#282 First Partners Second Series & Our Best Cheap-Valuable Cards

Foreign. Welcome to the Metapod podcast, the Pokemon TCG podcast that revolves around the evolving meta. I'm Jake, I got my co host here with me, Sean. The Utrecht regionals happened this past weekend and one of us was at the Utrecht regional. So Sean, how, how did you like the regional? I. Look, I can't complain about going to a regional that is by bike for me. Like I just, I, I hopped on. Did you really bike there? Yeah, it's a 10 minute, not like motorcycle bike either for, for maybe for some listeners who think by bike I mean, you know, with an engine. No, no, no. This is my feet, Feet, foot, foot powered pedal power. You're doing physical activity. I was, I was getting a workout and playing Pokemon at the same time. Yeah, I biked. It's 10 minutes. It was great. And so I'm very excited about all the other regionals that I will go to in the future where I will also wake up, make coffee in my own house, make myself some breakfast and bike there. Probably my 8:00am start. But yeah, it was good. It was, the venue was really nice. I've been in the venue before for like other like conventions. It's like the main convention hall here which is. They just do everything there and it was just chill being with like some of the friends that I've made here and also seeing some other folks who I, you know, haven't necessarily met in person before but I've talked to in the past. Like Jake, you and I have talked to some of these people before. You know Shay, the, the commentator. We had. I believe we had Shay on the pod years and years and years ago. Yeah, years ago. Yeah. But like it was one of those things where I was like I've, I've never met you in person and like cool. That was awesome. So it was nice. There's like a whole different group of people and it was just yeah, was chill. I hadn't been to a Pokemon regional and played in one for a hot minute. I was going to say now that you have played in a North American regional and now a European regional, what are some of like the cool. Were, were there like a. Obviously there were a lot of similarities. Like it was a Pokemon regional, but like, I mean you already Talked about the 10 minute bike ride that you did. But like is there anything like notable difference I guess that you can think of? I mean, I guess like a lot has changed probably since you played in a North American regional for like what the standard or regional is? I mean I, Yeah, I suppose I went to NAIC in 2024, which wasn't that long ago. Yeah. And I was at. We were both at worlds. We didn't compete or anything, but we were both physically there. Yeah, but those are like, those are all like scale. Yeah, you're right. Yeah. I would say the, probably the most obvious difference you'll note if you go to a regional in Europe specifically is that you will encounter players from all other countries, which can technically happen at an ic, but I think it's a little less common. It'll mostly be people from whatever the region. But in Europe, so many different languages of cards are allowed at their regionals. You can have English cards, Spanish cards, French cards, German cards, Italian cards. So there were several matches where I sat down and the person's cards were not in English at all. And you know, that was pretty neat. I was like, I'm trying to remember. I think there was a. Some French cards across me at one point or maybe some German cards. So I think that your entire deck, I think, has to be one language. But yes, that was pretty neat. It was also funny because I think I paired up against a couple of other Dutch players because you'd see on the thing like what region, what country somebody is from on the player slip and on RK9. And I think I, when they sat down across from me, the other Dutch players, they were very surprised that I would just speak English with an American accent because it's like they're like, wait a minute, this person's not a Dutch. You are. You are not Dutch. What is this name? And I'm like, oh, sorry. I, I just moved here and I changed my region, so. But otherwise it was pretty standard in terms of regionals. You have a limited amount of vendors, you have the stage set up, you have the play area. You know, I, I think it was pretty common for like everything else. If I compare it to like the last small regional I went to, which I believe was in, I want to say Stamford, Connecticut a couple of years ago. But yeah, yeah. So not really all that much different though. They have it, they have it down like, you know, you do these things that are regional. So. Yeah, I just didn't know if there was like any like quirky things or like, I don't even know if design is the right word for like, you know, a regional, like in a different region. I've never been out of the country. For anyone who does not know, I want to get out of the country sometime to compete in like a. It probably end up being a one piece regional. But maybe a Pokemon regional in the future or something like that, or attend Worlds or you know, what have you. But you know, I've just, I'm just curious. Yeah, no, there wasn't anything too different. That was basically it. I think the card selection from the vendors. There was some playable, but there was a lot. The biggest difference I've seen over the last couple of years is the vendors that come have way more cards that are like high value slabs and like the kind of stuff that you see at the typical card convention rather than what you would expect to see at like a regional where most players, probably most people there probably play the game. So that's not to say you can't collect and play, but that was a little surprising because seeing that many slabs and like cards that were like, oh, there was a set of the, the scream promos, all PSA 10 and they were selling the whole set for 50,000. 50,000. Like that's €50,000 euros. Yeah, yeah. So that's a big number. That's a big number. I'm like, I mean I, I guess somebody could theoretically buy it here, but like it just doesn't seem like the venue for that. But I don't know. Well, it's, it's kind of interesting. So, uh, we didn't expect to get a little bit deeper in this topic heading into this episode, but I think it's a very interesting conversation that builds upon our previous conversation the other week about how promo cards are going crazy if you go to like any one piece or even a riftbound regional, you know, as of right now, you win prizing, you can sell that before you even leave the venue because people intentionally go there to buy like that high value, that high class prizing sort of thing. So I think that kind of shift that you're talking about of like the, of you know, high level slabs or super high end cards, I think it's just more so adhering to those people that go there not necessarily to play, but just to buy these like high level cards and things like that and invest. I say that in quotations for all of our audio listeners. Yeah, I, you're probably right. Like, I think more spectator badges seem to be appealing to people who are not there to play inside events, who are not there to watch whatever game that they are interested in, but more so people who are just there because they know it's a place that they can buy and sell some high end cards. The vendors were a very limited selection. So I, I actually don't, I don't Know if the prices. I could actually tell you the prices for the playables were not very good. Mostly I saw Meowth for €10aMeowthy X and I was like, I didn't buy them because I was like, I think it's like a six euro card online. And I'm like, yeah, I don't mind paying a small upcharge but almost double is a. You know, that's a bit much. So one thing that is pretty interesting. So like Dark side games out here in Las Vegas, they. They typically then like Pokemon regionals now like they did the, they did the North American regional the other week. I can't remember what it is off top man. Was it la la? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they did, they did the LA regional and they were talking about how like it's a rule that's set when they are chosen to ven that they can't sell a card over c a certain value. So like it might have been even I don't know if European regionals also has that thing. I have no idea. This is just information that has been told to me by, by some people. But like it could be also that those screen promos and like high valued end cards are more like there for display and if somebody's interested, we'll talk after the event kind of thing. I mean I certainly did not discuss purchasing them, but. Yeah, you don't have 50€000 just lying around, Sean. No, no, I don't. I. It was funny though. I. There was a few people that I was with. One of my friends was wondering if they would have one piece cards there and I, I said I was like at a normal card convention, yeah, sure, you know, vendors will have maybe multiple games, but I feel like that would be a rule at a Pokemon regional is that like you can come, you can sell cards, but you gotta only sell Pokemon stuff. So. Yeah, yeah. But I really didn't want to officially license things too. Yes, I did really. Like I'm gonna get it out the Playmat though that they gave away. I gave away that you could get at the regional. Hold on, I'll grab it. Yeah. While Sean's talking about it. Oh my gosh, the Playmat is so good. It is so fun. And for all of our audio listeners, you can check out the official Metapod discord to see the picture of this Playmat in the show notes the description. But yeah, for the video