204. Japan, NAIC, and Too Many Pikachu

Pickaxe. I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool. No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong. So what's the problem? That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch. Maybe there's no catch. That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow. You need to relax. I need a knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminate. Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough. Car selling without a cat. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. My name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of yowie, a gift shop. From the lens of artists and handmade objects, I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on shopify.com. All right, Adam, we're live. All right, Justin. This is our first like live stream of the podcast, correct? No, I mean, first one in like two years. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's. It's been a. It's been a hot minute. Well, welcome trainers, to another exciting episode of Special Conditions. You know, the podcast where competing and collecting collide. I'm one of your hosts, Adam Tuttle, and I am joined by my lovely co host, Justin Keller. How are you? I'm doing fine. How about yourself? I'm doing okay. It's currently 11:56pm and exciting. What are we doing up right now? Well, during our normal. I thought we were going to record times, you decided to have two whatnot shows. So then I was like, well, I guess we're going to do it late. Okay, so, you know, here we are. It is currently June 16, about to be the 17th, 2026. Like I said, I'm Adam, that's Justin and we're here to talk some cardboard. Cardboard. Just don't be bored and. Yeah. So what's going on, Justin? How. How the heck have you been? Well, first I will say I was. I was glad to see you and go Fest Chicago. That was a lot of fun. You know, it feels like Just like yesterday. Well, it was like last week, but it may as well have been yesterday. But, you know, we've been going every year now for how many years? You've been going since day one, but I've been going since Philly Safari Zone in 2021. Well, we didn't go to the first Go Fest. I think it was just like it was out of our budget. And then we went to the second one, and we did the whole as if, and we just kind of snuck our way into the mix of things and rubbed elbows with almost everyone we possibly could. And look where we're at today. Yeah. Remember early on when your thing was we are the unpolitically correct podcast and we curse at things? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I never. I mean, it took a lot to get me to. To say anything. Kevin always be like, what can I say to get Adam to break character. Deli Bird. Deli Bird is dead. No. Oh, man. So, you know, we don't have a crazy agenda today. We're just catching back up. You know, I've been struggling trying to bring the podcast back to Live for forever partially. It was just, like, I wanted to change how we were doing it. Part of it was we were changing away from software that we're using, so I had to learn new software. It's kind of a lot of things, so there's going to be some struggles here at the beginning, but we're moving forward. We're getting it done. Speaking of getting it done, Adam, I hear you've been getting it done on the card front. You've been. You kind of changed some things around with work, allowed you to do some more card things. A summer schedule, if you will. I mean, heck, you were just at a card show, what, two hours ago? Two hours ago. Yeah. ShinyCon midweek, which was different. You know, it wasn't necessarily, like, crazy busy, but it was steady the whole time, and there were so many collectors that came to that one. Like, everybody was on a mission to complete sets. Everybody was looking for specific Pokemon, specific arts and trying to complete binders, and. I don't know, it was really cool to see. It was just a different vibe than I've been used to at the bigger card shows. Yeah. No, that's cool. How would. I mean, would you, Eddie, midweek card show. How many people are showing up to something like this? I don't know. Maybe a couple hundred first, you know, almost a thousand people for a bigger show. Yeah. I mean, that's. That's pretty. That's pretty cool. Is this like a larger convention space or is it like a. So it's the original spot. It's in the Wakefield, Mass. The high school, I think. But it's. It's one of the schools and it's. Normally the whole place is jam packed as tight as possible. Very difficult to work your way through the room and shop and be able to get into people's binders and talk to people and try to make deals happen. That's why they moved to Mega and created a bigger event with more vendors and more space and people can walk through the aisles and not feel like that. So that's why. That's like how I became part of ShinyCon Mega and it's been awesome. Speaking of awesome, you got me this awesome arcanine cup and I appreciate you carrying it around all day at Go Fest until you finally met up and you could give it to me. And that was just like by happenstance, honestly. Yeah, it was that and the Trapper Keeper which I'm. And the hollow binder because that was separate. There's like a notebook that was separate. I just put it in the three ring binder. Oh, that makes so much more sense. I saw the, I saw the notebook in here. I was like, wow, this binder has a notebook in it. Yeah. I was like, I'm gonna ship this to you. And then I just. Yeah, day after day went by and I was like, you know what, I'm going to go fest. I'm just going to meet up