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What amazes me is that Charizards can sell for so much when they are so worthless to the game. In MTG the most expensive card Black Lotus is basically broken an

What amazes me is that Charizards can sell for so much when they are so worthless to the game. In MTG the most expensive card Black Lotus is basically broken and can be used in some formats and so actually desired by players. Charizard from the the original Pokemon base set is bad now. His HP is laughably low, his attack throws away tons of energy and it's a 3rd stage evolution making it slow and hard to get out. Even the buffed 2016 Pokemon Evolutions version isn't much more playable.

monocasa 5y ago
Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I bet most of them are ending up framed on walls or what have you by people who wanted it in middle school. And I bet there's way more of those people than people playing the game.
tasogare 5y ago
I remember being kid and other kids telling back then, when the card game was released, that a charizard was worth 500 francs (around 75€) and I didn’t really believed them. Funny how it raised to even crazier prices. Someone gave me a free Ponyta, which I traded against other cards, growing my collection without buying any pack. One day I was with only three cards remaining but managed to trade again them for a bigger collection. My brother did the same, also with a free starting Ponyta. A year or so later, I bough two packs of the Fossils extension. A guy stole my whole collection in junior high school and I wasn’t able to bring it back. I still hate him to this day.
rogerdb 5y ago
I don't think it's too surprising - cards from this era are primarily collector items, so among equal rarity cards, the most "iconic" ones are the ones that demand the highest price. Charizard had a pre-existing (and continued) level of popularity that made it the obvious most desirable card, even if it's not particularly playable. MTG didn't have the existing IP, so the cards that became iconic are more based around their playability, rarity, and associated mythos. Not too many people are dropping $20,000+ for a lotus to play it in vintage, but the prices continue to rise because of increasing collectibility. For what it's worth, Ancestral Recall is arguably a stronger card of equal rarity, but it's worth substantially less on the basis of being less iconic (if only slightly).
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  Is there a standard list of highly valuable MTG cards? I have a couple thousand cards from the mid-90s and while I’m sure they are probably worthless, I can’t bring myself to just dump them even though I haven’t played in 20 years.
  - 16mb 5y ago
    You can check mtggoldfish https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/vintage#paper https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/vintage#paper
  - rogerdb 5y ago
    Depends on your definition of "highly valuable" - from that time period, there's a very short list of cards worth >$1000, quite a few in the $100-$999 range, and a ton in the >$10 bracket. What they're actually worth depends a lot on the particular printing and what condition they're in. If you wanted a starting point, Scryfall is a useful tool for looking up cards (though they're missing pricing data for some early cards, presumably due to scarcity of transaction data). Here's something to get you started (cards printed before 2000, sorted by price, displayed as a price list): https://scryfall.com/search?q=unique%3Aprints+sort%3Ausd+date%3C2000+display%3Alist https://scryfall.com/search?q=unique%3Aprints+sort%3Ausd+dat...
  - hsndmoose 5y ago
    https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists IMO you'd get a lot of mileage from the "Reserved List" or "Vintage Staples" but site is decent for a general price lookup as well. Feel free to shoot follow-up questions. There are a few cards that went from trash to treasure since you've been out of the game. Lion's Eye Diamond probably the most extreme example, but basically anything on the Reserved List has gone insane in the past few years.
    - herodoturtle 5y ago
      Heya, mind if I jump in here - this comment has piqued my interest. I've got an old collection from the early 90s as mentioned in my comment further up. Are my black bordered cards indeed Beta? I'm going through this list you shared for the Beta edition cards and some of these prices are ridiculous. I'm pretty sure I'm misinterpreting something.
swang 5y ago
Black Lotus only can be played in Vintage, and even then it is restricted (1 card total in main/sideboard). It is more of a collectible because of its pure rarity more than anything now.
- ufo 5y ago
  At this point a black lotus is so expensive that I wonder how many people can still afford one, and would be comfortable shuffling it into their deck.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
MathYouF 5y ago
Me and every friend I had in elementary school played with pokemon cards. We never once played the actual card game, just the gameboy game. The cards were closer to stuffed animals than utility items. If you played a card game it was YuGiOh because it was so simple.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  In my experience, kids who played YuGiOh didn't play with the rules on the cards, but came up with their own rules. I grew up in Greece where most YuGiOh - age kids didn't know much English, so they couldn't actually read the cards. I realised that when I tried to play with some kids once and they kept telling me "no, that's not how this card is played, this is how it's played", because I was trying to play like it said on the cards. I think maybe they had derived the rules from watching the anime.
ufo 5y ago
I've heard that Pokemon TCG card prices are more related to collectability and less related to in-game strength, when compared to Magic the Gathering. Some of the most sought after cards are first edition printings, or promotional cards.
JohnWhigham 5y ago
I can virtually guarantee that out of any 10 people that are buying these cards, 9.9 of them have never played an actual game. Hell, I remember only playing one or two games with the cards as a kid back in the late 90s, and then the rest of the time was flexing your collection/haggling with other kids for trades.