listeners, I'll try to describe this. It is Meowth sitting on a bench with some coins and he's just looking up at the sky. It's very pretty. Oh, my gosh, I love that play. Matt and somebody, I think, in our discord maybe pointed out. Yeah. The funny joke, which is like, this is where Meowth should be on the bench. I was like, I hope that the person who designed this mat had that exact same joke in mind, because it is Chef's kiss. It's so good. It's so good. It's a very, It's a very good. What was your play promo Judge. Oh, it was judge. That's right. That's the promo. That's for regionals and stuff that are going on right now at this point in this quarter, I think. Yeah. Is what it. Yeah. Anyways, let's get into more of Utrecht. I guess. We've been talking a lot about Utrecht and things like that. It was interesting to see the event because Miloslav. Yeah. From Czech Republic ended up winning the event with Mega Lopunny Ex Da Dun Sparse. Right. We've seen this big rise in the Dun Sparse with that runaway draw ability being paired with a ton of stuff. And Megalopony Ex is its recent partner. Yeah, we talked, actually. Or I believe, I guess I probably did that episode, that part of the episode by myself last week. The analysis, was it low funny? Was it low punny Dusknor or low punny Dudun Sparse? I think it was Lopani to Dunsparce and then it was Starmie Dusknoir. Yeah, but Starbucks. But we did like, we did call out last week, or at least, you know, I, I, I mentioned it that, like, that could be coming out of LA regionals. One of the decks that really surfaced, it didn't win, but that did well was Megalopany. I watched it on stream during LA and I thought to myself, I was like, man, if any deck can beat Dragapult, it's probably this one. And yes, maybe this version of the list, you know, maybe Megalopany would struggle more against the Dusknoir variant of Dragapult. But, you know, it seems like this player either didn't hit any of those variants or if, if they did, maybe they still won. But super cool list here. If you don't know what Megalopany does, I will refresh your memory. The first attack, gale thrust for one colorless 60 plus. And if this Pokemon move from your bench to the active spot, it does 170 more, so 230 for one. And then the second attack is actually just gravy. One other colorless energy spiky hopper for 160 and it's a shred attack. So this is your out to crustle like all on one card. So good. I. It's very interesting, right? Because you're not necessarily like one hitting one shotting anything that's not like a bench sitter within the format. Like a meowth, like a pheasantipity, you know, things of that nature. But one of the high points of this deck is Sean's favorite card, Wally's Compassion. Right. Being a full playset within this deck, it makes sense, right? If your Mega Low punting ex is a one energy attacker. Wally's Compassion is so nice to be able to heal all the damage on a Mega Evolution Pokemon and then you trash an energy while you just get. Just put it back in your hand. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's. It's. Wait, put it back in the hand. Is it put it back in the hand or trash it? No, no, put it back in the hand. Oh my gosh. This card's even better than what I was thinking. Yeah, yeah. That's why this card it works so well with enriching energy in the deck. Because if you have air balloons and so say you retreat the damaged one into a non damaged one. Use Wallies kit the enriching energy back in your hand, attach it to the active draw four cards. Oh, it's like Wallies is basically heal all your damage draw four cards. That's crazy. And especially with the idea of air balloon. Right? A switch card or something to help with switching within this deck. And the dun sparse, it is very very frequent to be able to. You know, if you attack a gale thrust with Mega Low puny in the turn it comes back to you. And in order to hit that 230 again you do have to get out of the active. So utilizing air balloon to retreat into a dedun sparse. Use that runaway draw ability, shuffle it back into the deck and now you can repromote your Mega Low punny Ex to be able to reset that 230 damage it. I mean it's pretty good in a dragapult meta, right? Because you can not only do a lot of healing with that 200 damage, you've got battle cage miss energy. Right. A lot of like other counter cards to draggable to be able to protect your little guys on the bench. Whether that's been Erie or Dun Sparse on the field. And then just two shotting and elongating the game while drawing a ton of cards worked. I mean it works out pretty well. And Let me tell you, a lot of this top cut was Dragapult in the top eight. Yeah, it was. Five of the eight players in top eight were Dragapult. And for those curious, I think day one meta share was 25 Dragapult. So it did come down technically. I think more people were trying to find counters to drag a pult like Megalopony, like Raging Boat, Bolt etc. But the conversion rate for Dragapult, even though it was only only 25 day one was still like 31 day of phase two. So. Yeah, and you know, if you had a good counter deck and you were able to not hit your bad matchups like Miloslav, you know, supposedly did, then yeah, you're going to have a good day in Phase two. Yeah, I mean it was, it was a pretty good time for that deck. And just taking a look at. We don't have all the dragon pull lists here, but just taking a look at one, the first one is just a vanilla Dragapult. I feel like in this top cut specifically there were a lot more like more vanilla dragapults right to where like sure, some of them ran like the dun sparse you see like a dust nor in seventh place. But this, this one right. Still running on the back of Crispin. Crispin in that resurgence into the format allows you to get these specific energies that you need. So then in one turn you can get both energies on a dragapult ex or maybe have the flexibility of, you know, getting an energy for Dragapult but also attaching to a monkey dory to be able to manipulate damage counters. So pretty much the same thing that we've been seeing, you know, time and time again. I thought it was very interesting in this version of the deck that got, I believe it's fifth place, right? Fifth place in the Utrecht running. Yeah, yeah. Running Area Zero under depths. I feel like that's not necessarily a stadium that we've seen a ton off of off of Dragapult, but. Well, a lot of Dragon Pulse the last play, a lot of Dragon Pulse the last few weeks have been running it, but they usually run well, they usually run a 1:1 split of area 0 and risky ruins. And the, the idea there is that if you're gonna run a heavier count of Meowth in your list, which not all of them do, but some if you're gonna run a few Meowths, you might as well put the meows down, put the Area 0, fill up your bench a little bit more and then you know, get rid of the Area 0 with something like Chen Pow or Risky Ruins to get rid of Meowth, right? Yeah. Get rid of all your liability. Yeah, Get. Get rid of your playmat. Yeah, exactly. I'm sitting on the bench. But, you know, it's. This is kind of a weird list, honestly, for what I saw over the weekend, because this list is also playing Blood Moon Ursaluna, which I thought it was just a good card. Look, it's a good card. And especially in certain matchups in the late game, like if you're playing against Raging Bolt, they are going to probably be attacking very aggressively, very quickly. They can probably one hit KO your Dragapults. You're not playing Neo Upper in this version, so it makes sense. It's like, well, what one shots Raging Bolt, Blood Moon Ursaluna to finish the game. So if you can figure out a way to take your four prizes and then just use this to close out the game against Raging Bolt, that's a pretty. Pretty solid plan. So my guess is that this one was sort of built a little more with Raging Bolt in mind. But interestingly, I know they don't have the list up, but Hassan, who got second, was playing something closer to Andrew Hedrick's list from la, which is a Dragapult Hammers. Crushing Hammer is back, Jake. So I know quad Crushing Hammer. Like, what's that? What better way to beat Dragapult as a Dragon Ball player than with Crushing Hammer to get rid of Dragapult's energy? It's funny because for anybody who's been playing the game for a couple of years now, you'll know that this is the same exact Dragapult life cycle that we have had with Dragapult Vmax. Oh, yeah. A couple of years ago, yeah, Dragon Ball Vmax had a phase where it eventually just shoved in four Crushing Hammers. And I'm pretty sure it was Andrew Hedrick that did that. And so doing it twice with another Dragapult that does spread damage. It just. I feel like we've been here before. Like, I. It's very interesting to see Crushing Hammer and this weekend handheld Fan was also a fairly popular tech card, which if you don't know what that does, if you hit the Pokemon that has a handheld fan attached, the player whose Pokemon that is can choose to move an energy from your Active to one of your benched Pokemon. So basically put an energy somewhere useless, which is very annoying. Right? Like, if they stick the energy on your Pheasantipity or your Meowth, it kind of does the same thing. Crushing Hammer does and but you can't get it back with a night stretcher so. Interesting. Yeah, just the developments. I mean Dragapold is the de facto best deck of the four, man. I don't think a lot of people can argue that. But even with you know it being the best deck it is constantly changing and having like new