with Justin and give it to him there. Trapper Keeper. Open it. There's a nice crunch. The hollow binder here. I mean, binder notebook. And then you know, it's just like a regular notebook. You got your fancy sleeves here and then in the back you got these portfolios. So to just folders, but they're arcanine themed folders. So there's a orange one and there's a black one. So I love it. See, I didn't even look that deep into it. I just like grabbed it and I was like, it has arcanine on it. He's gonna want it. Oh man. And then, oh, it's upside down. And then it's like the old school art for the arcanine on this. So I was not a big fan of a lot of the target stuff but. But some of it hits hard. Yes, I really wanted the fanny pack personally, but I was not successful in getting one sad day ad. Which fanny pack did you want? Well, the red, blue and yellow one. The. Do you like fanny packs in General or just that specific. I do. I wanted it because I thought it was, like, cool. But now I'm taking down notes. Taking down notes. The sting, the stigma, Stigma behind it is that, like, if you have one, you're a scalper. Yeah. Just like the same thing with the Kanto jackets. I. And I'm not gonna. Starter jackets are not my style. No, they're not. Not my style at all. And the one thing is too. During Go Fest, the drop happened, like, whatever morning, and we're an hour behind, right? Yeah, we were an hour behind Chicago or in Chicago. And so the drop went live and I couldn't even get anything on there. Like, I. I immediately went. And it was like, the jackets are still checking out. And I went in, click the jacket. Maybe it might have been a minute passed and it was like, they're all sold out. It's like, how. I don't understand. Like, I. At what point, like, I'm. Am I not normal? Because I don't know how to use a bot to hold my place in line and auto buy something. Okay. So I just. I don't get it. What am I supposed to do to secure the bag? I think you're just supposed to hope and pray somebody else did it and help you out, because I think it's just a practice of not having FOMO for things like this. And if you don't get it, you don't give it, you move on. There will be something else. Yeah. And so when I was at the. I went to the event, obviously I should have been there at like 6am in the morning and camped out, but I didn't. We actually had, like, breakfast, and we. Then we all went as a family at like, 10:30. And most of it was sold out, but there was still some hats, which I got for Zach, who came onto the show. Chanel bought a jigglypuff T shirt and a hairbrush and one of the perfumes, which are actually pretty cool. I actually like the perfumes. They do smell nice. I will say that. Or the body mists or whatever they're called. Yeah. Well, I will keep that in mind, because in my future, I am going to Japan, and I am leaving in exactly 12 hours from now, which is wild to me. I'm getting on the plane in less than 12 hours, and we take off 12 hours from right now. So it'll be fun. That's why I'm staying up late and because earlier today I've been using this timeshifter app that helps you adjust the time Zones two days ahead, you kind of adjust like your lighting and how you see lights during the day. And so if we were going to record this morning, I was literally going to be wearing sunglasses and like be in a dark room because I wasn't supposed to see light until 1pm they'll be like, are you podcasting with somebody right now? I can't tell. You know, I'm just ZZ top over here. And then, you know, like right now I gotta be up until 1am to kind of keep shifting me towards the Japan time zone because they're plus 14 hours from me. So it's 11pm locally for me, which means it is 1pm there tomorrow. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. So it's, it's, you know, 12 hours plus two. That's how I think about it. Okay. So I will keep an eye out if I see any fanny packs that have Adam's name on it. Yeah. I gotta shoot you a list of things that you need to look out for. Deli bird slash, iron bundle wise. Yeah, Should be a good time. I've never been to Japan. You know, Japan always gets the crazy cool merch. Like I pulled some things out that I've ordered from Japan Pokemon center in the past. You know, it takes like two months to get here and then I get it like these sleeves. So Adam, I'm showing the art Arcanine terastal Pokemon center sleeves that have like the, it's just got the, the fire terastalized form on top. And it looks, it looks very similar to the art of the card that you showed me in a PSA 10 earlier that cost 800 bucks or 900 bucks. Yes, and so it looks like that. And then I also have these other sleeves. It's Perrin with her camera and Hisuian Growlithe. You know, it's, it's related to the art that was from those cards. And what was it? Paldea Evolved. You know, where Growlithe is looking at the camera in one and then Perrin has the camera and you can see Growlithe inside the camera lens in the other. