Newbie XY Ancient Origins Help

[JS.Raju]

Hello all,

I've recently started collecting XY Ancient Origins cards but am confused on the check list. They show parallel, standard and basic or something like that. Most of the cards have 2 versions apart from some which have 1 version yet I have gyarados (21/98) which has 3 different versions. One is non shiny, one is where the picture is shiny and the rest is plain and the other is where the picture is plain but the rest is shiny.

Would someone be able to clarify all the different types there are.

Thanks for any help

 

[steffenka]

Almost all Pokemon cards (excluding Ultra Rares) come in two types of cards: There's the "normal" cards, where everything is plain (except for holos, which have a shiny/sparkling artwork). Then there are reverse holos, which are when the whole card except for the artwork is shiny. However there are also some decks, where some cards that usually are holos are non-holos, and the other way around. So to quickly sum up:

No shiny version (except for artwork on some): Regular cards
Shiny version: Reverse holos
Cards that usually have sparkly artworks: Deck exclusive cards

Hope that makes sense to you

 

[RiverShock]

There are also occasionally foil patterns that are exclusive to certain promo releases of cards rather than their initial in-set one. For instance, Raichu from XY, in addition to the standard "sheen" style foil used in the XY set, has a print using the "cosmos" style foil with a star-like pattern that was released in a certain blister pack.

For a collector seeking out absolute completion of a set (which is up to the collector, there's nothing wrong with just collecting the main set for instance), it's sometimes a pain tracking some of this stuff down. That being said, I'd recommend checking out pokemon.com's pages on the sets for a pretty good list of most of these variants and where they came from.