#284 30th Anniversary Reveals & Banning Slabs

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As always, the Indianapolis Regionals have come and gone. We're about ready to head into the Chaos Rising format. So Sean, how are you doing today? I'm good, I am very good. I didn't really watch a lot of the regional. I think in our discord people were like, oh, I've seen this regional. And I, I, I was just blunt. I was like, I'm kind of over this format, if I'm honest with you. It's just been so much dragapult. I played in the regional a few weeks back and, but, and we'll get into it in a second. Very surprising finals match. Yeah, that was, I was not expecting that. I did watch the finals match as anticlimactic in some ways as I think the actual match played out, but it was still very interesting. But other than that, I have just, I've been a deep diving onto the little project that you and I are working on, which we'll talk about at the end and be just prepping a lot for the Riftbound regionals. I'm going to in about, yeah, Sean is ready to play Riftbound for 14 hours in nine Swiss rounds. Yeah, I'm ready to sit there and shuffle my hand for four straight minutes without taking any game actions and then not have a judge tell me that that's slow play because apparently that's not how Riftbound works. Or you could just sit there for three minutes and do nothing. I, I, okay, so I won't spend too much time on this. We'll, we'll move on. But the biggest thing the barrier, the biggest barrier for me in getting into Riftbound, especially at a competitive circuit, is that I cannot spend like 15 hours for a nine round regional. Like day one. That's just not how my life is going to work, unfortunately. Yeah, that's. It's a lot. I mean, the nice thing about one piece regionals is that they're best of one until you get to top cut. So at least like, if you're gonna go x3 drop, if you have a bad day, it's only like, you know, two and a half hours of your time. But yeah, with Ripbound, everything is best of three at a regional level. And the games do take quite a long time. And they are. They're also unlike Pokemon, where during your turn in Pokemon you can get very focused on your actions and you don't have to worry about your opponent. Right. There is no response in Pokemon. You just, you have your turn and then your opponent has theirs. Fine. But in Rip down, every single action you take, it feels like you have to like, think about and wait, is my opponent going to do something in. It's just, it's like playing magic. It's very close to magic. And yeah, it's exhausting. So, yeah, it's much more complicated. And there's a lot of jokes in the community. There's a lot of. And this actually, this part actually isn't even a joke. So I don't even know why I called it a joke. There's different rulings for actions that are happening at the judge level for this game. Like, not even the people who know the rules are consistent. Like, it's one thing to like get a call wrong or whatever, but it's just, it's. It's okay for the calls to like, change and to like for. With like specific rulings. It's just like, it's not consistent. Like, it's, it's almost as if they're like just going on the fly. And so for those two reasons, I cannot play in the tournament, because if I don't know the rules, I can't play at a high level and I can't be bothered to be that long. I will, I will give them. Having done a little research for our special project, I will say that Riftbound is certainly not the first game to not know how their own rules work within the first year or two of its development. That's. That's what I'll say. We'll get into that deep lore at some point soon how it relates to Pokemon. But Jake, shall we jump into Indianapolis briefly. Yes, I was able to watch a bit of Indianapolis. A lot of it was to the side as I was doing other things because the one piece Japan Championship started up again this past weekend. But we did see Saris Jones take down the Indianapolis Regionals with a Metapod Old Faithful. That's right. It was Alakazam. So big surprises there in this new variant, this new style that I believe Saris was calling the control Alakazam build. It is a very interesting build. You know, you got your core pieces of all the Pokemon you know, that you typically see in Genesect, Psyduck, Fez, Dunsparce, and the Alakazam in general. You know, your typical trainers that you have of, you know, finding Pokemon Pokepads, Telepathic Buddy Poffins. The trainers pretty much the same. The only exception. Well, no, even we we've been playing Lana's Aid. Yeah. So that like that's normal enriching energy. Lucky Hellman. But there's a couple cards in here I would say probably what the quick math 8 cards that are a little bit different than a lot of other people's lists that I have seen. One of them is Handheld Fan. I had a tough time actually deciding of which one I wanted to name because there's like four different car. Handheld Fan. So Handheld Fan, if you do not know a tool card attached to the Pokemon, if your opponent hits it right, if the Pokemon's in the active, they move one of their energies onto a different Pokemon. And you as the Alakazam player with the Handheld Fan, you can choose what energy that is and where it goes. So you can have this kind of control style. Usually we've seen it in like Sander Wick decks, you know, or All Out Blitzel decks, you know, of these pidgeot controls or whatever making its way in here. And it's really nice against a deck like Dragapult potentially, or maybe even Crustle and stuff like that. Just people that have these like energy counters to you or low counts of energy. You can put them in places where they don't matter. Right. To where you can get off your attacks. Yeah. And the other, I think, well, there's. There's a couple of Pokemon we'll talk about last, but I believe the stadium and Jake, if you can remind me what this one does, it's called Nighttime Mine. I think it either increases the retreat cost by one colorless or increases the attack cost of it is increasing the terror Pokemon's attack cost in play, but it costs a colorless more. So point of the matter is, again, like in those Dragapole matchups now they need three energies to attack, right. If that stadium sticks onto the field. So those are the trainer cards that were used in the deck. But there was two Pokemon that were used by Saris Jones, one being a Dedenne De Dene. If you do not know, this is the Dedenne from surging Sparks Little 70 HP Mouse Pokemon. So Buddy Buddy Poffinable has a colorless attack that says a trainer card from your discard pile into your hand. So a nice way to be able to recur some trainer cards, to recur some resources that you may need, whatever that is. Right. If it's needing another Pokepad, if it's needing a rare candy, if it's needing Enhanced Hammer. Well, I was going to say, in theory you can put a trainer card, but in practice, I think there are, I would argue probably two trainers that you're most likely putting in your hand, and that is either Enhanced Hammer or Boss's Order. Yeah, those are two very, very good trainer cards to be able to get. Right. The flexibility of Dene