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So those are just a couple things I'd ordered in the past. You know, maybe a plush or two. Oh, and like a couple deck boxes. But you know that's subject to online stuff. So now I'm going to check out the in person Pokemon Centers and see what that is like. Yeah, I can't wait. I know you're going to record stuff. I know you're going to send me pictures and stuff. I'm very excited to live vicariously through you. Yeah, it'll be a good time. And I kind of enjoy the whole, like, recording thing. Like today and in the midst of packing and doing other stuff, I put together a couple videos like the one that we recorded of us opening cards on At Nando's Chicken with JT Valor helping us record. That was fun. I just. That was fun. It just had me burst up laughing. I was like, by this time I'd watched the video like 10 times because, you know, that's just the nature of editing a video clip. And I was still laughing every single time that JT goes, winner, winner, chicken dinner. And then it's sad because you can't eat chicken. Just. I don't know. The way he said it was just so funny to me. Although it's not funny that you don't eat chicken, but it's just like, I don't know, you know, Circumstantial. Yes. So I did that video today, which you can see on our YouTube channel or Instagram, and then I did a. A five minute video of us going to the fossil museum and, and the Pokemon fossil exhibit that'll go on the YouTube channel tomorrow. I. I had a lot of fun. I used. I got a couple new game Chop songs to put in the background. I'm a sucker for the Zelda game Chop songs. I don't know why. I just like. They just fit my vibe better than the Pokemon game Chop songs. So you can look forward to that. Yeah, so it's been good. Oh, and right here I got the sought after Pokemon fossil exhibit card. The Archeops with Pikachu winking with a stamp. So, you know, and I also may have gotten one of those. Oh, how did you get one, Louis? We discussed it at the Airbnb. Nice. He's so nice. He just, he's always looking out for other people, you know, what's, what's not to like about Mr. Pure Lighter? You know, and then we just slept it off, you know, Got him. Got him. No, and then I got. Also got the. I got a shirt. And then I got the mining Pikachu. He's. He's got his little pickaxe. He's got a scarf. See, I got the Pokemon Go Mining Pikachu. Oh, and he's got a little fossil on his hat. Yeah. So it looks just like the one in the game. It's just a plush. Sorry. It's been a lot of showing off things, but since we haven't recorded in a while, there's been so many things that I've gotten. Oh, man. Yeah. I could show you my deli bird binder. It's got more deli birds in it. Are they different ones or all the same one? They're kind of all the same ones. Yeah. They're all from Mega. Yes. Okay, So Adam, we've kind of caught up on stuff. Is there, Is there anything else that's been going on in your life recently or should we jump over into the news realm? We should jump into the newsroom because there's a lot that's been happening. Okay, what do you want to talk about first? We definitely should talk about tpci and they have banned their vendors from selling graded slabs at events. Oh, yeah, that, that, that was interesting. But, you know, it kind of makes sense. I have not experienced this in person yet, but it kind of felt like a slippery slope of, you know, we want them to have more product there to help play the game and prepare trainers who need last minute cards. And it felt like, you know, anecdotally to me, I felt like you're kind of slowly getting further and further away from that. Like, it's cool to have the other stuff there, but you still need a heavy amount of singles cards. Yeah, and you gotta think too, like, the average Pokemon TCG player is not like dropping thousands of dollars on slabs. You know what I mean? If somebody. Because, you know, I saw that today, you know, I'm over here with a bunch of singles and like lower level slabs. And then the person next to me legit just had all very, very high end, expensive slabs. And you know, they had probably like, you know, 25 in each of their cases. And it's like, oh, I got some competition here. Meanwhile, I've got like a CGC9, like Flareon promo. I'm like, yeah, that's like 15 bucks. Let's go. And they're like, yeah, I got this and it's a thousand five hundred. And. And you're. You're right though. With, you know, people needing to buy standard cards. Like typically at shows, if you're bringing those things, you don't have space for like bulk trainers and stuff like that. But this way here, these vendors that are going, they can have a hundred poke pads and they can upcharge on whatever they want for cards you need for your deck. I remember a time when I went to regionals and it was like, man, I need like for professors research. And I wanted the Professor Willow. The Pokemon Go one. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was Hartford Connecticut 2023. I'm pretty sure that's what I wanted. And I ran over, I was able to get them all. I went to two different vendors to find them, but I was able to get all four. And I was like, yeah, these are going in my deck. But there's GLC now, so you need like even older cards. I don't know, it's all relevant. Which, honestly, one of the last regionals I went to, I was looking for some GLC cards and I was like, I don't. My normal stores don't carry this. But I knew Full Grip was going to be there and I knew they would have the cards that are relevant. So I, you know, you pay a premium. But you know, on these old cards, they're not that expensive. You know, sometimes it depends on, you know, how meta relevant the that particular card is for glc and they get like sacred ash. Yeah, that was a sought after trainer card because it was printed way back when. And we just got it reprinted just now in Chaos Rising. I believe. I believe it's Chaos Rising. I hope it is. And that's cool. That's really cool that we got it back so now everyone can use it. Yeah, it's just readily available. Okay. Speaking of readily available, we got readily available news all over the place. Oh, so we got. What do you want to talk about next? There's the 30th celebration stuff. There's. Japan