innovations based on whatever the rest of the meta is and things of that nature to keep it at that top. Right. Especially by these top level players. But one of the decks that really stole the top cut show I will say Zaptos, TCG if you know who they are. A long time Pokemon YouTuber getting top four with Team Rockets Honchkrow and this was a fun list I have. I'm gonna be competing in like a two thousand dollar league cup here in a couple weeks and I have decided that this is the list that I'm going to play or at least a haunch crow because I love a good one prizer as you guys may know. So Sean, do you want to take it away with this deck of what this does teach me a little bit about this. It's pretty straightforward. You have your early game attacker which is the Team Rocket Tantra stage one. So usually you can get it out by turn two for double colorless. And you do play in this deck both for Team Rockets Energy and four Ignition Energy both of which will work work but you do 60 damage for each supporter that you discard from your hand when you're declaring the attack. So your damage ceiling can be theoretically very very high. You do have the Team Rockets transceivers to put more things in your hand. You even have and I think you pointed this out in the discord Jake. Your a spec of choice being miracle headset which if you don't know what this card does I don't blame you. It says put up to two supporter cards from your discard pile into your hand. So it's in this deck. It could be either the exact supporter you need or it can be plus 120 damage for one card. It's also worth noting that there is a full four copies of Roto Stick in this deck. I had to look up what this card was. Roto Stick. If you do not know, you look at the top four cards of your deck and you reveal any number of supporter cards that you find there and put them into your hand. It could be one, it could be four if all four are supporters. Now you do as Sean was mentioning, you do have to discard Team Rocket supporters specifically so you run 20 of them in this variant of the list, right? Full playset of the Ariana, the Archer Giovanni Proton and Petrol, which is a lot. But some of these cards are actually like pretty solid, right. Proton allows you, if you go first, you can play this card during your first turn. Breaking the first turn supporter rule to get three basic Team Rockets Pokemon. It's like almost an extra set of Buddy Buddy Poffin, right? Which is great. Which works out pretty well because your Team rockets Mercros are 80 health, not 70. So you actually can't run Buddy Buddy Poffin. But not only that, like you have Team Rockets Giovanni, which is a prime catcher, which is pretty solid because you switch your Team Rocket, your active Team Rockets Pokemon with one of your bench Team Rockets Pokemon. And if you do, you switch one of your opponents Pokemon. And since your full list is Team Rockets Pokemon, I mean it's basically a prime catcher in a supporter. Petrol just finds any trainer card, which is very nice. You know, you can find a Transceiver Roto Stick, Team Rockets factory even, right. Being able to draw two cards every time you play a Team Rocket supporter in a turn. Ariana allows you to draw up to eight cards in your hand or draw until you have eight cards in your hand. And then Team Rockets Archer is a hand reset. You draw five, your opponent draws three. An Ace trainer of sorts. So you don't have to run something like Reset Stamp and you can run something like Miracle Headset. Pretty. I mean, this list is so funny to me. I love this. And especially against Dragapold, it also has some counters to Dragapult. With Team Rockets Articuno we I he ended up losing top four to a Dragon Pole. But you saw the impact of how good this card is within a matchup. Like Dragapult, with that repelling veil ability, you prevent all effects of attacks used by your opponent's Pokemon done to your basic Team Rockets Pokemon. Which I think is pretty cool because with your Pokemon, what we saw, I think in the Dragon Ball matchup is he would not evolve his Mercuros or Porygons until he was ready to attack because of the Team Rockets Articuno ability. And I just thought the synergy in this deck was so cool. Yeah, I mean that. That's always the place. So if you are planning on picking this up, I know you know this, Jake, but if you're planning on picking this up and you face Dragapult, put both Articunos down as best you can. And then like you were saying, just don't evolve until you have to. That's the biggest mistake you could theoretically make is if you evolve just because you have them in your hand and you want to make sure that they're online. You have three night stretchers in the deck. You can get your Pokemon back if you need. And to be honest, if you have to evolve more than like three or four or five times in a game, you're probably losing that game. Because this deck does really want to trade favorably with prizes. I think it probably would struggle a little bit with certain single prize decks a little bit more because that prize trade and the resource game that you're playing is a little funky. But I mean that's not what most people are running, right? You're just not running that kind of of deck. So yeah, no dust nor variants is so nice for this deck. And we talk about, you know, the affordability of Pokemon too. And I, I mean I've thought this for a number of years. Pokemon is the like cheapest competitive game that you can get into. And play this deck on TCG Player right now, none of these cards by themselves outside of Miracle Headset is over a dollar, right? As a single copy, Miracle headset is a dollar and four cents. This deck in total, all 60 cards. If you did not have any of them and you bought them right away, $15.40 USD. That's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, is. I mean honestly, if you want to build this deck, find your friends that opened a lot of destined rivals. They'll probably have extra copies of everything in their bulk. Like the hardest thing for you to get is going to be Poke pads and the pre release kits. Like if you've played in pre release kits like perfect order and stuff like that. Maybe Chaos, I don't know. Does Chaos Rising have Pokepad or Pokey Pads? Yeah, it does. Do you remember? Yeah, they do. It does. So if you played in pre releases for the last two sets, right, Team Rockets Petrol was part of pre release kits in perfect order. Team Rockets Factory was part of the pre release kits in perfect order. Like, I don't know, like Josh Zaptos, TCG. Joshua put in. What is it he. He invested $15 USD in? Well, he did it in Euros but like he invested $15 USD in his deck and he has walked away since with Prague Regionals and Utrecht Regionals. He has walked away with $6,000 in cash because he actually got top 32 with this, with this archetype in pre in Prague. Jake, we don't want to get all the Poke Bros and the Sneaker heads clued in on the prizing now with Pokemon, because then they're going to be signing up for the regionals. If you want a cheap deck to play that's fun, this is. This, this is the most affordable deck that you can play. Overall, though, for me, the Utrecht Regionals, just to recap a little bit of what I played for context too, I decided to play Festival Lead. My very first round reaffirmed that decision, actually, because I hit Cynthia's garchomp, and if I had played Alakazam, the four Rocky Energies would have been very bad for me. So I was like, okay, it's basically an auto win because of the weakness. So I was very happy. Round one. And then I. I did all right. After four rounds, I was three and one. And I was like, okay, this is going all right. I. Statistically speaking, I will only hit one more dragapult, right? 25 meta. Eight rounds, two dragon pults. Right. Like, in theory, I'm not a statistics major. I'm sure Stefan Erickson would correct me on that to some degree. But still, I figured two would be not. Not so bad. And then it was all downhill after that. Three, one. Jake. I hit Dragapult. Dragapult. Bronzong to go. Three, four. Bronzong. Yeah. Do you know what bronzong does? No, I don't. It's the biggest troll. It was Bronzong Slow King. So it's technically Bronzong has a 1. I know what Slow King does. Well, Bronzong is the gross part. Bronzong has a one energy attack, one psychic, and it does 30 damage. And it says your opponent can't play cards from their hand to evolve Pokemon during their next turn. And so if they go first and they get a Bronzong out, the game is over. There's literally, I can. I can't evolve the rest of the game, and then that's it. So I. I believe that every single one of my rounds, whoever won the coin flip won the round. And from what I am hearing when I talk to everybody else right now, the format is pretty atrocious in terms of coin flip equals win. So I would love to know the statistic. I don't know if this is ever something that we could actually get, but I would love to know a statistic from like, maybe like a league cup, let's just say, you know, league cup, you. You try to track, you know, you have every player submit if they won the coin flip in their round, like who wins the coin flip and then who wins the round and try to. Try to like create a percentage of, you know, if that is true. I don't know. I think that would be really cool. I think it. The reason it probably feels very much like that right now is you just have certain decks where Megalopan is a good example or Festival Lead, honestly. Festival Lead into Dragapult, I had that three times. I lost the coin flip to start the