is just that good in a lot of those situations. And then Elgium is the other Pokemon. Elgium. We've talked about LGM before on a different deck, I believe it was like the Pidgeot control decks that this was running around, if you do not remember, has the one psychic energy attack called Slight Shift. Gotta say that slowly. So, because that's hard to say, that's a tongue twister, moving energy from one of your opponent's Pokemon to another of their Pokemon. Similar to the Handheld Fan. Just a way to control your opponent's board to try to lock them out of specific attacks and things like that. I mean, this is like. It's super sneaky because between Dene, Handheld Fan and Elgium, your opponent, I imagine in a lot of matches, the first game at least, if this comes out, your opponent doesn't necessarily know to play around this. So they might bench a Psyduck or, you know, they probably won't in this matchup, but they'll probably bench something that's not particularly useful. Right. And all of a sudden now all this energy is going to get piled onto that Pokemon that does no good for them instead of onto their main attackers. And a lot of decks right now don't. Don't have a ton of energy. I think the main exceptions to that would be maybe your Raging Bolts of the World. You know, that's probably the. The biggest exception. But. But yeah, we saw in the finals, the Dedenne plus the Enhanced Hammers was enough to pull Saris through. Of course, I'm just going to enhance Hammer away some key energy, put the Den in the active to get the Enhanced Hammers back after I've used them, and then do it, you know, enough times to win, basically. And it's not that you don't do. You don't ever attack. You just frustrate the opponent enough, kind of lock them out. And that way when you do go into attack with Alakazam, they can't respond ever. Right. And so we did sort of see that because that, that was one of the challenges with Alakazam is like if your opponent is playing four copies of Mist or Rocky Energy or whatever, you sometimes just lose because you're not going to run four Enhanced Hammers. But if your opponent can only attach one of those a turn and you can spend two or three turns using Enhanced Hammer, well then the game, they may not have a chance anymore. So. Interesting. It's one of those cool thing. It's one of those cool things too that with like Elium with the Dene, these like kind of seeker weapons in any sense that with Alakazam, it's different than a lot of other decks to where like yes, you draw a lot of cards and you play a lot of cards, but it's actually fairly easy to hide tech options. Right. Especially because Alakazam just says deal the damage based on the amount of cards that you have in hand. You don't have to reveal anything actually. So a lot of these like tech options that you can have between games because you don't run like Ultra Balls and stuff in this list. There's not actually like a lot of force discard that you do in there. You only reveal it if you maybe find it off of Pokepad or Buddy Buddy Poffin or Dawn even, or also these po. These two Pokemon can be found off Telepathic Energy, which I think is really, really cool. Yeah. As like little psychic Pokemon. But point of the matter is, is that especially in the best of three, like what you're talking about, you know, in a game one, you can definitely surprise your opponent, but you can really, really surprise them in game two or three in order like to lock up a series if you're careful and you don't reveal Pokemon, it doesn't necessarily work as well in top cut of these regional championships now because they actually have open decklists. If you do not know in the top cut just because of transparency with like people being on stream People not being on stream, but especially in the Swiss rounds, you know, of the phase one and phase two for Saris, it probably worked out so well. And I mean, they, they were the champion this weekend. I mean, Saris is just also a very skilled player. They had a lot of like, top finishes. So it's one of those where it's like, okay, combine that though, with a few cards in a deck that like, people don't expect the deck to play this way and all of a sudden you're stealing one game every single round. Right. Like, and if you steal one game and can win another outright, that's all that matters. Right. It's the best of three and one free win is. Is pretty, pretty strong. Yeah. Especially in a game that ties a lot. So, like, if you could just steal a win in a bad matchup. Right. That ups your chances for really just even going and getting a tie. Yeah. Which is in a lot of situations could matter now. I don't know if this deck continues to be good post Chaos Rising. I think that will depend ultimately on how popular Mega Greninja Ex is. Eh. So I think Alakazam will still be around. You think? I. I just, I see, I see that Mega Greninja, man, if they go first and then turn two, I'm just going to wipe your whole board of your abras. Here's my thing, though. I don't think Mega Greninja is good enough for me to care fair as much in that matchup to other decks that are running around within the format right now. You know, you talk about like, Dragapult is the obvious one. Yeah. That you need to do. But then thinking about other things, like, you know, Raging Bull was very popular this weekend, especially in Phase two. Meganium. Yeah. Right. There was a. There was some really cool ogre pond Meganium, like in even Hydra shenanigans that were going around this past weekend, like on the stream and stuff, it was actually fun to watch. So, yeah, I, I feel like I just pay attention to those and if I, if I see a Greninja unlucky, you know, if it's a bad matchup, you're probably right. You're. Honestly, you're probably right. That like, I don't know if Greninja will represent a huge meta share even at Nai, because I, you know, I think that somebody will find a way to really break some form of the deck and it will do well, but it'll probably be. I can't imagine that Mega Greninja itself will be in more than 5% of the decks. I'm gonna eat my words in two weeks, Jake. So hard with that statement. But yeah, that's all right. You. You can't be right all the time. But we will have predictions. Well, hey, we. We get some things right. Including me. I have huge news that I am ready to say that I was right. I was right. But not yet. That'll be later in the podcast, so I'll hold it for then. But we will talk about our predictions for things like NAIC next week on the podcast as we head into that format for the pinnacle of the championships for the average person, not necessarily the world championships, which is for a select few, but going in and speaking of major events, whether that's regionals, IC worlds, things of that nature. Pokemon has officially implemented a band of sales of graded slabs and Japanese Pokemon center products at major championships. So if you do not know, in the Pokemon trading card game at like regionals and things of that nature, they have select vendors that are invited to participated. Yeah, they. They pay for a spot to sell cards. Things of that nature. Plushes are a big one too. You know, just