Help The "What Should I Buy?" Thread

Hi

Thought I'd post here and keep the forum tidy instead of making new thread LOL

Anyways back in the days I use to have the pokemon cards eg sycther, mewtwo etc but lost them all due to house move. Since that time just gave up on pokemon. However after all these years I am playing catch up and getting back to my pokemon routes, I might be getting older :p

I have around £150 to spend and I've seen few good retailers here in UK that sell pokrmon cards. I'm i correct into buying booster boxes instead of packs?

A friend of mind told me to start collecting legendary treasures as you are most likely to get great pulls and vast more rare etc. I started by getting a few packs of xy furious fists n flash fire got some good pulls.

At moment I put all pokemon cards straight into ultra pro matte sleeves then straight into xy trainer box. Is this a good way to store the cards? I don't like binders, portfolios :p I was thinking of using tins instead of trainer boxes. How many cards can I hold and who here uses tins for collection?

Finally do you recommended buying theme decks, tins or promo packs? Kinda like the ancient box :p

Trying to start a collection. Xy series?
 
Tins? You can probably get at least 500 cards if stacked correctly. I would use a 3 ring binder with card holder and put your cards back to back and and use card sleeves for the rares. You can get 18 cards to a page this way. I would do this to protect your cards. Tins will work but if a lid ever came off so would all your cards because that would really be not good if they ever hit the floor or a wet spot.:)
 
If you are starting a collection. You might want to start with Japanese cards. It sounds like that is where all the big collectors are.
 
[split] The "Merchandise Help" Thread

Hi! I'm new to this forum and just got back to TCG. I'm looking for advice on which booster box I should get. I'm not getting into competitive battling, just having fun collecting them with my gf. Of the three booster boxes which two do you guys recommend on getting or any other booster boxes not mentioned. Furious fist, XY or legendary treasures?

Thanks
 
RE: The "Merchandise Help" Thread

vinni3winni3 said:
Hi! I'm new to this forum and just got back to TCG. I'm looking for advice on which booster box I should get. I'm not getting into competitive battling, just having fun collecting them with my gf. Of the three booster boxes which two do you guys recommend on getting or any other booster boxes not mentioned. Furious fist, XY or legendary treasures?

Thanks
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If you want those Charizards get Flashfire. If you want some more valuable cards that you can trade for you should go for Furious Fists. If you want a lot of Shiny cards get Legendary Treasures because it has 10 EX pokemon and Radiant Collection is an extra bonus.
 
If you're just playing for fun, I would probably recommend Legendary Treasures. Compared to Furious Fists and XY, Legendary Treasures has a lot more variety in terms of possible strategy, as it's mostly a reprint set. It's also a set with very high Ultra Rare pull rates, so although the cards won't be valuable, they will be nice to look at.

Have fun!
 
vinni3winni3 said:
how do you tell if a booster box is a reprint set?
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There is no direct way from the box itself, but you can look up the set itself online to find some extra information about it. Reprint sets almost always come at the end of a series, just before a new one begins, and (obviously) consist mostly of cards included in previous sets with different artwork.
 
How far back are you looking to start a collection? If you are new I would start with the B/W sets? Why you guys ask They had a great pool of cards number 1 and number 2 they had a great collection that was worth collecting. You can't use them at tournaments but they are great for collecting purposes and great for playing the TCG with your friends or just for fun play. If you are looking to compete and collect both start with the X/Y sets. Most I think are still eligible but check to see which sets are still eligible in your area. You may have to call around or check online to see what set or sets you can you can use and that are still playable.:)
 
vinni3winni3 said:
is dragon vault worth buying?
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When it comes to playable value, it's literally none right now, because putting the fact that it's not longer Modified-legal, there's probably about 3 cards that you'll use competitively. However, if you're more of a collector, it's a nice deal since all of the cards are Holo, so they look nice and have a nice collectible value.
 
Budget: 100£-150€

Looking for? booster boxes, packs general advice.

I've been away from the game for over 15 years, I collected the original sets and have them recently completed Fossil and Jungle, by buying the last few cards i needed, apart from Charizard and Blastiose for base set 1! I'm still hoping to one day get to team rocket, base set 2 and the gym decks too, but i'll have to rely on ebay for that.
Like wise ebay is my hunting ground for bargains and so on,
I've still got 1000's of old cards lying around that aren't part of the collection merely swaps.

I'm looking to collect again (i like to have full sets of things), i'm not interested in playing the game, i've a vast collection of wargames and board games that don't get played so it's merely for myself.

where's the best way to go? Booster boxes are the best options from what i've read,
But do I go English, Japanese? or maybe something else, German! as I'm in Germany! noting that i can pick up some older booster boxes such and black and white, but they are German, so i doubt if i went to sell them they'd fetch much?

I bought a Korean booster box just because it was reduced and i'd read about them,
 
As for what language cards to collect.... it's really all up to you, or you can try to collect them all. Cards in your local language will probably be the easiest to get your hands on, but foreign cards are always fun to show off to other collectors haha. If you're planning to collect German cards, booster boxes are probably the way to go, especially if you're doing Black and White onward. Thanks to the Extended format, many competitive players are now looking for older cards from out of print sets, so you'll have plenty of people to trade extra copies of cards with. I know you're not looking to play the game again, but players are often looking for staple Trainers and such that you'll likely pull in bulk from packs. They're also likely to have "Junk EX's and full arts" that aren't playable, but are nonetheless rare.
 
Hello, I'm looking into starting a collection of Japanese cards because I'm American and little symbol-looking things and different language stuff is cool to us. Y'know, everything is pretty much just in English and it gets boring (except in Texas, I saw a Spanish commercial a couple hours ago). I'm thinking about buying Phantom Gate XY4 booster box. Do you usually get your money's worth from opening these?
 
