A History of Pokemon TCG Holos + Foils

I played pretty much every trading card game Under the Sun and Moon but in my opinion the Pokemon Trading Card Game has some of the best-looking holo foil cards of all time over the past two decades they've gone through so many changes prints forms and experimentation that it got me wondering how many different foil patterns have there been in the history of the pokemon TCG what first started as a curious question exploded into a massive undertaking binder after binder category after category trading and collecting and it turns out depending on how strict you are with the categories there aren't give or take 17 different types of hollows out there let's check it out [Music] today's video is brought to you by our returning partner expressvpn I'm always happy to continue working with them because they provide a simple secure and top-rated VPN service that I continue to use every day at home with just the click of a button using a virtual private network masks your IP to keep your data secure keep your data private and let you access region-locked content from all over the world if you're like me in the current kovat 19 situation and stuck at home using a VPN to change your region and view more streaming content is a lifesaver a huge show I've been watching right now is the currently airing of the last dance a huge documentary with brand-new footage and stories about Michael Jordan and the 1919 Chicago Bulls to him right now in the US this show is only airing on cable TV but if we take a trip over to Canada which took three seconds it turns out that the last dance can be streamed straight from Netflix right now internationally if you're interested in trying it for yourself you can get an additional three months free with our exclusive link here and expressvpn comm slash the j wits and that's also in the description hopefully you enjoy binging some new shows okay quick ground rules before we begin this list is by no means definitive there are so many obscure categories of cards out there that I'm sure I miss something but this should be a pretty comprehensive look at the entire history of the Pokemon TCG I tried to only focus on cards that did things unique with foil patterns and I try to group similar foil patterns where possible also I decided to stick with the internationally released cards only with one minor exception Japan has an entire world of different foils and I just don't own enough Japanese cards to catalogue them all and finally not every card I show today is gonna be in mint condition my wife is a collector of cards so hers are in great condition but because I played with mine most of the time there might be a couple of scratches here or there and I'm sorry that you got to see it we have a huge history of cards to go over today so let's sit back relax and start where it all began in 1999 our first major pattern is the star pattern that you'll mostly see from the first three iconic sets base jungle and fossil now only is this super nostalgic to see because it's the first Pokemon foil pattern I ever knew but I also love it because I feel like it's one of the few styles that truly looks holographic as you tilt the card around the stars give the illusion of jumping out forward beyond the art starting with base set two in the year 2000 we started to see this new foil pattern consisting of dots in the occasional swirl which I believe matched the Japanese foil pattern at the time this main pattern was used for over a decade stretching all the way up to call of Legends in 2011 making it by far the most common one today here's a base set Charizard side-by-side with the base set to version where you can see some of the major differences the dawn of the 21st century also gave us one of the most iconic holo cards of all time ancient Mew this card had a featured role in the second Pokemon movie it's the first card to feature foil across the entire surface and it's the only card I've got today that also features foil on the back side as well and speaking of movies we've also got the third movie promo Entei which was the first card we had seen up to this point that had its foil pattern in Reverse over the outside of the card instead of inside the art box there was also a Pichu promo that did the same thing around this time starting in the neo era of the pokemon TCG we started to see our first special patterns which is a category I'm using for unique ultra rare and secret rare cards The Shining cards were our first look at shiny pokemon in the TCG and they featured foil just over the character image and nothing else over 15 years later we'd see the specific style of shining cards returned in shining legends here's the only Japanese card type I'll be talking about today the owners pokemon versus series this gold and silver themed cent is one of the very few that we never got internationally at all I'm barely including it on today's list because it features a small unique pattern with the foil giving us that tiny shiny V s in the lower left corner starting with 2002's legendary collection Wizards of the coast took a page from Magic the Gathering and began a fish introducing reverse holo cards into the pokemon TCG allowing any card common or rare to get a special reverse foil this first pattern is absolutely wild so wild that many players actually confused them with counterfeit sticker cards that were shared around the late 90s and early 2000s legendary collection is also the last time that we'd see the classic stars pattern