pokem products in general. And I think we actually talked about this a couple weeks ago. I mentioned on the podcast, or at least I'm pretty sure maybe it was off the podcast that I was talking to you about this, but vendors were barred from selling things over a thousand dollars, like at these venues, at these regionals. Things of that nature. Yeah. And so now Pokemon has expanded upon that to these, you know, graded slabs and Japanese Pokemon center products things. So I think I'm not necessarily surprised of the whole thing of that they're doing this because. Right. The. The Pokemon regionals and these events are meant to be mostly for like, players, like lovers of the game. Right. And so what a lot of people do is they go to these vendors, you know, especially on the TCG side, and they go and they try to find the last card for their deck. Like, I think Azul had mentioned that like the morning of the Melbourne regionals the other week, he didn't have a third honch crow for his honchkrow deck. So he's like trying to find it, you know, with vendors and friends and things like that. So I think it's Pokemon just kind of stepping away from like this like investor bros culture of like people maybe trying to flip things with these vendors, maybe trying to just go, I, I mentioned pro. I. Oh my gosh, man, this is such a cool follow up to our Conversation that we had a couple weeks ago, I mentioned a couple weeks ago how one piece, like you can, there are people that go to these regionals and stuff that just go to buy like prize cards or high end cards and things of that nature. And it, it wouldn't surprise me if Pokemon was going in that same direction where there are people that, you know, get these spectator badges or something like that and their whole goal is to like trade for high end cards or just buy high end things, sell high end things. And I think Pokemon is just trying to step away from that, right? Trying to disincentivize people for doing that. I mean, I can confirm at least from the Utrecht regionals a couple things there weren't that crazy, honestly, like, but there was somebody walking around looking to buy up as many of the Meowth play mats as possible. And they were going and they, I think they were from Japan. So they were looking to buy the Meow playmat to then bring back to Japan. And there was like a limit from, for how many you could actually buy at the main booth, which, I mean, makes sense, right? But I don't think that that's horrible. Like to me, like, that's just like, ah, it's kind of whatever. Everyone that wanted a mat probably got one and they had I think the same playmat at the most recent regionals too. So yeah, it, indeed. So, you know, if you really wanted one, you could get one. But I, I did notice that all the vendors in Utrecht, it was a hugely disproportionate amount of the booth was taken up by graded slabs. It was like probably 70 to 80% graded slabs, 20% sing like normal ungraded singles. And there was also a lot of space taken up by plushies and sealed products as well. But gosh, the slabs were, I think I saw a set of all of the Edward Monk slabs. They had all of those PSA 10, 50,000 pounds. And just a lot of money is a lot of money. And the problem for me was when all of these like high end products are all on display at a regional where the space is more limited, right? Because you don't have usually more than like seven or eight vendors at a regional. At Worlds you might have like, you know, like we saw like a huge area just for vendors, but what ends up happening then is all of these people are constantly gathered around trying to make deals for slabs, sell and buy them back and forth. And for like somebody like me who was like, I'm just looking to pick up singles like playable cards Right. I would have to wait sometimes five or ten minutes just to get to the binder because there was like seven or eight people in front of me doing. There's people making multi thousand deals and. Yeah, in front of you. And so yeah, I. Look, I know that there's, there's part of it is the investor bro culture. I think another part of it is just like, I don't know, it's just a bad vibe at a place that's supposed to be celebrating the playing of the games. You know, like they're not Pokemon's not saying you can't sell the cards, but they're like, hey, I do think it's kind of messed up that they are announcing this. I think effective this past weekend at Indianapolis. I, I can feel for the people who bought space as vendors and had planned to bring out all of this product to then sell to only be told no. You know, the majority of the product you are planning on putting at your booth is no longer eligible for sale. I can certainly feel for the vendors that kind of got blindsided by this news. I, I think it probably would have done Pokemon good to like start this at NAIC or start this moving from Worlds onwards. I'm gonna be honest, I don't really, I don't really feel a remorse. I'm gonna be so real right now. I just don't have it in me right now. But it is interesting to see especially in this last year, you know, because Pokey beach had cited this and I actually did not know this. So I do want to bring it up because I think it's good for like the conversation quote at last year's Worlds. It did not escape notice that PSA's booth was originally supposed to be set up in the vendor area on the main floor. However, shortly before the event began, it was moved out of sight to a corner on the second floor. First of all, did not know that there was a second floor. Oh no, I do remember the second floor of World. That's who they were giving away the magic. There was a. Yeah, that's right. And we tried to get one. Oh my gosh. It's all coming together. So yeah, it's. That was like kind of the first instance of Pokemon like not really wanted associating with grading. And this is kind of just consistent about that. And I think that this is also like a really interesting follow up this policy following up with the Pokemon Japan's announcement the last week of requiring the government ID to purchase products from the Pokemon Center. And now you Cannot sell Japanese Pokemon center products at it, which is actually, like, hold on. I'm actually kind of sad about the Japanese Pokemon center products because I have. I don't. I don't think I have any in front of me right now that I can just grab. But, like, some of the coolest Pokemon products that I have have come from the Japanese Pokemon center that I got at the world championships, that I got at naic, that I got at regionals. And now it really, like, I don't know when I'm going to be able to get it outside of. Maybe one of my local shops imported it, you know, which is not very common at all. So I. I will pour one out for that. Yeah. I'm trying to think of, like, if I have anything that's Japanese Pokemon center specific. I mean, I do. The closest I have are like, you know, the Pikachu plush boxes, the deck boxes. Yes. Those originally were Pokemon center exclusives in Japan. I think they went to the stores as well. But they were Japanese exclusive, at least. And then eventually they came out here. But that also includes