monocasa 5y ago

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. I bet most of them are ending up framed on walls or what have you by people who wanted it in middle school. And I bet there's way more of those people than people playing the game.

tasogare 5y ago

I remember being kid and other kids telling back then, when the card game was released, that a charizard was worth 500 francs (around 75€) and I didn’t really believed them. Funny how it raised to even crazier prices. Someone gave me a free Ponyta, which I traded against other cards, growing my collection without buying any pack. One day I was with only three cards remaining but managed to trade again them for a bigger collection. My brother did the same, also with a free starting Ponyta. A year or so later, I bough two packs of the Fossils extension. A guy stole my whole collection in junior high school and I wasn’t able to bring it back. I still hate him to this day.

rogerdb 5y ago

I don't think it's too surprising - cards from this era are primarily collector items, so among equal rarity cards, the most "iconic" ones are the ones that demand the highest price. Charizard had a pre-existing (and continued) level of popularity that made it the obvious most desirable card, even if it's not particularly playable. MTG didn't have the existing IP, so the cards that became iconic are more based around their playability, rarity, and associated mythos. Not too many people are dropping $20,000+ for a lotus to play it in vintage, but the prices continue to rise because of increasing collectibility. For what it's worth, Ancestral Recall is arguably a stronger card of equal rarity, but it's worth substantially less on the basis of being less iconic (if only slightly).

germinalphrase 5y ago
Is there a standard list of highly valuable MTG cards? I have a couple thousand cards from the mid-90s and while I’m sure they are probably worthless, I can’t bring myself to just dump them even though I haven’t played in 20 years.
- 16mb 5y ago
  You can check mtggoldfish https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/vintage#paper https://www.mtggoldfish.com/index/vintage#paper
- rogerdb 5y ago
  Depends on your definition of "highly valuable" - from that time period, there's a very short list of cards worth >$1000, quite a few in the $100-$999 range, and a ton in the >$10 bracket. What they're actually worth depends a lot on the particular printing and what condition they're in. If you wanted a starting point, Scryfall is a useful tool for looking up cards (though they're missing pricing data for some early cards, presumably due to scarcity of transaction data). Here's something to get you started (cards printed before 2000, sorted by price, displayed as a price list): https://scryfall.com/search?q=unique%3Aprints+sort%3Ausd+date%3C2000+display%3Alist https://scryfall.com/search?q=unique%3Aprints+sort%3Ausd+dat...
- hsndmoose 5y ago
  https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists https://www.mtgstocks.com/lists IMO you'd get a lot of mileage from the "Reserved List" or "Vintage Staples" but site is decent for a general price lookup as well. Feel free to shoot follow-up questions. There are a few cards that went from trash to treasure since you've been out of the game. Lion's Eye Diamond probably the most extreme example, but basically anything on the Reserved List has gone insane in the past few years.
  - herodoturtle 5y ago
    Heya, mind if I jump in here - this comment has piqued my interest. I've got an old collection from the early 90s as mentioned in my comment further up. Are my black bordered cards indeed Beta? I'm going through this list you shared for the Beta edition cards and some of these prices are ridiculous. I'm pretty sure I'm misinterpreting something.

swang 5y ago

Black Lotus only can be played in Vintage, and even then it is restricted (1 card total in main/sideboard). It is more of a collectible because of its pure rarity more than anything now.

ufo 5y ago
At this point a black lotus is so expensive that I wonder how many people can still afford one, and would be comfortable shuffling it into their deck.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

MathYouF 5y ago

Me and every friend I had in elementary school played with pokemon cards. We never once played the actual card game, just the gameboy game. The cards were closer to stuffed animals than utility items. If you played a card game it was YuGiOh because it was so simple.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
In my experience, kids who played YuGiOh didn't play with the rules on the cards, but came up with their own rules. I grew up in Greece where most YuGiOh - age kids didn't know much English, so they couldn't actually read the cards. I realised that when I tried to play with some kids once and they kept telling me "no, that's not how this card is played, this is how it's played", because I was trying to play like it said on the cards. I think maybe they had derived the rules from watching the anime.

ufo 5y ago

I've heard that Pokemon TCG card prices are more related to collectability and less related to in-game strength, when compared to Magic the Gathering. Some of the most sought after cards are first edition printings, or promotional cards.

JohnWhigham 5y ago

I can virtually guarantee that out of any 10 people that are buying these cards, 9.9 of them have never played an actual game. Hell, I remember only playing one or two games with the cards as a kid back in the late 90s, and then the rest of the time was flexing your collection/haggling with other kids for trades.