is requiring ID to purchase cards. We just. I love that so much. Okay, let's talk about anything. Anything to minimize the scalpers. Yes. Let's see if my browser connection works this time. Like, we were talking about the vending machines and how like Pokemon's like shutting some of them down and taking them out of stores. Okay. And in my opinion, I wouldn't even attempt to walk into the stores because I know that I'm not even going to stand a chance because somebody's probably waiting there and they're gonna fight me if I touch the screen and I see ascended heroes and I'm able to hit it and they'll be like, oh, I've been here all day. Like, it's just. I don't even want to put myself in a situation where that's even possible. So I wouldn't even go and look because I don't want to put myself in that position. Sorry. There is a giant spider that is climbing up my wall and I don't know if I should grab it and put it outside or just let it do its thing. I'll probably Just let it do its thing. So, yeah. So this article from GamesRadar, it's called Pokemon might soon require government ID in Japan to prevent TCG scalping. The system arrives in August. The Pokemon company is looking at age verification to help suit the market. They revealed in a statement on the official Japanese site for the tcg. The idea is to use my number cards, a standardized form of government ID in Japan, as a way to provide all customers with fair and safe opportunities for. For certain purchases through the official store. Per Translation by Automaton users will be asked for identification alongside their account on the site before participating further. These cards are available to the general public, but they aren't mandatory. And the company encourages any Pokemon fans without one to apply as soon as possible, lest they be locked out of buying whatever drop they like. Certain items, including those, will be sold through lotteries. We'll use this system as well. Some official events and tournaments in Japan. The overall extent isn't specified. We will find out later and it will start in August. So, you know, it's kind of crazy. Feels a little extreme, but, you know, sometimes we need the extreme now. I think it hampers. It definitely hampers travelers coming to Japan just looking to pick some stuff up for themselves. You know, selfishly, I'm thinking of me, but doesn't start until August, so we're good here in June. Okay. So, Adam, did you. I know you're busy. Did you get a chance to watch any of Naic this weekend? I did not. I literally had work in the morning and then I left work a little bit early and went to pick up the fam because they kind of did their. They did their own show, if you will, by themselves. How did that go? Pretty good. Did they sell all their stuff? They only sold a couple things and they said, give me a dollar for this binder of Deli Bird. Yes. And then I showed up and I immediately just like. It's like everybody showed up and they're all like, all right, the main guys here. Let's all. Let's swarm the table. It was kind of funny and I just. I made some. A bunch of really good deals with a co worker of mine and gave him a good deal. He was happy. I was happy. I got some cards that I have never even seen. I've never seen. Well, I mean, I knew that it existed, but I've never seen an actual armored Mewtwo. And a lot of the cards were from his childhood binder. So like, they're pretty rough, so it's hard to Take most of them. There were some that were like pretty rough, some that I didn't expect to be so expensive and they were very expensive. So I was like, I think I'm capped with the armored Mewtwo here. And then I brought that to New England Card House on Sunday. No bites on it, but it wasn't. That was an insane show as well. It was the one year anniversary of their show. So Happy birthday to New England Card House. All the vibes. Yeah, no, that's cool. So I, I did not get to watch anything. Probably could have Monday or today but I decided to. Well, if you got some free time, you know it's always very high production. I would recommend to anyone out there got free time. You know what, I can download these videos and play it on the airplane tomorrow. Maybe that's what I'll do tomorrow. But you know I, I was busy planning for Japan because this was a very last minute trip. We found a really good deal on flights and we had the points to do it. So we're just, let's do it. You only live once. So we just needed to make it happen. But anyways. So the top eight of NAIC that just concluded is as follows. First place with a Kangaskhan Clefairy deck was James Kowalski. Second place and he was an American. Second place from Czech Republic, Neddy Kosik with Dragapult Dusknoir. Third place from the US Dragapult to Dunsparce. Fourth place Ross Calon from the US with Slow King which I have not played Slow King. I need to actually play it. Fifth place, Rahul Ready from the US with Crustle. Sixth place John Webb with Dragapult Blaziken. Seventh place, Juho Kalama from Finland. I don't, I've kind of recognized that name but not really. With Rockets Mewtwo Spy Dops. And then rounding out 8th place with Dragapult is Miguel Angel Marin Herrera. So kind of a lot of what we expected, Dragapult, which you know it's fun to hate on because it's like the big bad deck. I still need to play it more just because I love Dragapult and I now that I, I didn't talk about this before but I am between jobs right now. My company was going through a large layo so they paid me some money to go away. So that's how I can afford to go on this trip and do a mental reset. And so as I do this mental