match three times. Every. Well, not every round, but two of my three rounds. One of them I bricked both games and it was just terrible. But the other two were very competitive. We went to three games, which usually, like, I think Festival Lead is not necessarily a favorite matchup into Dragapult. Even though I was playing Badoo and Redeemable Ticket to make sure I could get my raps. Yeah, I was playing the raps. So I had the text and I had the cards to make sure I didn't ever prize the text. But when I went first in two of those rounds, it was a pretty easy ish win because I get rolling, I take two prizes, usually pretty early. And then I can use the rest of my game to like and I can set up my rabsca and I can use the rest of my game to just find the pieces to one hit the dragapult for two turns. That's it, that's game over. And then when they go first, they find their rare candy, they kill my rellor before I ever am able to evolve it, and it's game over. So the one thing I did learn though, Jake, and this is gonna sound so dumb for everyone listening who knows this, but I don't play on live, so I don't get the prompt, the automated prompt with Festival Lead. It says you attack. You may attack twice, right, Jake? Yes. But you don't have to attack twice. You can choose to attack just once and then not do the second attack. Oh, I wish that makes sense. It makes, right? It makes perfect sense. But like me, like, I'd never. I've been playing the deck on and off since it came out two years ago, but I'd never really thought about it because it never mattered in when I was playing it. I've never gotten in a. You've never gotten in a situation to where you've never had to say no, no, thank you, right? But in my third match of the third Dragapult game, I was. They had. They super bricked. They had started to power up monkey dories instead. And I was like after the fact. I was like, oh, somebody told me this. And I was like, I just didn't have to hit the monkey because I was only doing 100. So I was giving the monkey all of this damage to move back. And I'm like, well, now that I know that, no, no, duh. Like, I shouldn't have attacked. I should have just killed the thing in front of me and then said, I'm good. I'm. I'm not gonna get greedy. So this is to say that, like, my record is, especially one of my games, entirely my fault. That was my fault, that loss. I can't blame a coin flip because I had a chance. But, yeah, so doesn't matter if you do a podcast for six years. Doesn't matter if you play for seven Sometimes. Yeah. Reading the card explains the card, and you fail to read the card and interpret it fully. It's one of the beauties of card games. I feel like you. You learn, like, something new every day. Like when you're playing a card game, whether it's like a scenario and this could be translated to. To any. Any card game. I feel like, whether it's Pokemon, One Piece, Magic, Riftbound, it feels like every day that you're playing, you're testing or whatever, you can learn something new with different, like, situations or scenarios, things of that nature. So I think that's pretty cool. I think that's fun. I'm glad you enjoyed the regional. I did. It was great chatting, hanging out with people. Shout out to everybody, you know, if they're listening that. That I saw there. Shout out to the couple of people who do listen that. That said hi. That was very kind. Did you have metapods on hand? I give out. I did not, no. I just had the tattoo and that was all I had. But it wasn't like. It was just like one or two people who were, like, saying hi. One of my opponents listened to the pod many years ago. Apparently. That was kind of neat, but. Yeah, yeah, but that's. That's it for Utrecht Regionals. Enough reminiscing about that. We have a little bit of news, and then Jake and I have two very interesting little topics that we're going to get into for the week. A little, you know, sort of news, sort of not. But one is fun. One is not. Yeah, Jake, before we get into the topics, quickly on the news front, the Pokemon company has revealed the promos for the illustration, the Forest Partner Illustration Collection series two promos. What Pokemon will we be spending too much money to. To open these packs for Jake? There are going to be three new generations posted in this as they've talked about those generations being Johto with Chikorita, Cyndaquil and Totodao. You, you've got Unova, which is the Black and white series with Snivey, Tepig and Oshawad, and then the Galler series with Grookey, Scorbunny and sobble. Those three are going to be put in the series two of the first partner packs, which are releasing on June 19th for $15. And remember, this box that you get holds a couple packs in it. It looks like it might be like Perfect Order, Chaos Rising packs may change based on the promotional art that is given out. And then you get a pack that has one set of the three starters of their respected regions. So, like, if you open the pack and you see a Chikorita, you know that you have the Johto pack, or if you open up a Sobble, you know you have the Galar pack. Right. So that's going to be releasing and I'm excited to hopefully pick up one of these for not an absurd price. Yeah, the. The prices of these thus far for the first series have just been a little silly. I do like the promos, but I just. I would definitely pick up promos if they were five bucks each. But when you're looking down the barrel of, you know, sometimes $30 or more for, like the first gen promos especially, it just kind of feels like this card just came out. This card is still being printed and going to hit shelves for the next six months. Probably like, not this too much. That's too much. I am trying to pull. Yeah, like, looking at, looking at these. I do like these. And they feel like a very similar art style to what the first partner illustrations were of, like Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle, the Sinnoh starters, the Alola starters. Right. Where it's like, it's the Pokemon with a white border around them. And then there's a lot of things behind them, a lot of little tidbits in terms of Easter eggs, things of that nature, or, you know, different scenes that are set within their region that they're. That they're hanging out around A lot of. A lot of Easter eggs, as I. As I said. And I think they do. They come together. They kind of come together with like a connecting picture. Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, look, this would be a really cool display if you are the kind of person who also collects the games. Like, if you had one of every game for every, you know, generation, it'd Be a super cool display to have like the three cards with the game and the game box or whatever. And like a little. That's super dope. So that's. That, that's a cool idea for. For those of you out there who like collecting both the cards and the video games. I will say it's just. I don't, I don't know if it's just because we've seen like this style already, but it was slightly underwhelming to see like these for me because I was like, oh, well, the first series was just like this. But I. I also like it thematically of like, oh, I'm glad that they're all like uniform in style pretty much. I will say the Unova one is much darker. It has a much darker set of background tones than the other two where they're much brighter and I really like that. I feel like that kind of fits, you know, with the black and white games. Yeah. But, yeah, that will be it for the news. Not a lot of news. I'm sure there will be more news as we get closer to the actual release of the Celebrations product that's coming out in what, August, September, something like that. Maybe October. Yeah. But first, sort of order of business topic wise, Jake, you were out at the store and you came across a very interesting magazine. I'm going to pull it up here on the screen, but give us a rundown of what you saw and what you thought. I was in line for the grocery store, you know, just waiting, you know, to get my groceries checked out. And, you know, you see the magazines, you know, the drama magazines and stuff like that. And I saw this one that said Pokemon celebrating 30 years, the ultimate Fan Guide. And I saw on there in their little like subtopics of the Ultimate Fan Guide, it says the most valuable cards that don't come cost a fortune. And so I was like, oh, I love car. I. I frequently. Just this past weekend, I went to a card show. I sold one card that I did not want that was worth a decent chunk of change. And then I bought a ton of Commons and Uncommons, you know, while I was there. And so I love finding valuable cards that won't break the bank. Right. So I was curious, I opened it up in there and I thought that this was the most bs. Absolute travesty of a guide of the most valuable cards that won't break the bank because the entire thing is just basically the most expensive common cards. And I think it's six of the eight. Six of the eight that they Showcase are just first edition base set almonds of the starters, Pikachu and Caterpie, which, wow, this doesn't feel like a real list, in my opinion. So out of spite, I work together with Sean and we made our own list. We made our own list of valuable cards that won't break the bank because they're that awesome. And you can love them too, right? Yeah. And so we try. We say valuable. We say valuable because they are. They are valuable both for their maybe their value, but also their aesthetics. Right. This is a value from an aesthetics perspective too. If you're gonna. If