - Base Set. I respect it, I have nostalgia for it, and I still love the cards. Base IS Pokemon TCG and always will be. But it has nowhere near the same excitement level and variety as sets I’ve placed above.
F-Tier - I’m a bit apathetic towards the reverses and can take 'em or leave 'em. Actually, probably just LEAVE 'em given the prices today. Returning the Galaxy/original foiling was a step back from the previous reprint set (Base 2) imo and simply the fact that it was ANOTHER reprint set just sucked at the time. The best part was Dark Vaporeon and Persian getting the holo upgrade, and the surprise inclusion of the promo Mewtwo as a numbered set card. Finally, my opinion of LC might or might not be skewed by the fact that I am still bitter about pulling the reverse Charizard from my first ever LC booster as a kid, keeping it in mint condition, selling it for around £30 on ebay when Pokemon cards were worth nothing, and it going missing in the post (or I got scammed by the buyer - could never prove it either way due to being an ebay n00b and not using tracking 
). Even with that small personal vendetta aside, and getting back to being unbiased, I just find it extremely difficult to get excited about this set aside from a select few cards.
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LoL 
WOTC + E-Series is all elite and full of nostalgia, besides Base Set 2. So many haters on LC. 1 of a kind reverse holos, first to introduce box toppers, 4 different zards to collect. What else can you ask for?
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Artwork that wasn’t recycled for a third time? 
It’s unfortunate that WOTC wasn’t given more creative license for it. LC would have been really cool with more unique cards like the black star Mewtwo
Scientist needs directions in 30 point font bold text, got it.
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Imo if you just treat it as S=+3 A=+2 B=+1 C=0 D=-1 F=-2 then you don’t need people to conform to your restricted system. Just add them up for each set and rank them
They dont pay me here to think
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I love the artwork of most WOTC cards, so I love the artwork that was re-used in LC but they added the one of a kind reverse holo pattern making it very unique imo. I also love the allure of the large set, lower print run compared to previous sets, and the difficulty grading the set. I think a lot of people collect sets for various reasons other than artwork like Neo Genesis which is notoriously hard to grade PSA 10s for a lot of the holos, or the difficulty collecting the set, or maybe the simplicity of collecting the set. This is probably a more niche way of thinking or collecting I suppose but I just don’t understand the LC slander.