reset and I'm applying for jobs, I'll have more time to actually Play Pokemon and less time commuting to work. Because besides it being nine hour work days, it was also basically an hour each way. So I got a lot of time back. Okay, that's exciting. I. I do. Even with my schedule too, like, I look forward to being able to play more Pokemon. I literally we. During the Zoom call yesterday, I literally just like, built a deck and was like, I'm just gonna try it. And I built Empoleon. And I think a lot of, like, it just has surprise factor. Yeah. Where people are like, what the heck does this thing even do? And I'm like, well, I have the stadium that reduces 30 damage. My attack reduces 60 damage, and this item card reduces 30 more damage. And my metangs just spread the energy. They. They evolved into their mega frost last. And I was like, come at me, bro. And with all of my reduction, they were 10 hit points. Like, they were 10 damage away from knocking me out. Yeah. I was like, let's go. So brutal. And I'm like, all right, I'm gonna knock you out. Take three prize cards. And then they came back and took two. And I was like, okay, well, here comes another one. Speaking of taking two, Adam, what if we took two and took a quick break? People in the live chat will still be here. Ask us whatever, and then we'll do some housekeeping and get back into all these crazy news topics. Okay, sounds great. All right, we'll be back right after this break. We're on a break. Yeah. Most of the people watching at this time of night are probably just in bed casually listening as we're not too animated, you know, going to bed. I mean, I'm also tired. I want to go to bed. Yeah, we can make a fast. I just wanted to get us, like, back in the groove. Try it again and let's keep going. So. All right, bring us back. You have the notes. I have the notes. And we are back. Thank you so much for that break. Just a little housekeeping real quick. This episode is brought to you by our Patreon shout out to the community that keeps the Pokemon Professor Network rolling. For a dollar a month, you can support the network and join our discord@patreon.com Pokemon Professor. And we just want to give a huge shout out to our gym leaders, Maddie g. Espeon, Willow, K.J. to Man, Herbert, Brandy, P.J. fisher, James. And our executive producers, Monkey Bread, Xander, Tish Smith, Kate the Cons, and our Elite four, Ozark Renee. Thank you all so much. Everything we do here on the Pokemon Professor Network Is powered by everybody watching, everybody listening. Thank you all. All right, Justin, what's the next topic? What are we after? What are we after? So we briefly talked about it. How do you feel about special promos? And specifically the fossil museum promo? Now, it's. I showed it earlier. I got it right here. You know, if you. They're just giving to you for free. As long as you have proof of timed entry into the fossil museum in Chicago. It is going now through April of 2027. So you got time if you want to go. It's pretty cool. You can see my video I posted on the YouTube channel. I can maybe link it if this records correctly. And it was fun. Now you're only spending like 30 minutes. There you go. I wouldn't go only for this. I would go as a supplement to whatever else you were doing. But it's cool. And then it's just like a. Fun to have a keepsake. Or in this case, people are selling it for 100, 200 bucks or whatever. Well, I don't know if they're still going for that. It is steadily declining. Okay. Now that more people are going. Yeah, more and more. Like, it launched. Go Fest happened. A lot of people got it, and they've been moving them as fast as possible. And in May, it was at the height 167. Geez. The. You know, whatever. June. That weekend of June with. Or. Yeah, last weekend really helped decline its price. So now it's sitting at $70. That's still like, too much money, in my opinion, for an archaeops. I do agree. I do agree in my head, like, promos are like five, ten dollars. Like, yes, you had to pay to get in. So part of that is technically that. Yeah. And so it's. It's. What did I pay? So you got to buy entrance to the actual museum, which I want to say is like 30 or 35 bucks. And then it's like an extra 15 to 20 to go to the special exhibit. It's not. Yeah. So even if the promo was $15, because that's like, quote unquote, your entry fee, like, that's even reasonable in my eyes. Like, that's reasonable. Yeah. So in. Let's be honest, it's an Archeops card. You're kind of. It's not the. It's got a Pikachu stamp on it, Justin. It's a Pikachu card. It's because it's exclusive and it has the Pikachu stamp. The Pikachu is very cute. He does have the little winky face similar to like the Pokemon Go Pikachu that you could catch at the museum. Which was a sick tie in by the way. Did you. Did you know ahead of time that they were going to have a in game event specific to the museum only kind of like it was its own biome habitat. I didn't know it was going to be that immersive. I thought it was just going to be like, hey, here's a raid with the Pikachu in it. And like that was it. But there was, there was mega Absols. No, not mega Absolves. There's mega aerodactyls that were spawning and they were the Pikachu with the explorer. And like you even if you didn't have a ticket, you could still raid them. And all the spawns around there were all the like the fossil, all the fossils, all the rock types, the research Anorith Lileep. Yeah, the research caught a shiny Lileep. Catch 10. Yeah. Take pictures of fossil Pokemon or you know, really felt like it was its own of like side quest event, honestly. Yeah. So I think Adam agreement, the promos are cool. They should maybe be. They shouldn't be $70. They should be like, I don't know, 40. And I think they will come down just because there will be so many more people. You know, it's only been open what, two months. There'll be so many more people that will come and go. I never understood the Van Gogh Pikachu promo craziness. Now it's a much cooler card than this Archaeops. You know, it's a full art. It's a Pika. It's never been seen before art. So there's that hype going around it. But I don't know, maybe they just printed a lot more of these Archaeops too. Well, from what I was told is they had people with like boxes and they just had so many in the box and they were just like handing them out like candy. The Archaeops or the. Or the Archaeops. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean they're handing them out like candy because like you're supposed to get one if you go. It's not like selling out. Oh, and yes, I know, I know the store had like a lot of exclusive merch, which I appreciate, I say a lot. They had a couple of things, but they had some stuff that was not available on the Pokemon center website. So like I got this camp shirt that has like a, a fossil like campsite. Like you're like, you're an archaeologist, like, embroidered onto the shirt. It's kind of a canvas looking shirt and it's got Tyrantrum and Archaeops on the side. It's pretty cool. It's really wrinkly. Otherwise I would have worn it, but I wasn't about to wear it. It's really wrinkly. Yeah. Yeah. So that will decline. I mean, as far as that goes. Like promos or promos. I don't know. Like, some people are go ham over the promos. Like, I just took in a Zekrom from Pokemon center promo and it's like, I don't know. Who cares about the Pokemon promo? The Pokemon Center Zekrom. What card is this from? The Black Bolt box. Oh, got it. Okay. I was like, what are we talking about? But now, Now I see it. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, I don't know. I don't really care about Zekrom that much. Yeah. So I think it's cool that they do these promos and we will leave it at that. All right, what else we got? Dragapult. People are excited. Not excited. Yeah. I mean, do you personally have dragapult fatigue? I just feel like now it's harder to have because we're not playing as much right now. So it's a little. Yeah. But when I go to. When I. I've gone to events or when I talk about events, it's like. Or when I talk about people that are still actively playing or going to tournaments or in tournament, they're just like, Dragapole is the best deck. Yeah. I. And then there's things. There's things that beat Dragapult. I'm a little surprised, which is all the grass decks. But then you play fire and it takes out the grass decks. I'm a little surprised that nothing in the last set really came out that like mattered. I mean, like, I don't know what. What good cards were even in there. In Chaos Rising or Perfect Order. Either. Perfect Order was extra bad for collectors and players. Chaos Rising. I just, you know, with the whole job searching thing and planning to go to Japan, I haven't looked at that one as much. We open those packs, we got a couple of hits. But I did not look at the playableness. Have you. I haven't looked at the, like, everything. I. I normally take my time and like go through stuff. Yeah. It just seems like they're really, really pumping grass because like the new bead really. X says this attack does 110 damage for each of your beedrill ex in play. So you can. I mean, you're gonna have four, so 440 damage for one energy. But you have to get all three. I mean, you can use Forest of Vitality. Like, there's ways, but all. All the opponent has to do is focus on just tackling your Weedles. And then, yes, your Beedrill will still hit for like 110 or 220, but it's not going to one shot. You. Yeah. And then at that point, once you've taken out the small stuff easily, because you have damage manipulation, especially with Dragapult, you can come back and just go hard. So. Yeah. Okay. So I'm gonna look back at the NAIC results and see if. Okay. So the big cards in Chaos Rising, Mega Greninja, everyone wants that for the, you know, the Collector series. It's a sick card. Like, it's the. This. The shiny black. Sorry, excuse me. S. Shiny black Mega Greninja. He's upside down. He's got his, like, little tongue going out. There's the gold one that also looks sick, where it's slightly different art. Where he's upside down on the Shrukin, there's Mega Floette. But what does that. What does that do for three cycles? I don't know. Eternity Bloom 200. Search for four basic energy cards, hash them to your bench Pokemon where you like. I mean, I guess that's cool. Yeah. And there's a stadium that, like, goes with it. There's also, like. Like, you have to sequence and, like, do things to make it more powerful. I think some of the unique stuff that came out of it is that we have the new Greninja Mega Greninja. Because you can have Greninja Ex in your deck. And you can also have Mega Greninja. So you can play like a 3 mega or 2 mega and 3 ex. So your deck can adapt and be fighting or be water, which is really cool. I like that. That aspect. Same thing with Mega Gallade, because you can run Mega Gardevoir and Mega Gallade in the same deck because they both evolve from Kirlia. I think that's something unique and cool. Same thing with Mega Pyroar, because you can evolve into normal Pyroar or you can evolve into Mega Pyroar. I just think I really enjoy when Pokemon does stuff like that, when it gives decks type