plushies. There's lots of plushies that people get in Japan and then, like, bring over here. Like, honestly, that's some of my favorite things to look at when I go to some of these vendors is seeing the wide array of plushies and sleeves. All of the cool Japanese sleeves that you can't get over here. Like. Yes. I don't know how strongly they're going to enforce some of those things. Like, they may not. They may choose not to enforce that to that same degree. They're gonna enforce it. I'm sure it is the Pokemon company. I'm sure they'll enforce it. Yeah. So that. I think that's a sad part. Yeah. I don't. I don't want to. If I was a vendor, I don't want to. I mean, they probably signed, like, crazy contracts. So I don't want to. You don't want to tick off the Pokemon company. But. Yeah, so that's the. That's the limitations over at the regionals, which I think is quite interesting to know based on our conversations the last couple weeks. The other one. We talked about this. A couple weeks ago, Lego was doing a contest to where you could build a Pokemon TCG card and then it would become a set on the, like, store. Like, it would be an official product eventually, if it got enough votes. And so the voting has opened and we do have our. I guess you could say, like, finalists. Yeah, they're the five finalists submissions. You can actually. Finalists. You can actually see all the submissions on the page, if you want. They're not all to this level, but these are. That's why these are the finalists. Yeah. And so they all have descriptions with them as well. Fans can vote from now until June 11th, 7th, to decide when they'll be sold in solo in stores. But the winning design will be announced on February 4th. That's a long time. That's slow. Like, why is it seven months? I mean, it's seven months till it's announced, and then probably another two, three or more until it actually comes out as a set. Probably. But the idea is one of these will be a buyable set. And I just want to point this out, because it ticked me off when I first saw this. There was one submission where my boy Rowlett got a beautiful, beautiful design and card and build. And I love most all of it, except for the fact that it has on there. That Rowlet is a Stage one Pokemon. And if I'm Lego or I'm the Pokemon company, I'm like, I'm. I'm doing some Photoshop work because that looks awful. Yeah. Because in no way ever is rallied a Stage one Pokemon. And it just hurts because I want it so bad, but it ticks me off so much that it says that rallied to Stage one, and now if it wins, I don't even know if I want it. Well, they. I would hope that they will if it is around. Exactly. This will be corrected. As much as the. You know. You know, John from Poke beach mentioned that, like, maybe this is an homage to error cards. I think that that's cute. But I think if it wins, Pokemon will not allow this to say Stage one. I just don't think that's gonna happen. But it is a very cool build otherwise. It is crazy, though, that it says Stage one. I'm like, what are we talking about? Yeah. And I can't believe they just. I just can't believe they put it out. Like, nobody. Nobody at Lego, like, going in because, like, I know how these companies work. Right. Like, you have to. Before you release news and things of that nature, you have to talk to your partner about it. I can't believe that nobody at Lego or at the Pokemon company was like, hey, can you do a little bit of Photoshop work and make that say. Make that, say, basic or something? But it's a crime. I want to. I want to put up on screen all of the finalists here, because they are truly incredible. So the jolt. They're beautiful. Yeah. Like, I Even if the ones that don't win, I want this person to like put up the files of like. Because there is ways that you can like build custom Lego sets that people make and you can order all the pieces for it. And obviously some of these pieces don't exist, like the eyes and the stickers don't exist. But most everything else I think are like out of the box pieces you can find. It would be amazing if they were to release all of these as like somewhere like on bricks and mini, you know, whatever the brick builder sites are. But Joltik, super cool here. It's like coming out of the card and the card has also got wires running through it, which is kind of crazy. Very. For all of our audio listeners. Yeah, yeah, I'm giving a description for the audio. Definitely look it up though. Go, go look it up if you can. But I think the cutest one is definitely Mew. This one, it's just like a really gorgeous like landscape. So if you're familiar with like Lego's recent like the sort of flat art style things that they've done. They did like a Van Gogh flowers one. Yeah, they do like paintings, right? You know, like famous paintings as Legos. So it's like imagine the a painting being the backdrop and then there's a mew laughing sort of as the foreground that's like stuck out from it three dimensionally. It's very cute. And then I'm just going to click through to the Gyarados here because also just the three dimensionality of all of these submissions is very impressive. Yeah, I mean there's variety in all of them. They look so good. My favorite one is the Arceus. Arceus has that 3D effect where he's coming out of the card, but it's actually like two separate pieces of this card. In general, there is Arceus himself, right. As a set of Legos in his normal form. But then there's like this grand stand that you can attach RC is to where you know, coming out of a pokeball and then the card kind of wraps around the rcs. It just looks so good, especially like from the side or at an angle. Just looks absolutely incredible. I feel like I feel like if I had to pick a winner, it's probably going to be Arceus because I think it just looks so good, especially as a like grand stand in different ways to display it. But if you want to do votes yourself, I will have the link in the show notes or the description below that you can go to. And I think you can Vote once every day. I don't know. Maybe not maybe. I know you have to, like, make an account and then you vote through there. So maybe. Maybe it's only one time, but it's very easy to vote. So if you want to see your favorite win or you just want to look at them all, make sure to go check out that link. Now getting on to sort of the last little group of news, if you will. First off, we did get the updated numbers for how many cards were printed in the last year. They usually have been doing it from March to March. So March 2025 to March 2026, if you've been following. I think we've been covering this as they do it, like, every single year for, like, the last, like, four years, five years. Now, 10 billion Pokemon cards were printed worldwide between March 25 and 26. But I would say, like, that's a lot, but it's actually not any more than were printed the year before or the year before that or honestly, even that much different from 2023. March. We've had about four years in a row now that were 10 million, 10.2, 11.9 billion kind of. Kind of a lot, and then 9.7 billion, and actually March 2022, 9.1 billion. So I would say that it's been relatively