The Pokémon TCG is in a bit of a precarious place right now. Due to unprecedented interest in new cards driven by Pokémon TCG Pocket, spiking resale prices, and over-excitement at a new Eevee-based special set, the latest sets are selling out everywhere before regular customers can find them. It’s into this situation that Prismatic Evolutions launches, which is a double-shame, given it’s the most fun set to open in forever.
Prismatic Evolutions is that Eevee-based set, and that furry brown pup tends to set Pokémon fans into a furor the likes of which only Charizard can beat. The last time Eevee fronted a collection was in 2021 with Evolving Skies, and that’s still causing conniptions in the resale market. (Evolving Skies booster boxes, $130 on release, now sell for $1,300+, and the so-called Moonbreon card alone currently has a market price of $1,600.) So it is that from the moment of Prismatic’s announcement in November, pre-orders sold out faster than they could be advertised, and sadly a lot of it was scalpers.
However, Kotaku is in the fortunate position of having had The Pokémon Company International send over a box filled with various Prismatic Evolutions collection boxes and an ETB, with a total of 26 packs to open. And people, it’s a really good set! It is, dare I say, the first Scarlet & Violet era set to feature pull rates that feel generous. And I feel that way despite, in opening all 26 packs, not pulling a single card above an ultra-rare. Yeah, it’s odd.
Prismatic Evolutions is packed with so many special-feeling cards that the pull rate I experienced was close to 1. As in, after opening 20 packs we’d sleeved 19 cards. Scarlet & Violet’s reorganization of pack contents mean there’s a holo in every one, making them generic, and this has meant that for most sets of the era, getting anything better has been around 1 in 4. But in Prismatic, so much of the set is made up of ex cards, new full-art holo patterns, Ace Specs, the first international version of Japan’s Poké Ball and Master Ball holos, and a whopping 49 alt-art cards of varying rarity, that it’s hard not to get something interesting in every pack. Sure, that reduces their “value” given their ubiquity, but after two years of being starved for fun, it feels giddying. Right up until you notice that you’re not actually getting the alt-arts.
That’s the important thing, right there. If you’re looking to buy a pack of cards where you’ve got a good chance of getting something pleasingly shiny, and you can find them, this is a great purchase. For kids, it’s exactly how it should be, meaning they’re not almost always wasting $4 of allowance on a pack containing nothing but bulk. This is a win. But now, let’s get into the weeds.
Of those 26 packs, and obviously ignoring promos that came in the various boxes, we got a total of six holo-pattern Energies, five ex cards, one Ace Spec, eight Poké Ball holo patterned cards, one Master Ball holo pattern, and four full-art trainers. Now, most people won’t consider ex and holo Energies that special, but given they’re better than nothing, we’re still close to a 1:1 ratio on 26 packs. (I’d say, given double-ups, that there were perhaps just five packs overall that had nothing but a standard windowed holo.) But even discounting them, this is still top-notch hits. It’s just that, on another level, we entirely missed.
Which is to say, in all 26 packs, we didn’t get a single Special Illustration Rare or Hyper Rare, and this set has 37 of them to find! That suggests that, while it was so much fun to tear this open and keep on feeling like we were hitting, anyone trying to complete the set is going to be facing a bankruptcy. And that’s all the more true given this set contains a collection of Eeveelution arts that are going to be so, so expensive. TPCi hasn’t exactly been subtle here: the SIR Umbreon is a work of art, and it’s got a giant moon in it—they know exactly what they’re doing. It’s already selling for almost $1,500.
I’m not the least bit fussed not to have the Hyper Rares—they’re gold cards that look ridiculous, and I can’t imagine any of the five, but for the Pikachu, will hold any value at all. But oh my god, as I leaf through the ETB’s booklet, I’m overwhelmed with the most stunning collection of artworks I’ve ever seen in a single set.
This is something that’s made to feel a little more galling when you learn that so much of the set’s bulk is reprints of cards from previous S&V sets, and appear so frequently as to become farcical. In the 26 packs, we received four or five of almost every basic card, and a ridiculous eight copies of the Stage 1 Dipplin that originally appeared in Twilight Masquerade. That’s almost one in three packs containing the stupid toffee apple. Go away!
So yes, I’m looking through this Player’s Guide at all those artworks I want and feeling enormous FOMO. In other circumstances, I’d be very tempted to go buy a bunch more in the hopes of getting a card that’d look awesome in a binder. (I’ll put together a gallery of the best art in this set, and it’ll be a million pages long.) Every one of the Eeveelution alt-arts is going to cost a bajillion bucks, and you could probably pay off your mortgage if you pulled that new Moonbreon, but the Dragapult ex and Palafin ex are mind-blowing pieces of work.
I’d like to imagine I could have found one alt-art in all those cards, but obviously the sample size is too small to draw conclusions from, and I may have just been spectacularly unlucky. However, looking at pack openings on YouTube, this does seem somewhat typical. We’ll know for sure when the likes of Danny Phantump et al put their data together.
But yes, this is all incredibly moot if no one can actually buy the stuff. Prismatic Evolutions is going to keep releasing new boxes all year, so hopefully the current madness will have eased off at some point and this will all become more available. Pokémon assures us that they are working fast to run reprints of all the current boxes, and trying to get stock into stores.
And so back to that main point: if you can find it, and especially if you have kids, this is a treat of a set to open. Just don’t expect to be seeing many Special Illustration Rares.
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