coverage. No, that's cool. Sorry, I'm just still looking to see if I can even find Greninja in this top list here. And I mean, there's a bubbly energy. So it's like a special water energy. Just says the water Pokemon this card is attached to recovers from all special conditions and can't be affected by any special condition. So I figured that one was notable. We had to talk about that one. There's also water support with the Great Hall Net. It says, choose one or both. Shuffle up to three water Pokemon from your discard pile into your deck. Shuffle up to three basic water energies from your discard pile into your deck. So essentially, you can shuffle. It's like Super Rod, but you can do six. You can do three waters and three Pokemon. Okay, so the top two Mega Greninja players were barely top 500, 470. First was the first was the highest one. That's bad. That is bad. But there's. That's the thing. It's. You went into naic, people came from all over. I'm sure they were testing against a lot of things. See, there was a Beedrill EX that got 229th, but that's still not very good. The main card that came out of it is special red card. Says you can only use this card if your opponent has three or fewer prize cards remaining. Your opponent shuffles their hand and puts it at the bottom of their deck. If they put any cards at the bottom of their deck in this way, they draw three cards. So it is like a re. Unfair stamp. It is like a judge. It is like an Iono. So just for reference, it was used in the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th place decks at NAIC. The special red card. The special red card. Yeah. Let's see. That one was a one of. That one was a one of. Yeah, it looks like it's just pretty much a one of card, this special red card. But it's cool to. Did you already read it? The text? Yes. Yep. It's cool to be able to do that, because resetting people's hands was just getting out of hand and how crazy that was. Yeah, in the. Like, in this set, we got a lot of cool, like, different Pokemon. Like, we got the Cabalion Ex. It has metal. Metal road. Once during your turn, when this Pokemon moves from your bench to the active spot, you may use this ability. Move any number of metal energies from your other Pokemon to this Pokemon. That's huge. It's very similar to what Virizian does or iron Leaves ex. Yeah, I'm pretty sure we've seen this ability before. It is nice to drop it, have something fresh come into play and just swing for 200 damage as a basic with 210 hit points. Okay. And then we're gonna quickly move along to our last thing here. They've been slowly leaking out a lot of the, you know, 30th, like anniversary cards and other promos that, that are going along with like, this year. And one of them is a Rayquaza card. Have you seen this Rayquaza card? It is tied to the Expo. I don't think so. Yeah, so it's from our friends at PokeGuardian. It was just published yesterday. There is a Rayquaza. He's. You can see him like, roaring as he's like breaking through the clouds and doing like a little spiral there. It's a Basic Pokemon card, 120 HP dragon type. See? Is it playable at all? It's not playable, in my opinion. It has Breakthrough Assault for Lightning and a colorless 20. Plus, if this Pokemon move to the bench, the active spot, this turn does 90 more damage, which is cool. But it's still two energies for this. So Pass. And it has Dragon Claw, 3 energies, 130. Pass. So, but what's cool is A, the art is cool and B, it's got the little P Expo stamp on there and then say black P or red xp. And Pikachu's face is the O. So again, it'll be a sought after card. I'm sure it'll be scalped the heck, but, you know, that's cool. All right. All right. Yeah. And I mean, the. Basically the biggest car we got out of perfect order was Poke. Poke Pad. And then we have the actual 30th celebration set cards revealed. Have you seen these? I have seen a lot of them. Yeah. So they're very different looking. Like I'm looking at the Mu Ex. It's kind of the futuristic ones. Yes. It reminds me of like the Terminator, you know, when they turn all silver and. Yes. And they. They're like morphing. That's what the MEW reminds me of. The Mewtwo, less so because it's got a purplish to it, but it's still like the future. It's got all like these little coin bonus energies all popping around the card. Let's see, Mew has the ability Memory Helix's Pokemon Cues, the attacks of your. Of any of your benched Pokemon. Oh, interesting. So that looks. That looks tight. The Mewtwo Ex. It's a Mewtwo card. It looks tight. The Pokemon or the 30th anniversary stamp is holographic or it's like a rainbow gradient. I did not expect that. I was expecting the Same old boring 3, 0 Pikachu stamp, which is what's on the rest of the cards that are not the future ones. I just was kind of over it after they did it the last time. We just. They just keep updating it. I'm just like, I'm done. But it's like it did say 25. It did say 20th. Now it's going to say the 30th. Yeah. So like there's. I wish I could figure out my screen sharing, but it's not working right now. The Hisuian Sarua is very cute. It's jumping and frolicking in the snow right between the trees and has kind of a hand drawn style to it and it reminds me very much of like Japan and being in the mountains there. It's very cool. There's this Lycanroc which is going to have to go in my Lycanroc collection. It's. It's the midnight form Lycanroc. And he looks menacing as heck as he's like breaking through rocks. There's Drifloon that looks like it's floating away from a. I was gonna say a carnival, but it's like a otherworldly Disneyland