consistent. Yeah, it's been a consistent growth. Right. We have talked about here on the Metapod and in the community how, you know, Pokemon should print more, and they've kind of started to try to meet that demand. I don't think they've opened it up yet and started printing from there. But Pokemon did buy that gigantic space to house more printing in the United States. I believe it was in, like, North Carolina or something like that, but it was, like a record size for a printing company that has not come into effect yet. So we're not seeing the. The effects of that in terms of more printing. It's very obvious now that Pokemon's, like, kind of hit, like, this capacity, this bub, in terms of the amount of cards that they can print per year. But they're continuing to do it, and I absolutely love it. And especially, you know, one thing that they didn't do in this past year was go into more languages and countries and regions, which I assume, which I would hope that they grow a little bit more, because in March 2024, that was their highest number of countries and regions, which it's gone down a little bit from that. But fact of the matter is, is that Pokemon is continuing to print. There has Been more cards in the last five years than ever in the history of Pokemon. And they're just. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of crazy. Yeah, I, you know, this is where I, it's just always so difficult for me when I see these numbers to really match that with the value of modern cards, like as they stand, because it's like, you know, was it, what is it, 50 of every Pokemon card that's ever been printed was printed in the last three or four years or something crazy like. Yes, correct. Now that doesn't mean that they, the majority of those cards are the high rarity ones that everybody wants, but you know, it's, they're just printing a lot. And you know, I, the weird thing for me is the set sizes have gotten so small. I actually looked this up, Jake, in terms of mainline sets, excluding like your illustration rares and all of that. Just like the number of mechanically unique cards. The. This last, like few sets. Chaos Rising, Perfect Order and Phantasmal Flames. I'm not including Ascended Heroes. Those three sets have been the smallest like mainline sets that we've had basically of the last like 10 years. And then you have to go all the way back to like Base Set Fossil and Jungle to find equally small sets that were all printed around the same time. So it is, it's like they're printing the same number of cards but in much smaller sets, which to me says that there's more of those baseline cards than have ever existed listed. Yeah, there's more product out there in a sense. Right. Or just the, the single cards in general. I mean, it's so crazy to me that a Chaos Rising Booster box is $252 on TCG player market value right now. When 85 or when 10 billion cards were printed in the last year, I, I do wonder. They have, I think, shifted the kind of products that they are printing. They're sending a lot more product to like Target and Walmart, the big box stores. And I do think that the effect of that is usually that they're sending this, those stores. The bundles, like the, the six pack bundles have become much more popular over the last few years, which have, you know, fewer packs and they're cheaper, but you can make more of them. If you're Pokemon, you can have a higher profit margin basically. And then they're also selling these like more and more of these, like premium collections, these poster packs, these whatever. So I do think that that is putting a lot of pressure on booster box prices. If like 10 years ago maybe there were 10 different products for every set that you could get. And now there are 50 different products that they have to print. Right. So that means like the number of booster boxes they can make, perfect set is potentially smaller than it was even four or five years ago. So I'm wondering if that's putting some pressure on it too. And also like the Pokemon center in general, I mean, I don't know how much product the Pokemon center pushes out every single set, like with the, you know, new pre orders for sets like that. I mean there's ETBs, there's booster boxes, there's bundles that typically come out on those, like new set releases. And you know, just outside it, they're basically like another big box Realtor. Yeah, that or, you know, at that point. So it's kind of crazy to just like think about how Pokemon has shifted their production with, you know, how they put out the cards within the last five years on top of that. Yeah, their priorities are, I think, very different than they maybe were 10 years ago. And I think it's mostly to the detriment of the local game store and the like, more intense collector. Like. Yeah, a lot of these other products, you know, if there's only like three or four packs in it, you're going to appeal more to the more casual collector, the mom who's buying it for their kids. It's like, Well, a whole 36 packs is crazy. But a $50 little premium collection that comes with a guaranteed cool looking card. Right, that's. That just appeals more to somebody who's not opening as much product, but just every now and again gets something. But I think the problem with that that we're seeing is it drives the price up of all of the other ancillary products from a scalper standpoint. But anyways. But that's like an update on the number of cards. And now we got big news. Just today, just I think a few hours ago, big news. And that News was the 30th anniversary collection got a little update. And I'm gonna play the video for the viewers watching. This is a big update. Yes, this is a big update. This isn't a little update. This is huge. This is breaking news. Probably not by the time breaking news. Yeah, this is about as breaking news as this podcast gets. But Jake, tell us how you were so very right in your predictions and I was not. I just want to say that you can pull it back up on the podcast, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks ago. I don't know how long ago you have to go so somebody else figure it out and let us know in the Metapod Discord. But I said way back when, you know, when we first got the teasers for the 30th anniversary celebration set that's coming out later this year, that I thought that in this set they were going to once again, like they did for the 25th anniversary, they were going to reprint a set of old Pokemon cards with a brand new stand, maybe new holo foiling, things of that nature for this. There will obviously be new cards. There will be, you know, playable cards, stuff like that. But I think. I think I thought that the 25th anniversary went so well and I thought was such a cool idea to pay homage to, you know, the anniversary celebration that is Pokemon, that they were gonna go back to it again. And wouldn't you know, I was freaking right. They are reprinting 30 classic Pokemon cards across the game's history, each of them featuring the 30th anniversary Pikachu stamp and a special foil treatment. Obviously not legal fraternal tournament play, but. But this is kind of an upgrade, or I think also kind of similar