English Card Quality

T

theducktamer

Tamer of all Ducks!
Member
I just got my box of Next Destinies yesterday and was super excited to see the new EXs. Now, my box was pretty good: I pulled a Mewtwo EX regular, a Mewtwo EX FA, a Reshiram EX regular and a shiny Zoroark. I even got all 3 legendary birds in regular holos. So, overall, no complaints about pulls.

But what REALLY irks me is how low quality the holos are. I mean you can BARELY tell a holo is a holo. It's ridiculous. I got all 3 legendary birds and half of the holo is missing on the bottom. All of the other holos only have SOME of the background holo and you can BARELY see it. Back in the day the ENTIRE background was holo. Not just the sky or some building in the picture. I think it's ridiculous how much cards cost these days and how low the quality of them are.

Has anyone else experienced this with their holos or was mine just a bad box?
I'm sending an e-mail to Nintendo today...not sure what it'll do, but they really need to change something about their quality standards.

*end rant*
 
The quality of the English cards has been questionable for a number of years; while many things have been improved in the BW run, there is enough cringeworthy printing choices that make them lacklustre.

I tell you, the ink on them still smells terrible. Low quality stuff.
 
I will say that part of the reason I started collecting Japanese cards again was because I was really impressed with their print quality.

As far as specifically ND goes, there was just some discussion about that in the errors thread. Seems to be regarded as a misprint.
 
After completing my WOTC collection, I think I'm going to go to Japanese cards as well... The quality of those cards aren't even comparable.

The only thing about Japanese cards, is how expensive they are. But in all honestly, you get what you pay for! =]

I sent my e-mail to Nintendo... I'm just really curious to see what they have to say!
 
viper.fox said:
I tell you, the ink on them still smells terrible. Low quality stuff.
Click to expand...

But... the smell of newly opened Pokémon cards is the best smell in the world! D:
 
They really should have just given in with ND and just started to keep the Japanese borders; by cutting out the holos on them when the cards were originally designed with them you get awful things like that waste of a holo Luxray.
 
I agree that english cards have lower quality but as far as the Luxray (and others) go, the holo on the japanese version is also barely noticeable...
 
Japanese cards have always been much better quality. Not only do they get cooler backs of cards, but their cards are almost glossy, kind of like the alph lithographs. My biggest complaints about the recent English cards are the RH and the backwards curve in most of the holos. I wish they would just bring back normal RH, and they had me use proxies because my Zekroms were too warped.
 
When I first pulled a Luxray I thought it was fake, but then I noticed the little holo in the top right and thought, Ohh pokemon....
 
its not the quality, its the art style of the new holos.

These holos feature pokemon in an environment. the environment becomes part of the art, along with the pokemon, so only a part of the overall picture is holo.

This isnt bad production or quality issues, but rather taste and artistic issues.
i personally like the better artwork and intricate details of the background environment and only having a little bit of holo showing through. much better than the older cards that were all holo background and you couldnt see any details
 
I never saw any of my Next Destinies cards have holographic errors. That was certainly a bad batch.
 
The BW holo style is horrible anyway so I was totally alright when I opened a pack and got a "holo" Luxray that was only barely so. It annoyed me back in the day when the holo taking up the whole picture ruined the joke of TR Dark Dugtrio burrowing into somebody's bedroom, so...
 
First of all, you didn't get a bad box, lol. Two Mewtwos? I'd take that anyday.

I still haven't seen a holo Luxray (even after 2 PRs), but seeing the other cards in this set it wouldn't surprise me. I wish we could get Japanese quality and costs. Twenty packs for around $35-40.
 
Is that really how much they cost in Japan? And here I thought that everything was more expensive there. (I mean, they have to pay $130 for a year's worth of Shonen Jump, and Carl chips cost twice as much as Lay's or Poore Brothers here.)
 
If you look at the cover of Dark Rush (I'm skipping over DS because it was more expensive due to the fact that all the cards are holo), MSRP for a pack is written right on the box: ¥158. 20 packs in a box means a box should cost ¥3160. A quick Google conversion says that's about $40.24 USD. And that's MSRP; you can pretty easily get boxes for less than that. AmiAmi's current price for Dark Rush boxes amounts to $32.09 USD.

Now, you do get less cards in Japanese packs: no RH, 3 commons, 1-2 uncommons, and 0-1 rares. But because of their ratios, that really only means that you end up with much fewer commons. Uncommons are also scarcer in Japanese sets.

I wish we would adopt their model so badly. :<
 
Plus because of the pretty bad dollar/yen rate they appear to cost more to people in the US after conversion than people who get the yen as a wage.

There's really no price difference to excuse the lower quality with.
 
It would really annoy me if American packs started following the Japanese way. I know people are complaining about the pull rates of the EX cards in ND but aren't they even more rare in the Japanese sets? And not being guaranteed a rare in each pack would be horrible. I think the American pack rates have been fine since DP when they went back to 3 uncommons and 10 cards in a pack.
 
The pull rates are nice with English cards and for the most part they always have been. I think having Japanese pull rates would suck...lol I hear they're horrible, but it makes getting ultra rares more exciting I guess.

I think it would just be nice if they adopted Japanese card quality. Like the only thing that got changed on cards would be the language of the text.
 
Has anyone noticed edgewear on cards that come straight out of packs?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top