Discussion No such thing as mint condition

[neoshai]

When I go to my locals or anywhere to play, people often ask me why 90% of my trade binder consists of empty sleeves. Some of them also ask why I almost always carry an empty deckbox with me.
And the reason for this is just in case I trade something, buy/get single cards or when I buy boosters and need sleeves for foils and/or space to put in the "junk". I try my hardest to keep my cards in top condition.
Not just by sleeving cards but also just by the way I handle them. I've played many cardgames in the past and in all of these games, the condition of the card is what holds on to the value.

However I have never encountered a MINT card in Pokémon (or most tcg). Even those that I pull myself and care for as if they're top donated organs, are never mint. At best they're near mint but following the condition help page from a market site I use, most of these are either excellent or good ... you can find the specifics right here.
That's for cards I pull out of boosters. The special promo cards that I get from tinboxes, special boxes like the mega ex ones are almost always so badly damaged that they're considered 'poor'.
Sometimes when I open up packs I feel like these are cards that have already been used by people and just re-packaged because they got bored of them.

I've honestly been quite disappointed by these because quite a number of these cards are cards that I don't keep. These are mostly cards I trade or sell. But because of how poorly their condition is, they lost quite a bit of value. And with people over here ... they're quite nitpicky when it comes to condition. Especially when they BUY the cards online and to make it worse, I've become the same.

In what condition are the cards you freshly pull out of the boosters?
Do you also get cards that aren't in top condition anymore even tho you just got them out of a new, sealed booster?

 

[MlleFalki]

I collect mainly Japanese, and so far I have to say the cards I pulled are pretty much in mint condition.

But ! I used to collect French and I stopped the day I opened a double crisis booster pack. The cards were so badly scratched, it seemed impossible to me to be just a production defect. Like someone used sand paper on the card.

Cards in this particular set were really in bad condition. In other sets, it was a lot better, but still. It's very difficult to find good FAs because the cutting is so bad, but all rarities suffer from this. Some sets, I wonder if there even was a print with a good centring (all of my BC cards have this problem). It's not that common to get a card with scratches though.
Since French cards are made in the US, I expect the US cards (and all European cards for that matter) to have similar flaws.
About promos, they're so badly packaged... most are already bent or show very visible dents.

I often look at PCA graded cards in France, and it seems extremely difficult to pull a 10+ FA (even just a 9.5), while some fresh from the pack go as low as 6 or 7 ! The sets with the most 10+ are apparently Aquapolis and Expedition... yeah that's rather old. Everyone agrees that quality has been decreasing for a while now.

 

[NY TCG HUnter]

I agree...I have pulled SO many poorly cut cards in the past year that it has become almost impossible to get a "mint" set. Just open an older pack and you can see the difference, its amazing. I just opened the new Magearna Mythical Collection for an upcoming video on my YT channel and the MAIN PROMO Magearna card was cut so off center. THIS IS THE MAIN CARD IN THE BOX!!! How they can let these cards through the QA process is beyond me. I take some responsibility for not checking before I purchased the box but it was the last one on the shelf so I just didn't even look because I wanted the box.

It's quite sad to see the quality of the cards go downhill. Sad indeed.

 

[DMYSYS]

It's quite sad to see the quality of the cards go downhill. Sad indeed.

Definitely. Checking back in as a collector for Evolutions about 8 years after i originally stopped buying the cards, the cut of cards in English packs is getting very dubious. The idea of collecting S&M is just out of the question - imagine pulling a Hyper Rare card from the set and it's cut poorly? Forget it.

 

[neoshai]

I collect mainly Japanese, and so far I have to say the cards I pulled are pretty much in mint condition.

But ! I used to collect French and I stopped the day I opened a double crisis booster pack. The cards were so badly scratched, it seemed impossible to me to be just a production defect. Like someone used sand paper on the card.

Cards in this particular set were really in bad condition. In other sets, it was a lot better, but still. It's very difficult to find good FAs because the cutting is so bad, but all rarities suffer from this. Some sets, I wonder if there even was a print with a good centring (all of my BC cards have this problem). It's not that common to get a card with scratches though.
Since French cards are made in the US, I expect the US cards (and all European cards for that matter) to have similar flaws.
About promos, they're so badly packaged... most are already bent or show very visible dents.