to the 25th anniversary. And what they did for the reprinted cards, I think this is kind of the same hollow foiling that they did for the 25th anniversary for some of them, like the. The Garchomp Level X and stuff like that. The dawn fan, maybe. I think the gold treatment. I remember that the Pokemon 25th anniversary set in Japan had a unique gold foiling treatment that we did not get in the U.S. oh, but you know what? Actually, I think you're right. And I think that's going to be the same thing for the 30th anniversary. So I'm a little mad that I was right. Well, who knows? We actually don't know. Like, the picture that we have on Poke beach is just the card with a stamp, but like, there is no foiling on it. It's just like a gold border. I. I hope that because of the fact that it's a simultaneous release. So that's also news. September 16th, we have the date, simultaneous global release. I'm hoping that they will have matching foiling styles this time because I do miss the fact that we didn't get that crazy gold foiling that they got in Japan for 25th. We did also get a couple cards that were confirmed to be classic cards, one of them being the base at Charizard. Obviously you always got to have the base at Charizard, so it looks like they're going to be redoing that for Another anniversary. But tag teams Pika Rom was confirmed in the trailer. The old Pikachu and Zrom Tag team GX I think is getting in there. So that's going to be really fun. Especially like I think we've talked about on the podcast how crazy tag teams have boomed on the secondary market as of late. So being able to just get Pica roms again, you know, for just a cheap price, I hope they leave out adp. Even though it was the best of the tag teams, I'm pretty sure, or pretty close to. I feel like they might only do because they're only, I think, gonna do 30 cards. Yeah, the cell includes 30 classic Pokemon cards. So I. There's a part of me that hopes that we will not get repeats from the similar mechanics. Like we'll only get one tag team and it will be Pikarum. We'll only get one V Star. We'll only get one Level X Pokemon. I don't know. That would be sort of my assumption, but I might be wrong. Some of the other cards that were confirmed in the 30 was base set Pikachu, specifically the yellow cheeks one. For those of you that are curious, you have Misty from Gym Heroes, right? So kind of a call back to that Gym Hero set. They also have another Gym Heroes card, but it's Erica's Jigglypuff. Right. And it's kind of cool to have like a. A trainer's Pokemon. Right. From that Gym Heroes era in the 30th anniversary, especially because trainers Pokemon have been, you know, a. Something that they've done within the last several sets. Right. So it's kind of like a. A cool call back to that to like this was the originator of those. You have Sneezel from Neogenesis. A car was formerly banned in the Pokemon trading card game. If you click on the link, Sean, that is the 30 classic Pokemon cards. You'll scroll down in that article from that link and you'll see these. I'm going to reload this because it's maybe that more got posted. Not seeing any of that. Sneezel. Sneezel from Neogenesis. Is there one of the first banned Pokemon cards in the trading card game? You also have Shining seller Celebi from Neo Destiny. So that's nice. I think Shining Celeb was one of the first instances of shiny Pokemon in general or part of some of the first shiny Pokemon actually. No, that might not be true. No, I think that is true. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, it was early on, but one of the first in There you've got an E Reader card from Aquapolis in Crystal Lugia. So one of the Crystal cards. Right. The Crystal cards are a gazillion dollars on the secondary market and are uber, uber popular if you talk to investor bros and all that stuff. So having a Crystal Pokemon in there is very, very cool. It. I mean, it just makes it so the average person now can say that they own a crystal card, which is so fun, in my opinion. You have Del Caddy from Ex Ruby and Sapphire. Good call. Out to the Ruby and Sapphire era. I love that. And then Dark Tyranitar from Ex Team Rocket returns. I love the Dark Pokemon from the. The old Ex era, especially from Team Rocket Returns. All those Team Rockets Pokemon. So obviously those are only. Or actually there's even more. Oh, yeah, we don't have to go through everything. Oh my gosh. I did not realize that there were so many. I'll leave a link to this as well in the description below. But very, very cool. I want to shout out, there is a break card in here, Jake. You'll be very happy to see that. And also if they do reprint full art N from Noble Victories, that would be. Yeah, that's actually. I have a regular full art N that I had bought a couple years ago. But where is it? I need to scroll down. In the Metapod, Discord shy guy mystic said that this was the rumored list, and I think they're a hundred percent correct, actually on what that list is, which is shocking to me because I thought it was just a rumor. They're actually also doing Legend cards. Yeah, the both halves of Dark Ryan Cresselia. Oh, my gosh, there are so many good cards in here. There's the Metagross Delta Species. Oh my gosh. There's Crow Badgie and Uxie from Platinum. Oh my gosh, Sean, I could go about this all day. Oh my gosh. No, this is. They're. They're not doing RCS Dialoga Palkia. They're doing Zashi and V instead. Yeah, I mean, well, I guess they. They chose Picorom as the GX and Zashin as the. The V mechanic, which, like. Hold on though. This is crazy. If I go just below this, you have new Vmax RCSV Star. Are they reprinting the crazy Magikarp card? I. I don't know. I feel like. Because Pokey. Hold on. Okay, so if you do not know, Poke beach on their website says that one of the reprinted 30 cards is the Paldea Evolved Illustration Rare Magikarp, which, if you do not know. That card is uber expensive and uber, uber, uber popular to a lot of people. This would be the first time, at least in the two times now that they're doing this that they reprinted an illustration rare, which actually would be a big deal because it's one of the more high profile illustration rares in the game. And you know, we had the, the shiny Magikarp in the 25th anniversary. You referenced that earlier, so. Wow, that would be. That would be crazy. I don't know if these are all officially confirmed, but when visiting the website, these cards are throughout the game's history quickly flashed across the screen. And there's exactly 30 cards that you see. So I feel like, I don't know, I mean, maybe not, but probably. And I feel like this would be actually a huge step up to the 25th anniversary because you have illustration rare. You have a full art supporter, you have two halves of a legend card. You have. Have just so many good errors. Oh, my God. I. I might open up this set if you can get my hands on it for a decent. Yeah, if I can get it for a decent price. I also really like the pack design on this. The gold for the 30th celebration. It is different than the last couple of ones that they've done like, very distinctly. And I do like it. I think it's. It's