Captoats said:Personally, I actually like the holo style from Base through Rocket the best. Rocket starts going towards the style they have now, but it still isn't quite the same. Then again, I like everything about them better from an aesthetic point of view, from the layout of the card to the actual picture. Then again, that might be partly sentimental as well. The backgrounds of the pictures (which were never really based around an actual setting, but rather the pokemon's behaviors, actions and/or typing) really popped with the card when holo and it made pulling holos really cool. Even then, though, the Japanese cards still looked better. Now, with the reverse holos being printed on everything it kind of takes away from the holo idea in general. "Oh cool, I pulled a holo! Oh, nevermind, it's just another holo caterpie." They took away the specialness from holo cards, and to be honest, I don't play with holos at all anymore, they look stupid now they just curve horribly and stack your deck. If you can't sleeve them almost immediately they almost lose all play value imo. I just down-trade everything I get for the same exact card, plus 1-2 dollars of something else.
As for shattered glass holos, I don't mind them one way or the other anyway more than regular holos/reverse holos, but I think the FA shattered glass style like the virizion posted a few posts above mine looks descent. If you could see it in real life and could see the shimmer effect I think it would actually look really cool.
Overall, the card quality in general has gone down considerably when you look at what it was in the past (not just the 1st few sets I like best) and what it is now. Primes and legends had beautiful artwork, but that's about it. Even the new reverse holo with the type embedded in it look bad imo, although it's a step in the right direction I guess. Cards should just focus on the pokemon themselves imo, and have less to do with the background.
And yes, I know the earlier sets had them just standing around in some cards, but it was the very beginning, cut them some slack.
edit: typo. fat fingers :|
Time for some scans!
Probably one of my (if not my) favorite holos from base set. You can hardly tell it in the picture, but he has extra sets of arms on both sides and when you flip the card around you see them go up and down. I miss stuff like this, where the creators/artists obviously put time into designing the cards to make them look special.
And everything wasn't always holo, which seperated them a bit. Ninetails has holographic fire behind it, and Jolteon has tiny holographic lightning coming from it's body (you can't see it in the scan), along with the bigger lightning.
There are more eyes you can't see in the scan of Hypno. Finally, there were some 'plain' holo, where everything was holo, like the Dragonite.
Quality still helps. This is a pretty good case here:
Different materials = different refraction = drastic difference in BG preservation or loss. The old english base through fossil holos have terrible problems with scratching, in addition to not being that appealing (and I even grew up with them, but was never too fond of them especially once they bought Galaxy in with Rocket) personally. But the biggest issue is scratching. I seldom see beautiful original holos because they were just so hard to keep. The print quality was okay, but had problems with colour clarity and saturation. Something which is a WORSE problem even today now under TPCi.
actually.... the shattered glass did appear in the the old cards too! I have a base set Abra that was given out at an event or something special ( cant remember, its been a while!) and its totally shattered glass effect. I can takes a picture of me in in holding the card if you dont believe me! =3