you're gonna spend space and time finding these cards and maybe putting them somewhere in a binder or on display. I don't know, just the fact that a card has a stamp on it, I. I don't to me, like, yeah, cool if we have a first edition Metapod card. But you know, we're weird. But yeah, Jake, you. You started the list. All of these cards are under $10. I think all but one of them are under $5, even USD that you can get at, like local shows, card shops, TCG players, stuff like that. So I got a lot of cards because this is what I look for when I go out to, like, card shows and stuff like that. The first one that I'm going to talk about is Octillery. So Octillery from Neo Revelations. If you wanted to buy the unlimited version of this card, it is a whopping $2.50 for this uncommon. But I love this card. It's one of my favorite Tomokazu Komia cards, especially in one of the early days, was made in 2000. Right. So this card being 26 years old pretty much at this point, it's a beautiful illustration of Octillery shooting out water. Looks like he's gonna fall off of the rock here in a second because of the power that he's shooting out the water there. It's one of Komiya's earliest cards that they illustrated. I absolutely love it. It's a good one. And this is the. This is the first card on my list. I love this card. I have it in my collection personally. And I think what you'll see with all these cards is like a lot of the time the art and the artist is also something that if you really like one of these, the art style, if it vibes with you, check out the artist. Komiya has a ton of cards over the years. Some are worth more, a little bit, but broadly speaking, none of them are going to be wildly expensive for the Most part. So I cannot tell you the amount because my girlfriend collects Tomokazu Komiya cards. That's her favorite illustrator in the Pokemon trading card game. And so when I go to card shows and stuff, I always look for Comia cards that she doesn't have or that I don't recognize or something like that. And I can't tell you the amount of Komiya Commons and Uncommons, even Reverse Hollows, stuff like that, that I have bought for like a dollar, like so cheap, you know, especially as Komiya, one of the most frequent illustrators to get pumped by like scalpers and things like that. So it's, it's tough. Another one of those. I'm gonna talk about a trainer card, right? And I'm gonna talk about Switch from Heart Gold Soul Silver. This is, I think of the communities debate, the best switch card of most people's favorite switch cards. I personally run Base Set Switch, which by the way is a whopping 34 cents on TCG player if you do that. But the Heart Gold Soul Silver switch only for a normal. It's an uncommon. So another uncommon, a $71 in USD if you want to get it right now, market price heavily played is under a dollar, right? And typically heavily plates are, you know, easy to use. But this switch utilizing the Heart Gold Soul Silver border. So even though I hate yellow borders, I love the Heart Gold Soul Silver bor for a lot of these cards because it's like a, it's like a worn out kind of yellow. It's not just a yellow border. It has wear, tear, a grid. It feels, you know, what's the word that I'm looking for? Like ancient. Not necessarily. It feels vintage. You know, it is vintage. It feels vintage. And, and this art style in general of like the Heart Gold Soul Silver era is just so good. And you've got Chikorita coming out of the Pokeball, Mel going back into a Pokeball. It's just one of the more iconic switch cards, you know, that you can get in your collection. And especially with a card like Switch. Switch is one of those cards that is typically always in the standard format. And because the text and the name of switch never changes, you can run a switch from 20 years ago. You know, this switch was printed 16 years ago. You can run this switch right now currently in the standard format. Hence one of the reasons why I run Base Set Switch in my decks whenever the time comes to use it. So it's one of those forever cards that you can use. You can pick your favorite art of Switch and then have it in your collection and always use it within your standard decks. And I mean it's just, it's so good. It's such a good. Ah, gosh, I love, I love talking about old cards. I think there's an E Reader version of Switch that you can get in a reverse holo if E Reader that people love as well. Just because those E Reader verse hollows are also like a really cool. I don't know, they just. It's a cool vibe, you know. I believe that's the switch with Porygon 2 on it. Yes, I believe my memory is correct. So that's, that's also something to keep in mind too if you're looking for like quote unquote valuable commons uncommons that are maybe older, that have cool art. Yeah, everybody always wants to get the gold or wants to get the new illustration rares of the cards. But things like rare candy and Switch and you know, Pokey. What's not Pokemon? Is it Pokemon Catcher that has been in and out of standard legality for many, many years. Yes. Yeah, so. And they've even eroded it. Right. Like there's just a lot of older cards that they just either reprint or that are always legal. That. Yeah, like that's a good thing to spend some money on because you'll always have a deck that needs probably one or two of those cards at some point. And so Sean, I am linking this to you now because I accidentally linked the wrong card. Poly World is going to be my next card that I've got on my list from Neo Discovery. This is one of my favorite Poly World cards in the Pokemon trading card game throughout its 30 year history. Printed in I believe 2001. The artist of Kagemaru, Himeno. Right. Someone who has made a couple cards in the game Unlimited, you can buy this Uncommon card for a dollar and sixty seven cents USD. And I love this illustration. He's sitting in the. The river, right, Just away from the bridge and he's waving, he's waving hello. He's like, thank you, hello. I would love to be added into your binder. It's one of my favorite polywhirls that I've got in my collection. He's just. Poly World's just a silly little guy, right. And this card makes him feel even sillier, you know, one of my, one of my favorites from Gen1. So I love this guy. You don't have to buy it first edition. You don't have to buy it first edition. But Nearman First Edition is still under $5. It's 4.44 USD if you wanted that extra stamp on it. But if you don't, you can save a couple bucks and still get it for under $2. Next card I think that you sent Jake. This is an E Reader era card. It is the Ekans. I wish the picture that they had here on TCG Player was a little more high res, but it's a pretty cool art. This is all the way from Expedition, right? So I don't remember the year that Expedition came out, but it's coming up on 20 years old because God, time flies when you're, when you're getting old. But this accents from Expedition is illustrated by Kyoko Umemoto. Apologies. And it's honestly one of. It's my favorite Ekans illustration. I'm not like the biggest Ekans fan, you know, from like Gen1 or anything like that. I just, when I first saw this card I was like, wait, is this a real card? Like it is just. It's so different than so many other illustrations that we see in the Pokemon trading card game. And I think a lot of it just has to do with like the line style. A lot of it has to do with the mixture of colors and the contrast between Ekans is yellow and purple on that card. You get a little flare of red in the mouth. You also have like this kind of trippy like background design that you've got on this. Ekans audio listeners, pull up the card with me. I'm trying to tell you like the set and everything of this card. E Reader, it's just such a odd card in my opinion. It is so fun. And you can get this a normal one, this normal common card from Expedition. The E reader ekans for $3 and 6 cents, right? As a normal, as the reverse foil, it's a little bit more expensive but reverse foils in the E Reader form generally more expensive. But three bucks you can get this Ekans in your collection. And it's one of the wackier cards that you can get it. It like I just saw this and I couldn't believe that it was real. The next couple cards you have here, Jake. I really love the idea behind some of these cards. Not just for the art but like for the whole like concept of Delta Species. I think I pointed out at the event this weekend to a friend of mine, I was like, you know, check out that Dragonite from Delta Species. It's grass type. That's crazy. But Jake, you have pulled up here, you've sent over this dugong from Delta Species. Tell us what. What. What about this dugong really gets you. I love Delta Species. It's one of my favorite eras of Pokemon. And Delta Species is heralded as a favorite to a lot of people. This dugong, It's a little 80 HP normal Pokemon, right? Not a water Pokemon or ice Pokemon, depending on how you do it. But it's just so beautiful, right? Illustrated by. Gosh. I always try to like Atsuko Nishida. There we go. It's not listed on TCG Player, so I had to zoom in, enhance on the card for me. But this dugong illustrated beautifully just very much under the water. Just under the surface of the water, looking down, and you see the light. The play on this illustration with the light not only shining the outline kind of of dugong, you know, like the. Like the meme where you're like, oh, like this. This thing in the light. You know, the light shining down on him. But the shadows on the dugong on those places fit so well