pretty cool. But Jake, there's one other thing that we need to talk about with this, this set, which is the. There were some new illustration rares that are very cool, don't get me wrong, but I don't read Japanese. I don't know what they do. I'm sure they're fine. They're. They're cool. They're gonna have cool illustration rares. But I want to talk about the new futuristic rares. So. Okay. We finally revealed. They finally revealed, like what that Mew and Mewtwo are going to look like. In the video, they showed the texture and the foiling. So I think it looks a little better than the flat images we get here. But yes, the Mewtwo seems fine for two psychic does 50 to each of your opponent's Pokemon Ex. That's, you know, if it's an Ex and you're only doing 50 damage to it, that's pretty weak, if I'm honest with you. Yeah. And then the second attack is just 230 and you can't do it. You can't use that attack. Next turn for three Psychic. Like, I don't know. That one kind of seems. I'm Gonna eat my words again one day, but that seems mid. However, this Mew Ex. Does this card and its ability remind you of anything, Jake? Oh, this ability called Memory Helix mu ex for 160hp has the ability Memory Helix. This Pokemon can use the attacks of any of your benched Pokemon. You still need the necessary energy to use each attack. Wow. This feels like every other Mew card that's ever been printed where you copy the attacks. Yeah, Mewtwo Mew Mew V Max. Yeah, Mew I don't know if it was a prime card, but like in. In kind of that era, Mew copying Pokemon from the Lawson like this. But this is not nearly as. It's not as rigid as a lot of the other ones we've had recently. Which yes, like Mew Vmax could only copy Fusion Strike Pokemon's attacks. And that severely limited. Now it was all. It was still a good deck, right. But it did severely limit like. Oh, it was more than just a good deck. And it's also I think part of the 30 cards by the way, in case you're curious. But like this, I think it really depends on the. The you still need the necessary energy. That clause may make or break this card long term. But because it's only 160 hp and it's a 2 prizer, so it's very, very squishy. But being able to copy any attack of a benched Pokemon. And it doesn't have to be a rule box, it doesn't have to be non rule box, it doesn't have to be a typing. It doesn't matter. I don't know know. I. I am kind of excited to see this mechanic and I do think that there was a Mew from a long time ago that had an equally unrestricted version of this kind of ability or attack. Well, I mean Mewtwo and Mew just needed a Pokemon in the discard pile. Right. And so did Reggie Drago v Star as well. But they drag it. Yeah. Versus. But the Mewtwo Mew, it could only copy GX Pokemon attacks. It couldn't copy. Oh yeah, that's true. And so yeah yeah, this is any. It's any. It does have to be on your bench. So it is in some ways harder. Like you can't just copy a random stage two that you threw away with Ultra Ball. So you know it. That might ultimately be its undoing. But I do like that they're reintroducing this style of. Of Mew mechanic because historically speaking it's been I think it's done well in the past. Yeah. And it's. I mean, it's. I think these are both, like, both of these cards are really cool call outs to what Muse and Mewtwo's have been in the past. Like Mew just copying attacks, you know, as we've been talking about. But Mewtwo I think is just so funny that the Mewtwo psychic powers attack for three psychic energy will knock out an opposing Mewtwo in the mirror match. Mewtwo attacks very frequently. Just knock out other Mewtwos of the same card. You know, just. If you want a good history lesson, maybe you're newer to the Pokemon trading card game. Look up a essay video or something about the Mewtwo wars from back in like the 20. I think it was like 2010 or something to maybe even a little earlier. But the Mewtwo wars, that is a. That is a prime example about how Mewtwo's just ko each other. And I think Mewtwo, Mewtwo, Mew, GX also did that because I'm pretty sure that it was. Was it weak to psychic Pokemon? Jake, I'm gonna point out something about this mu ex. I don't know if it will work, but I think there is. Isn't there a clay doll that's still in format that says deal X amount of damage to myself? If you do knock out the opposing Pokemon. But the problem is the amount. The amount of damage you're dealing to yourself is exactly enough to knock you out. But if Mew can copy that, it won't get knocked out. So Claydol from Obsidian Flames says put damage counters on your opponent's active Pokemon until its remaining HP is 10. If you placed any damage counters, it does 120 to itself. So that doesn't work. It's also rotated. Okay, okay. I'm trying to see there's a destined rivals, one that definitely doesn't do what we're thinking of. It's a thought. I was like, there's gotta be something out there. The clay doll from Chaos Rising devolves Pokemon. That's. Yeah. So I don't know. I don't think there's a way to do it in standard at least. Yeah, yeah. Look, I don't have the answer to this, but I think it's cool. That's all I'm saying. But yeah, I do. Like, Mewtwo always knocks itself out. Basically. Yeah. Mewtwo always hits itself before we get into the big headliner Pokemon. That's in these celebrations that they did also reveal a variety of new cards that are going to be made within the set. And last year they did like some interesting ones. Like it was like a dark Sylveon V. Blaine or what was that guy's name? Lanes Lane. Charizard. The Charizard. Blaine's Charizard. Blaine. No, it's not Blaine. It's the Dragon. The Dragon guy. Lance. That's his name. I knew it started with an L. Thank you, Sean. Lance's Charizard, whatever that weren't actually legal but were cool call outs and mixtures of like previous eras of Pokemon, but not as much as of right now of those. But they do have a good variety in here of not only like ex Pokemon like the Greninja and Sylveon, but illustration rares that they've got here. There's four illustration rares depicted as of right now, maybe more in the future. Unsure depicting Lapras, Drifloon, Hisuian, Zorua and Lichen Rock. The Midnight Form, I believe it is of Lycanroc, which all look so good. And I'm so excited for this set. There is so much. And we're not even. I mean we're just at the tip of the iceberg of how people are going to go absolutely bonkers for this set. Like we have talked about the. The things that people may be very calm about. Right. Because I think for the. I think for the 25th anniversary, people. I mean it was only like the old school players that really loved the 25th. Like old cards. Yeah. I think like people that wanted to collect the retros. I think people had a soft spot in their heart for the birthday Pikachu and then the Greninja A. There was like a. Not Greninja. Maybe it was Greninja. The Umbreon. Gold star. There was a gold star. Yeah. They wanted. They wanted the. The Umbreon. They wanted the Greninja promo. Right. Obviously the base set. The base set. Charizard Blastoise, Venusaur, you know, Boo. But in this set, in the main set, they're also featuring in here, what