Depends on how you define getting your money's worth. For starters, it's best to buy boxes from sources like AmiAmi that sell boxes for close to the Japanese MSRP; if you buy from Ebay and some other import sellers, you'll be spending a hell of a lot more per pack/box for the same cards, so that's already eating into your wallet. In general, Japanese boxes have better pull rates than English boxes with less extreme variants, so you're less likely to get screwed on a bad box. Japanese URs/SRs also tend to have a higher after-market value than their English counterparts, unless the English card happens to be competitively viable. Because a lot of the value of modern English-released cards is based on how good the card is competitively, prices for individual cards tend to fluctuate based on the meta-game and prices can (and will) drop (sometimes drastically) once a card has been rotated out of the current format. Because Japanese cards are mostly bought and traded by collectors (especially outside of Japan) prices are more stable. You're also less likely to get bummed by poor quality cards since Japanese cards have overall higher production values despite their relative cheapness.

If you're not looking to make an investment or resell/trade or whatever, though, you may wish to consider Korean cards. Korean TCG cards tend to be even cheaper than their Japanese counterparts. However, there isn't a particularly large market for Korean cards (at least not yet), so you might not have luck trying to make money back on the cards or sell them in the future. I do not collect Korean cards, so take this paragraph with a grain of salt, but this is the impression I've gotten from people who do. It's nice for fun, or for serious collectors who want to have everything, no matter what language.

This is coming from the opinion of someone who is a pure collector and deals primarily with Japanese cards.
 
Thanks for the info!

The idea that I was going after when I said "get my money's worth" was getting cards that are worth about $25 if I bought a $25 booster box. If the pull rates are a little better than English, I'm assuming that most of the boxes would be able to reach that amount. Especially if I end up buying them on the website you mentioned. I never even thought that the eBay prices on those would be almost double. I've also considered the Korean cards just because they are the cheapest, but I mainly wanted the Japenese ones because of the way they put holo effects on the border to make the card more shiny.
 
Carpey said:
Thanks for the info!

The idea that I was going after when I said "get my money's worth" was getting cards that are worth about $25 if I bought a $25 booster box. If the pull rates are a little better than English, I'm assuming that most of the boxes would be able to reach that amount. Especially if I end up buying them on the website you mentioned. I never even thought that the eBay prices on those would be almost double. I've also considered the Korean cards just because they are the cheapest, but I mainly wanted the Japenese ones because of the way they put holo effects on the border to make the card more shiny.
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Any time you purchase a booster box of any type (or booster pack, or tin, etc.), you're taking a chance. You're not guaranteed to get your money's worth with any of those purchases. However, generally speaking, it's easier to at least break even with Japanese booster boxes because of the better pull rates and the fact that Japanese cards are cheaper than their English counterparts anyway.
 
Carpey said:
Hello, I'm looking into starting a collection of Japanese cards because I'm American and little symbol-looking things and different language stuff is cool to us. Y'know, everything is pretty much just in English and it gets boring (except in Texas, I saw a Spanish commercial a couple hours ago). I'm thinking about buying Phantom Gate XY4 booster box. Do you usually get your money's worth from opening these?
Click to expand...

I'll get into Phantom Gate a little down the post, but like Athena said, if you're looking for non-English boxes to open Korean boxes might be a good option, since they are only about $20 on eBay (not sure if there are Korean stores that sell them online for less but I assume there are). Unfortunately, the ratios for these aren't as good compared to boxes in other languages, and are also inconsistent. I've seen someone on YouTube pull two Mega Charizards from the same Korean Wild Blaze box, and I saw another YouTuber who was left wondering if the packs were weighed, because his pulls were pretty bad.

However, if you do pull a Mega Charizard (or Charizard Full Art) from a Korean Wild Blaze box, I've seen them sell on eBay for $20+, so you'd make your money's worth if you decided to sell it. Athena is right about there not being a well-established market for Korean cards, so anything else that isn't a Charizard is definitely really difficult to get rid of.

As for Phantom Gate, I think you should get your money's worth as long as you don't spend too much on it. There's plenty of Gengar cards in it and it seems to be a popular Pokemon, so you shouldn't have a hard time with that... are you just looking to collect the cards, or resell? If you're trying to resell, sending the Japanese cards to be PSA graded is a pretty safe bet to make money.
 
Patriots Fan said:
I'll get into Phantom Gate a little down the post, but like Athena said, if you're looking for non-English boxes to open Korean boxes might be a good option, since they are only about $20 on eBay (not sure if there are Korean stores that sell them online for less but I assume there are). Unfortunately, the ratios for these aren't as good compared to boxes in other languages, and are also inconsistent. I've seen someone on YouTube pull two Mega Charizards from the same Korean Wild Blaze box, and I saw another YouTuber who was left wondering if the packs were weighed, because his pulls were pretty bad.

However, if you do pull a Mega Charizard (or Charizard Full Art) from a Korean Wild Blaze box, I've seen them sell on eBay for $20+, so you'd make your money's worth if you decided to sell it. Athena is right about there not being a well-established market for Korean cards, so anything else that isn't a Charizard is definitely really difficult to get rid of.

As for Phantom Gate, I think you should get your money's worth as long as you don't spend too much on it. There's plenty of Gengar cards in it and it seems to be a popular Pokemon, so you shouldn't have a hard time with that... are you just looking to collect the cards, or resell? If you're trying to resell, sending the Japanese cards to be PSA graded is a pretty safe bet to make money.
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I think the PSA grading is a good idea. I'm thinking about buying a couple boxes or something and then selling any RR, SR, or UR that I get doubles on. Thanks for the reply :)
 
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