with this card because you know that place is not being shined by light. And so you have this, like, contrast of the light in the background and the top of the water, but also on the. The contrast of the dugong being darker, kind of giving him, like, a more definitive outline. To be able to see the dugong a lot better is just, oh, it's so fun. And this is a rare card that you can get as well for only as a normal copy. 2.83. So this is a nice little stage one, rare that you can add to your collection as a normal type Delta Species dugong. Gosh, I love. God, I love Delta Species. And I wish they would. I mean, they kind of did it again, but they didn't do it again. Oh, you mean with some of the, like, Terra Pokemon, like, the Terrors are being Pokemon tried. Yeah, they tried to do it with the Terror Pokemon. It was cool. But it was only a couple of them actually were different type. Like Greninja being fighting type. It's just like, okay, but go all the way. Like, do a bunch more. Like, yeah, anyways. And then staying in the Delta Species realm. Jake, you have this shelter here. I'm just looking at it. This shelter is also weird. It's a fighting type shelter. And this shelter is just. It looks like it's just sitting on a rock, and you just see the shell. The clamshell is completely open and just two big eyes front and center in the artwork and a tongue sticking straight out, looking straight into your soul. In this card, it. It's like if you were washed up on a beach because your boat crashed, right. And you got washed up on a shore and you wake up, you become conscious again and this is the first thing you see. Just a shelter, like sitting on you, like staring at you. It's. I, it just cracks me up every time I look at this card. He said Nakamura, the illustrator for this car, just did a wonderful job of just shelter. Just being a weird little guy. Right? Just. And it's kind of interesting too, because there's like, I, I can't tell if it's like flames, if it's like electricity, if it's like aura. Like his aura is just maxed on this card. You know, he's glowing like orange too. It's just a weird card and it's just so funky. And I absolutely love it. Most of the card in the text area as well. This cracks me up too. Most of the card in the tax area is just dead space because Shelter doesn't have a poke body. Because it was, it was poke. It wasn't abilities during this era. It was poke bodies, you know, did not have a poke body. Only has one attack. That is pretty generic. You know, just flip a coin. Defending Pokemon's paralyzed if heads, you know, one energy and it's. There's just a lot of weird things about this card. The illustration and then just the dead space on this card. It's almost like a vanilla card. I, I, part of me really wants to like, clip out the art of the shelter staring at you and just use it in our discord as like one of the. Yeah. Emojis or something. Because it is very funny. It is crazy. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's do this right after the recording. And it's a 88 cent card. If you buy it this regular common. So 88 cents. You can have the coolest card in your binder with this guy and. And once again, shout out to Delta Species. My debatably, my favorite era of Pokemon. Jake, there's one more old card that I say old. It's not as old as some of the others we've pulled up, but it is, I think, XY era. Jake, what, what car did you throw in here? I wanted to throw in a break card because I think break is actually like a really cool era of Pokemon that people don't think about or talk about. Like, I, I attend card shows very frequently now in Vegas because most of them are free to attend. And you know, I love window shopping, you know, like, and I don't think I've ever seen like a break card at any of these card shows. So I brought up Machamp Break. Machamp Break. You know, for you Gen 1 lovers out there, a lot of you people, a lot of people love Machamp, right? And this card being 3.30 USD, if you went out and bought it right now, very cheap. But Break cards were so cool because it was almost like pseudo evolving Pokemon. It was almost like the V and V Max mechanic, right. Except you turned the card sideways and you put it on top of the Pokemon and it was like an extra ability or an extra attack that you got on the, on the Pokemon. So I just thought these were really cool. And also, I just don't understand the lore, right? Because a lot of Pokemon like comes from the video games. I don't understand the lore of break cards entirely. Maybe I'm just not in it when this came out back in the X and Y area. But like he's plated gold. He is just a Goldman Champ and there's electricity around him happening even though he's a fighting type Pokemon. And this is like all the, all the break cards that you'll ever see are like, they're just gold Pokemon. Gold plated Pokemon with electricity everywhere. Like, I don't get it. It's. But it's. It's pretty cool. I think the mechanic is a little weird because it's like Holland Pokemon. Do you know the Holon Pokemon? Yeah, they did a long time ago. That is unique to the card game. It's an entire made up story of the Pokemon universe that does not exist anywhere outside the card game. And Break is not quite that extensive. But like, I think it was just a mechanic and gold Pokemon that had nothing to do with anything else. It was just a pure Pokemon thing. Like, which is. It is definitely weird. It's. It doesn't feel necessarily even like Pokemon. It's strange, but it's. It's cool. It's an era of Pokemon that nobody talks about. Like Pokemon doesn't reference it. Like collectors don't really talk about break cards. Like nobody. Nobody talks about break cards. And so I think if you want like some abstract, like really cool stuff, you know, just this era of Pokemon that was a very short. I think there's only like 25 or so 30 break cards in general. It was a very short window of Pokemon. Yeah, that is, it's a. It's a cool piece to add to your collection. And that is my personal top five, which if you did the math It's a little bit more than five, but how could you restrict it to only five? I. I had just a few cards, but all of my cards were not quite as cheap. So I went with the recommendation that if you want some newer cards that have gorgeous art, because there is so much amazing art that Pokemon has been printing over the last five years, go with the Japanese friend of mine here collects entirely Japanese as much as they can. And it's always a good idea if you really are just in it for the cool art. And to be honest, Japanese printing, I think is much higher quality than Western and English print. So the texture on the foiling is usually a little more interesting. It's nicer, the card quality is more consistent. But I pulled up this Kirin here from SV8A. It's just a gorgeous Kirin. I love the color scheme here. Again, this is another card with a light is really cool. It looks like a shot from an anime, the character sort of turning back to you while them and their friends are walking away. But this card you can pick up in theory for just about five bucks in Japanese, which for a. An s. A special art rare in Japanese. Pretty. Pretty hard to pull this card when you only get one per box. Just five bucks. Pretty good deal. Pretty good deal. Yeah. I mean, Iori Suzuki, fabulous illustrator, did a phenomenal job on this card. You know, there's multiple Sirs or Sirs of Kieran, as this being a reprint from Terrestrial Fest Ex, but I mean, I just love this. I mean, I collect full art supporters and this is one of the cards that, yeah, I would buy this in Japanese if I did not own it, just to be able to have it. Right? Because it's just. It's a. It's a beautiful card to look at in the English version from Prismatic evolutions is like 20 plus dollars. So heck yeah, I'll save 15 bucks. And I think that's one of the important things to note if you really love collecting, either for the art or you can also play Japanese versions in Gym Leader Challenge. Totally fine to mix your languages. Doesn't matter. This is a great option if you want to bling out your Gym Leader Challenge decks. Get the Japanese version. But because Prismatic Evolution was scalped and hyped like crazy, it's the same problem with Ascended Heroes. The more rare cards from that. Even though in a normal set they wouldn't probably worth that much because the set itself is so expensive, it just pumps the price of everything else sort of artificially. Next one here is an Artist that I really, really like. Ishikawa. I think they've done a few other cards, but this art feels so unlike what most Pokemon cards look like. It is Lt. Surge's deal in the West. We may know it as Lieutenant Surge's strategy, I believe. But the Japanese version of this card also coming in at just about five bucks. I just really like this, like, you know, soft. I say soft, but like this curved but hard outline style art. It's just neat. It feels unlike a lot of what a Pokemon card is. And there's just so much lore, I think, baked into Lt. Surge and his whole Persona and everything. And it's just all brought to life here, like the weights behind him. One of them just being a Volk. Voltorb. It's crazy. And also with Hideki Ishikawa's illustration that you're talking about, you know, you talk about the lines, you know, everything is in this like, sort of soft style, this sort of like fun cartoony style, but comic book style, I would say like a comic strip, you know, that you read in a newspaper. But Lt. Surge is the only one that's in this like darker outline, right? So