I often look at PCA graded cards in France, and it seems extremely difficult to pull a 10+ FA (even just a 9.5), while some fresh from the pack go as low as 6 or 7 ! The sets with the most 10+ are apparently Aquapolis and Expedition... yeah that's rather old. Everyone agrees that quality has been decreasing for a while now.

For collecting purposes I don't mind the cards being JP (english or japanese is fine) but since I still play the game as well, I'm a bit forced to buy the english ones if I want to understand the cards XD

 

[neoshai]

I agree...I have pulled SO many poorly cut cards in the past year that it has become almost impossible to get a "mint" set. Just open an older pack and you can see the difference, its amazing. I just opened the new Magearna Mythical Collection for an upcoming video on my YT channel and the MAIN PROMO Magearna card was cut so off center. THIS IS THE MAIN CARD IN THE BOX!!! How they can let these cards through the QA process is beyond me. I take some responsibility for not checking before I purchased the box but it was the last one on the shelf so I just didn't even look because I wanted the box.

It's quite sad to see the quality of the cards go downhill. Sad indeed.

Funny, the Magearna from the lunch box tin was one of the worst I got .. in a way. They're pushed in between those hard plastic lips so it's already a huge effort to get them out without damaging it yourself. But the one I got wasn't completely between those lips, the bottom part of the card was split open with the lip "inside" of the card. Kind of disappointing but luckily not to visible sleeved in my binder.

 

[neoshai]

Definitely. Checking back in as a collector for Evolutions about 8 years after i originally stopped buying the cards, the cut of cards in English packs is getting very dubious. The idea of collecting S&M is just out of the question - imagine pulling a Hyper Rare card from the set and it's cut poorly? Forget it.

Cut poorly? Second time I see this, but do you guys mean that it's not cut straight? Because that doesn't change the condition of a card in the slightest.
If for example (exaggerated but it does happen in tcg) a card is cut in half and top half of the card is the atk of 'a card' while the bottom half shows just the image of another card, that doesn't change the condition of the card.

The ones I get are just ... damaged. Not just on the borders where they get cut but anywhere on the cards. Scratches, dents and more.

 

[Athena]

Quality control on English cards is horrendous and has been since early BW at the latest. It's one of the things that swapped me into Japanese collecting.

 

[RiverShock]

Aside from cards held firmly in place in plastic, like tin promos and box promos, I don't have any issue with the condition of Pokemon cards personally. They might have slightly more edge roughness than the average other card game's cards, but not to the point it's bumped out of Near Mint.

They really do need a better solution for holding box promos and tin promos, though. It's basically guaranteed those will be damaged, usually to the point of being unusable outside of a sleeve.


I don't really agree on miscuts being massively more common than they used to be. The worst era for that was definitely the early Diamond/Pearl era. I don't remember the last time I personally pulled a significantly miscut card. (It might have been a Red Genesect Collection, actually... That, of course, would have been a while ago.) From what I remember, Theme Decks are more likely for this than packs are, though.

 

[Shishigami]

I collect mainly Japanese, and so far I have to say the cards I pulled are pretty much in mint condition.
I often look at PCA graded cards in France, and it seems extremely difficult to pull a 10+ FA (even just a 9.5), while some fresh from the pack go as low as 6 or 7 ! The sets with the most 10+ are apparently Aquapolis and Expedition... yeah that's rather old. Everyone agrees that quality has been decreasing for a while now.

WOTC had a level of quality that at the time was better then the Japanese equivalents. The finishes on ultra rares and higher are of a one layer glossy effect that looks more affordable quality under the demand and deadlines for English mass production prints. Japanese cards have thankfully remained their quality control despite their demand in moderate amount in comparison to English demand. Its ineviitable unfourtnately yet understandable for a mass productive company such as tPCI/ GameFreak despite its quality standard seeming to drop in my view which is a shame considering how many more products there are to collect increasingly these days revealing its capitalist/consumerist nature more then its customer care.