is it? 30 different Pikachu cards illustrated by different artists from the Pokemon training card game that they have additional set numbering which of the 30 Pikachu they are. And they teased some of the Pikachus that are coming in there. There's a ton of different illustrators that are recognizable. Right. I think the most recognizable one is Komiya. Komiya has a Pikachu in this set which looks absolutely fantastic. And They've shown off a couple of the different ones. Like, Okacheke has been phenomenal the last couple years in the. In the card game, Atsuko Nishida, you know, very, very cute Pokemon cards. And then Yunishito is some of the three that are officially, you know, confirmed with the full arts and effects and things of that nature. And none of these Pokemon are actually that good in the card game, but they all are super cute. And if you're a big fan of Pikachus, you're gonna want to love it. It. And every pack comes with a Pikachu. Oh, yes. That's that. Yeah. So that's. That's. I do like that. So, like, you're gonna open this set and you're gonna get a Pikachu. It might be kind of difficult to get all 30 of them. That. That'll take, I think, a number of packs, but every single set is going to have a cute Pikachu, which I think is a very cool theme. So. And it also might make it, especially if you get a Pikachu in every pack that, I mean, obviously, probably the most popular illustrators are going to have the. You know, if you buy singles, but hopefully, because of the Pikachu coming in every single pack, it'll drive down the price of the Pikachus. Right. So then if you want to get all 30 of the Pikachus, it's not going to be as bad as maybe what you would have originally expected, but the information was out previously. But we'll reinstate it as well that, you know, each booster pack is going to contain one of the Pikachus, as we just mentioned, but it'll also contain five foil cards and one foil Basic Energy, along with the Pokemon TCG Live code card. So I think we mentioned previously that this set, every card is going to be foil in the set in some form or fashion. So, I mean, this set. I. I love this set. I will actually. Ah, man. I. I hope to open this set at a decent price. If you want to collect the Pikachu, I'll just say if you and your friends are opening up packs and you get duplicates, just trade them with each other. That's going to be fast. Don't think about the number. Yeah. So go back to the old days. I'll trade my Pikachu for your Pikachu. Yep. I am excited to see people do that when the set comes out. But speaking of 30th anniversary and things that we're gonna do, Jake, I am wearing a hat today. Do you Know what hat this is? Do you know what this is from? That is the DC Worlds in 2018. 19. 2019, 19. Dang. I was one year old off, but yeah, it was the DC Worlds 2019 hat that I am wearing. I did not play, but I did attend. But the reason I'm wearing this because Jake and I had an idea. I don't know if we talked about it on the pod, but we had an idea for us to celebrate and also to get some weekly streams in. Basically between now and the World Championships, we are going to take on the task of starting in 1999, doing a. A match. I'll pick a deck, Jake picks a deck that is, you know, of that format of that era. And we will do every single year from 1999 all the way up to this last year in 2025. So 27, technically. 27 total. Well, there's 27. Well, it's kind of odd because like Pokemon didn't officially have World Championships until 2004 and then during COVID there was two years where we actually didn't have a World Championship. So Sean and I are still working out the kinks of, you know, how many exactly and what eras and things like that. But Sean, Sean has a whole document decorating this. So we're like, it's, it's, it's, it's gonna be fun and we're keeping score because I am trying to win, right. If we tie, you know, if we, if we tie, we're gonna, I'm gonna of force Sean to do some sort of tiebreaker with me. And maybe it would be the 2026 World Championships, right, that we just do that. I don't know, maybe that's the tiebreaker of it. But very excited. As someone who has retro decks of the Pokemon Trading Card Game and you know, especially some throughout the years and also collects the World Championship decks. And we're gonna have some variety too. Sean and I have already decided a couple decks. So far we haven't, I haven't, I haven't decided every single deck, but at least for the five years or so, I've decided what I'm going to bring and I'm going to try to bring a variety of decks as well. You know, I'm not always going to choose the number one deck that won worlds in that format. Might not even choose a deck that won the final or was a runner up in the finals. You know, I might bring something that was kind of a hidden secret, you know, in the World Championships that year or something. Because Worlds typically is like a semi unique format a lot of times, you know, where surprises can happen leading into the championships. And I'll try to do a variety of different styles and Pokemon as well, at least on my side. So I'm, I'm pretty excited for that. I'll obviously have my. My favorites in certain eras, but. But yeah, I'm. I'm pretty excited because I love playing retro decks and there's not enough people that want to play retro with me. So this will be a good way to scratch that. It's. So if you are interested in watching any of that. We will be making individual videos for each year. Oh, my. My camera is going wild. We will be making individual videos for each year, but we will also be streaming it live. So starting on Monday the 8th, so a week from basically when this comes out, I think the timing of that will be about noon Pacific time. I'm doing it a little bit in the evening, my time, so that hopefully the sun will have gone down enough. We will post it in the Discord. We will post it, but the goal is to do it weekly, three different, you know, formats per stream. But if you miss it, we will have the videos also cut down and put onto the channel as well. If you're interested in seeing specific decks you may have heard about out in the past. And we're like, what was the first world championship in 2004? Like, like. So I'm excited. I'm pretty excited too, and I hope you are too, but yeah, and let us know. And in the Discord, we'll give out more information as that becomes available. Link in the description below or the show notes. But Sean, do you. You have anything else that you want to say? No, no, I think that is it. I'm excited. Excited. I'm excited too. I love. I did not know about, like, all the 30th anniversary news until we, like, basically started the podcast. And I am. Oh, I'm so excited for the 30th anniversary. And I'm so happy that I was right, too. I just want to say that I was right. Yeah, this is me. Golf Clap. Golf clap. Yeah. And thank you so much for listening to the Metapod podcast, Pokemon TCG podcast that revolves around the evolving meta. I'm Jake, that's Sean. Whether you've been in the Pokemon card game for 30 years or less than one year, we appreciate you tuning in and checking us out. And we'll see you next week.