he really pops on the card, even though the colors are not that different, you know, between him and like the background and things like that, he just really pops because of that extra line work that was done on that card. And again, it's another S A R for just a super cheap price that you can save like 15 or so dollars if you don't buy the English variant. So again, just like another card on the list. And a lot of people hated this card when it came out and it got a lot of unnecessary hate. And it is very different than most other Pokemon cards. But I. I love this card. Last one will. Will break the bank a little bit more. It's almost $10, but if you want the English version, it'll be a lot more than that. It is the art rare of Tatsugiri, the one that's currently in the format that you can use to look at the top six and reveal a supporter. I have this art. I pulled it in English. It is gorgeous in person. I think this picture does not do it justice. It is much more vibrant in person, but just great art. Absolutely fabulous. I. In terms of like, new Pokemon they've introduced over the last like three or four years, Tatsugiri is one of them that I. I just. I vibe with. It's just different forms for different kinds of sushi. And like, yeah, that's cool. That's that's cool. I like that. And so this one being about 10 bucks, pretty good pickup. It's gonna look great in any binder that you put it in. Especially if you put it in the right center of a nine. I have a nine page or nine holder one. Yeah. Pretty neat. Pretty neat. I mean it's a beautiful illustration by Osare, right? Fabulous illustrator. In the Pokemon card game, you know, you see like all the different variants of Tatsugiri not only in its colors but also like personalities of Tatsugiru. Right. The main focal point one is like kind of got that like, huh, like eyebrow raised kind of deal going on right now. But you have one like so sleeping at the bottom side, you have one that's like standing, you know, you have one. You have some like looking around, you know, at different places. It's, it's just got a lot of flavor in here. And the Tatsugiri just pop on the page because of that blue and darkish background, you know, in contrast with all the bright colors of the yellow, pink and orange Tatsu gear. And, and I agree. I like, I love Tatsugiri. I love how he's like a little sushi guy and his pairing with Dodonzo, you know, when he hits that like evolution. Is it an evolution? I don't. It's complicated, but it's just a. It's just such a fun Pokemon. And I remember when this card came out because I think it was Twilight Masquerade. I think is when this card came out in English because Transformation masks. That's the ogre pond set. Japanese. Yeah. I mean we were so excited about this card. We love. I'm pretty sure we talked about this card on the podcast of how much we love it. So yeah, that is gonna do it for our cards. Hopefully y' all have your own cards. That's. This is just a smattering of suggestions that are better than whatever that terrible magazine was saying, which is basically, hey, if you want to spend a hundred bucks, you can get the starter and the starter has a stamp on it. Isn't that stamp cool? When in actuality you can get a non stamped version of that starter for $3 maybe. And it's just, it's one of those things. Again, there's no wrong way to collect, you know, the. What you value, your collection is. What is, is fine is whatever it is, you know, there's no wrong way to do it. But trying to explain how like there's so many cool cards out there in Pokemon's 30 year history that you know you can just, if you just go looking, you dig in some bulk, you dig in, you know, card shows, you know, looking at the different cheap binders you can find so many cool cards. We have one more bit of news to discuss. It's not so new, it's like I think a week old now maybe, but there was an update to PSA once again their pricing and their turnaround times and I don't necessarily think it's a surprise so many people are submitting cards because it's all stonks now. But I'm gonna pull it up here. Jake, the service level update that you sort of sent me specifically the main points were that the cost for submitting value bulk per card was going up to I think what was like 15 or $20 a card or maybe more. Well it's, it's also the minimum, the minimum, I don't know if the dollar value changed necessarily but the minimum of cards that you can send to Vs or 2 PSA in the value bulk section is 50 cards, minimum. It used to be 20 but now it's 50, which I think most people just do. Value bulk, I feel like a lot of times more often than not. Yeah, so and the turnaround time has also increased to 140 to 160 days for value bulk which like if you do the math on that, that's about that you're creeping up to about six months, five to six months turnaround time for your value bulk submission. And here's the thing too, it is not just like it's going to be, you know, 140 to 160 days in the value bulk. This is an estimated time. So I mean there's a pretty solid chance that you're going to be over on that time. But they broke it down I think a lot of times chain or completed business days as business days, that's another thing too. This is 140 to 160 business days. So weekends don't count and maybe some Fridays don't count, I don't know. But value, if you submit through that it's 100 to 120 value plus 60 to 80 days value max. 40 to 50 days regular is 30 to 40 days, express is 20 to 30 days, super express is 7 to 10 days and a walk through or higher is 5 to 7 days which when you talk about business days, if you do a walkthrough or higher it is at least a week now. Yeah, now I think those top end services you're really only going to use that for, I think Two reasons. One, you have pulled some crazy like the Gold Charizard in, in Pokemon terms or the Red Manga Luffy. Right. Like that's I think the tier that you're probably looking at because only those people are going to be willing to spend 400 minimum service fee plus whatever the percentage of the value of the card is. Because PSA also charges that. Remember they will upcharge. Oh I know. Yeah. They will upcharge you based on the value of the card which you know their value of the card. Yeah, we, we can get into in, in a minute. But like I think those tiers and the Super Express you'll also do if you like crack open a set very, very early and you do get one of the Chase cards and you want to be one of the first people to sell a PSA 10 on eBay of that card, maybe then you'll be sending it Super Express. But the vast majority of people, collectors etc are are going to be sending in cards in that value bulk value in that range. Right. I'm talking you're like 30, 40, 50 cards. Your illustration rares, your low end Sirs even. I'm thinking about some of the stuff from Perfect Order that maybe is only like 70, $80 for the sir. Like the less popular ones. Yeah. Especially because value bulk is a minimum value of $150 of what the card is after it's graded. Yeah. Or is it minimum or maximum or I'm sorry, maximum. Yes, maximum. My bad, my bad. But like it's, it's for like the low end stuff. The stuff that people are you know, selling at card shows in volume or putting into the stupid mystery packs where it's like hey, there's one Umbreon Vmax that you could get and then there's a hundred unlimited base set metapods. What are you gonna get? Who knows. New mystery pack coming on the Metapod. You either you either get a Regular base set PSA4 Metap pod from Basead or you get a signed one from us. There's one of them 100 we, we'll look into that one. But like I think that the, the biggest problem that this new update creates. It's always been a long turnaround time. They've, we've talked about this before. It keeps getting longer and longer and the upcharge on cards who gain in value over that six months. Right. Like sometimes you'll submit a card that and by the time they get to grading it, you know, I think a lot of one piece people experience this where they submitted A card maybe in October of last year or September and it took six months and by the time it came back, the one piece, you know, market had exploded and now all of a sudden the card that they sent value because it was only $100sp, is now $1,000. And they're like stuck with this new bill. And if you're a person who was just submitting it because you wanted to keep the card, you're like, well, I don't want to pay another hundred dollars for a card that I sent in when it was a hundred dollars just for me to keep it on my shelf. That's crazy. Yeah, I, I think this is, and this, I think also I've seen people talk about how this is going to dissuade them from continuing their subscriptions to PSA. That 50 card minimum. If you are not basically running PSA submission as a business, you're not going to have 50 cards to send in every so often like that. That's crazy. I don't know. Especially because PSA has not done in I believe a year now a one piece card collaboration with an issue. So yeah, I have canceled my PSA subscription at least. But I mean, when you submit cards, Jake, you don't submit individually anymore. No, I submit through a friend. Yeah, a friend of mine, he submits cards pretty much religiously. Like he is always sending in cards and he frequently like sends in cards for people as well. So it's not necessarily a business. He just kind of does it for us and we reimburse him for like the upcharges and things like that of what it actually costs to be able to do it. He doesn't necessarily have a business model, but like, you