type. It's like it's got a castle in the background. It's got big carnival tent style rides. It's got a monorail. Oh, it's very cool card. I'm looking at these for the first time. There's. I really hadn't looked at these. There's Lapras with Psyduck with Psyduck hanging off to the side and a couple spheals. It's another cute card. Your generic Pikachu shooting lightning out of its butt. You know, it's a cool art, but it's Pikachu that happens. This Pikachu is very cute because he does what dogs do and sticks his head between the railing on the stairs and gets stuck. So his face is all squishy. Oh, they're bringing. Are they just straight up reprinting Pika Rum? I think so, yeah. Wow. I also think Charizard as well, which is cool. They're reprinting Greninja Ex. Is this new? This might actually be new. They're bringing back Zard with the stamp. You know, of course there's an Umbreon, which I don't know if these are supposed to holographic or not do, you know, like the, the basic Umbreon and The basic. I would assume. I would assume Espeon. Sylveon's really cute, but it's kind of too much in my opinion. Okay, this other Pikachu. How many Pikachu cards are in this set? It's very like, kind of Chibi looking and very like young Pikachu. It's very small. There's Victini. There's a Zara aura. There's the future Pikachu looks. Looks pretty cool and metallic. Oh, there's multiple Pikachu's. There's a dark one and a light one. Interesting. Yeah. One of them is the. The spc. Spc? What does that mean? Special premium collection or super premium collection. Oh, okay. Do you know which one? I don't. I wish I could. When I zoom in on these cards, that portion of the card goes off the screen. So I'm just like. I don't. What is it? Tell me, Is it. Oh, okay, I forgot. There is the special illustration where Espeon and Umbreon, which is going to be a chase for people. Have you seen these cards? Yes, I. Let's see. If I think about this, You know, I. I can't. It's hard to say because you gotta like, see these cards in person. I kind of like this style better than the sun Brion and the. Yes. And the. Whatever. Terastal. Espeon. The. The Umbreon here is sitting in front of 30th anniversary fireworks. There's a big 30s drawn in the fireworks. And there's so many Pokemon on here. Adam, do this card in front of you. Can you name all the Pokemon? No. All right, you pull up the Espeon then. All right, so Umbreon, the Espeon Ex or the. Yeah, yeah, the one with all the special art. One that people are gonna spend money on. So Umbreon is centered here with Eevee off to the left. And then the background is. I'm even probably gonna miss some. There's Dino, Svilas, Zara, Aura. You know, the big yellow guy. There's Toxel and Toxicity. Let's see, there's. I said its name earlier. Meteor. Oh, there's Minior. No, the fox. The fox that changes shape. Zora, Zarua and Zoroark. There's Murkrow. There's Hydra Gun. There's Mewtwo. There's. What is this guy? Celia Cressalia. Did I get them all? I think so. There's so many. See if there's. And most people probably don't even know who Minior is. Yeah, it'll just go by like. No, that's just a firework. Yeah, I only knew of many or from new Pokemon. Snap. That and my. My good friend Scott really loves Minior. All right, let's look at the Espeon. Espeon. Espeon has Victini in the top left. You got comfy. There's ninetales. There's Espeon. There's Eevee. There's Meryl. There's Kangas Khan, Cherrim right there on the handrail. And then Tropius. But I'm definitely missing something. Yeah, you're missing a few. So I don't know if you saw next to Vulpix. I mean, next to Ninetales is the Vulpix. Oh, yeah, Next. Oh, and the Cherim next to the Cherubi. Yep. And then look at. Look down from Meryl. There's a. Is hiding right there. Yep. And then if you look at Kangaskhan directly above his head. Do you see it? Oh, there's Mew. Yeah. So that's a Mew card right there. Yeah. Okay. Is that it? I mean, you really have to stare at this thing. Yes, I think that's it. Yeah, I think so. I'm looking, I'm looking. Okay, we're gonna call that it. Yeah. I was like. I was looking at these other planes in the background drawing the clouds. I was like, is that a plane or a magnemite? I thought. Yeah. I was like, what is that? I think that's a Wingle. Oh, and there's even a video showing the new cards and the art. No, I know. It's. It's very epic. I showed Ashton. Oh, my. I'm gonna have to. Man, I wish I could share screen. I'll just share that. All right, well, if you've enjoyed this episode, follow subscribe wherever you listen to podcast. Don't miss the next podcast, please. And now that we know so do a friend. Now that we know we can do this, we will schedule actual times ahead of time and put it out. Yeah. And then actually be on time. Yeah. All right. Justin, Is that a show? That's a show. All right. You can email us special conditions@pokemon professor.com voice. Leave us a voicemail, text us, send us a picture. 732-835-8639. And remember, if you're affected by a special condition, don't forget to use a full heel. Bye. Hi, I'm Simon. I'm Jean. And I'm Boof. Have you heard about Pickaxe's hit new old movie podcast Yours. We each have a list of six films we want to share. Every week we roll a dice to randomly pick which one we watch and discuss. McBunker Welt says this trio is perfect for a movie podcast. G is the casual that has the mainstream movies, Simon is the nerd that is bringing the gems, and Boof is the seller goblin that scrapes the bottom of the diaper. Messiah Jones says, Such a fan of of this podcast. 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