know, that is now infinitely harder because that minimum now is going up, right, from 20 to 50. That's over double right of what it used to be to be able to have that minimum to submit. So it's just, it's so hard to do now at this point. But I think one of the reasons that they're trying to do this is they're trying to dissuade people from just sending in crap, you know, because people, you, you see it at card shows, you see it at the mystery packs, you see it on whatchamacallit, you see it on ebay, on what, where there's just, yeah, you see these graded cards of like, why do you have a PSA 7 common card like from, I don't know, like Twilight Masquerade or even a PSA like, like, yeah. And it's it's one of those things of like, I think they're trying to combat those kinds of things, you know, where it's a little bit more intentional on the grading of like trying to decrease the volume because they're maximizing the thing. But I don't think it actually matters because I feel like the people that do that always submit in huge bulks anyways. So it's just you're weeding out those people, you're weeding out those people that want to do like more towards that minimum and you're forcing them to go up into like the value or the value plus because like sure, you may, you may have stuff for 20 cards but you don't have 50 cards. I think what it's, what it is ending up doing is it's turning the actual grading process away from something that 10, 15 years ago. Grading cards was, I would assume, primarily something that individuals did, collectors did. If you were a collector and if you were kind of in the know a little bit, you could send 1, 5, maybe 10 cards off to get graded that were like cards that you really liked and that you would get back and you would keep for your collection because, you know, whatever. I think this is pretty anti consumer is the best way I can think about it. But it's definitely anti collector where the only way that this makes any financial sense is if you are just running a business where this is a big part of your business. Like, like you we were talking about 50 cards, packaging them carefully, getting them in the proper order, sending all of those at a time and being okay. Sending that amount of value out to a company and waiting six months to get it back. That only works if you're knowing how the market is going to change with those cards. Being willing to take that risk of six months or more of like the card could go up, the card could crash. Like you don't, you don't know what the market's going to be like in six months. I think in a lot of ways that does really incentivize larger scale operations, submitting cards. And now collectors are just largely going to be left holding the bag on. If they want a graded card, they have to go through that third party or they have to go through the people selling graded cards on the back end. And I just, you know, I don't know. We've talked a lot about how PSA now is also partnering a lot with ebay to sell your graded cards directly and increasing the turnaround time like this. I, I wouldn't be Surprised if they start offering a, an expedited tier if you're willing to put everything. Well, yeah, I guess they do. Is that like part of like you could submit either through value bulk or you could submit the same color. Like the, like the Super Express is like. I mean it's a seven to ten day turnaround time, but you got to pay a gazillion dollars. Oh no, but I was saying if you allow PSA to then sell your cards directly after they get graded. Oh, well, there's, I mean there's a amount of time between. Yeah, they do do that. There's a fair amount of time between when it's graded to when it gets sent back to you. Yeah, but, yeah, but the PSA I think has been offering. Or it's just, I don't know, I could be wrong. Debated offering expedited service if you allow PSA to sell your card themselves. Oh, I actually don't know about that because we, we talked about that and that was like this feels like another move in that direction of like by making it a 50 card minimum, you're ruling out individual collectors sending in small batches. By increasing the turnaround time you are, you know, you can offer an alternative where the businesses that are sending their cards in can get their return on investment more quickly if PSA is allowed to take a cut both on the grading and on the sale. It just seems like they're just sort of building it up to where like the only people who are going to get their card back physically in their hand are people who are willing to get shaken down by PSA for, you know, those express windows. I don't know. This is all part of as well, a $200 million infrastructure investment to support global demand. One thing that I do appreciate though on this quote, as they updated the turnaround times to a much larger degree says quote now when you place an order, you will have an estimated timeline that aligns closer with reality, not optimism. I think that's a really good summary of how it feels the last six months with psa. It is reality, not optimism. Yeah, these updates aren't actually updates, they're just reality being told to us. Their updates, they're definitely updates, but they're not updates you're gonna like. Sure. Yeah. Well anyways, this is another, another PSA topic rant basically. But it's just so hard. Like I, I don't and I. Here's the thing too is like you can get a, into a whole other conversation about like Beckett and Tag, you know, like Like, I saw a vendor. This is the first time I've seen this. I saw a vendor the other day because I was at a card show of basically just all graded slabs, but they were all tag. And I will say TAG has a clean. It's a nice looking thing. It's a nice looking slab that breaks when you drop it on carpet from three feet, you know, So I don't know. I'm not. I'm not 100 sold on. Like, I. I still think PSA is the standard, and I still think PSA is going to own most of the grading market. And I think the numbers from this past fiscal year tell that. I feel like I saw it somewhere. I don't have it off the top of my head. Yeah, they own Beckett now, even though Beckett is. It's still its own company, but it's not because Collectors owns it. Yeah, they. Well, yeah, we'll see about. Technically, they're their own company. They operate independently, but the money goes to the same. To the same place. But yeah, it really is. Now you have Collectors, which owns probably what, 80% of the grading market? And then the rest is CGC, TAG and a handful of random local vendors. Like, local. I mean, I don't know, like regional. Like, there might be somebody in Europe. I don't know a lot of people that grade CGC anymore. CCG or cgc. See, what. That's a problem. We don't even know. It's all just acronyms, Jake. It's acronyms. Yeah. Like, I think TAG is. TAG is definitely taking over in the TCG space. I think CCG is still kind of like the number one with either like comic books and video games and. And other things of that nature. But, yeah, even though I don't think TAG can take over PSA or even Beckett, they're definitely making a push. I just wish their quality on the slabs felt less like. Yeah. Fragile. Yeah. It is weird because you're like, this is meant to be a way to preserve my cards and keep them safe. And now if we have to stick our slabs inside of slabs, you know, what are we doing? What are we. What are we even doing here? Just. Although, have you seen the. The market on the. Like the border guards, the graded. That you can put on graded cards Guards. They're crazy. That $300 for some. Yeah, yeah, that's. That's wild. Well, well, anyways, that's. That. That's our little rant on psa. I. I do, Jake, want to, in the future get into a discussion on the eBay trying to. Oh no, GameStop trying to buy ebay. I do want to have a discussion about that at some point in the future because I thought that was a little wild, but it wasn't urgent. Definitely not. No. And didn't ebay just say like, no? Yeah, of course, because like, no. But I, I think it's interesting to explore why GameStop is doing that and, and some of the thoughts maybe that I have. But I think that'll do it for this week. Jake, I did at PSA buy two more cards to get closer to my 2010 Gyarados Retro deck. I bought a Gyarados and a Magikarp. Let's go. Which are very much needed within the deck. It was interesting though because I'm talking about like, again, talking about like cards that you can get for deals. Like they are not near min. They're more like moderately played to lightly played. The Gyarados typically goes for like 24 bucks. Near mint. Got it for five dollars. The Magikarp goes for like 14. Got it for three. Storm front man. Cool. Cool arts for the cards too. The cards that I could have put on my list, but they're a little bit expensive. If you want near mint, we could talk about, you know, the. We could talk about conditions. A different day. All right, wrap us up, Jake. That's gonna be it for the Metapot podcast. Hopefully you enjoyed this podcast that revolves around the evolving meta. Whether that's the trading card game, actual game, or the collecting side of there. Let us know as well. Your favorite cards that you have that are not going to break the bank, whether they're commons or uncommons in the discord or in the comments or anything like that. Cuz I'm always curious. I'm always trying to find really cool cards to add to my binder and stuff. Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you next week. Nappy nappy, nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy nappy.