return I find it especially interesting because it allows some of Team Rocket's dark hollow cards to receive this foil pattern for the first time here's a legendary collection Blastoise side-by-side with its original Team Rocket print the next series of cards the e-reader sense would give us a much simpler style of reverse holo a basic mirror refractor like surface much more similar to what you'd see with Magic the Gathering foil cards similar patterns have been used over several sets including the early e^x era the diamond of Pearl era heartgold SoulSilver and even the first black and white set Wizards of the coast also had a small handful of promo cards but one of my favorites are these base set style foil basic energy cards these are the first foil basic energies and they're one of the styles of energy I used the most when I competed in the pokemon TCG and our final Wizards of the coast era card type is the crystal pokemon these cards featured regular foil in the picture slumped but also a faint almost reverse holo style over the rest of the white border around the card I'm very lucky Renae collected the e sets over a decade ago because these cards have become very expensive today due to their small print run moving on to pokemon sprint run of the game comes one of the longest running special cards the lowercase Pokemon II X you'll understand why I'm saying lowercase e X in a couple of years but for now you can distinguish these powerful to prize pokemon cards by their foil silver border also speaking of borders in 2004 they finally ended eReader support for pokemon cards so newer e^x cards no longer have that eReader strip on the side ironically as we talked about in my old eraider video the foil eReader cards weren't actually scannable starting with e^x firered/leafgreen they started doing something weird with reverse foils they were trying lots of new patterns and also they aren't even technically reverse these bonus foil cards are inside of the picture box this first new pattern is one of my favorites it's full of tiny energy symbols and it's what I based my long-running video background card on all those years ago firered/leafgreen also gave us this special cracked ice foil pattern for the first time with it secret rares eyx cards with the original three legendary birds for a long time I thought that this pattern was unique to the special Rotom cards but I learned I've been wrong for over a decade ext rocket returns and give us a new feature in Reverse hollows that stuck around for the rest of the e.x era set stamps featuring the name of each set on the cards it also added a new trend which added gold foil over the names of the cards that were also regular foil cards in the set to better help differentiate the two shiny pokemon would return to the e^x era this time in the form of Pokemon star these cards featured light accent foil around the edges of the art box as well as the iconic golden star next to their names as I've mentioned Pokemon will continue to do crazy things at the reverse foil patterns and here's the exclusive prism like foil used for reverse Hallows from the ext Oxus Sun and here's the unique reverse foil pattern that they used in e^x emerald this one is kind of similar to the old energy pattern from Ruby and Sapphire except this time they are tiny foil pokeballs instead emerald also added a unique basic foil energy card design for the first time directly available from a panic these energies have long been called matrix energies by the community due to their light resemblance to the code in the matrix yet unseen forces would give us a Pokeball pattern in reverse again but unlike emerald these ones are in 3d it's hard to fully describe the optical illusion without seeing it in person but this is another one of those cards that I would truly describe as holographic they pop out of the card we've talked a lot about how this era is experimental and by far one of the biggest examples of that comes with Delta species Pokemon these differently typed Pokemon from the land of Holland have a refractor pattern over just the Pokemon itself and a gold border speaking of Holland the Holland phantom set gave us some special foil energy this time with the lightning like storm pattern across the card we also began to see more special Hollow energy from the league promos that were given out around 2006 and 2007 I don't think I've seen this foil type used since it has a wild mix of wavy reflections and tiny pixel light dots throughout and how about another foil energy as a final gift from the crazy Hollow adventure that was the px era we got another foil energy from power keepers these ones feature a larger grid of dots that fade out in the background and with the end of Gen 3 comes the 4th gen block with diamond and pearl instead of a X's our new special card would become the level X these cards really emphasized art that pops straight out of the confines of the box like axes they have a silver border and they often feature a special hollow detail on the character itself such as hollow eyes or teeth also this arrow was when the trend of set names damn some reverse hollow cards finally ended it was also around this time that we began to see a new Hollow pattern in league promos this etched err crosshatch style of hollow was used for years over a variety of organized play promos from Pokemon to energy to even prize awards like I briefly mentioned earlier rising rivals gave us Rotom and Sharons choice cards with the cracked ice hollow pattern unlike the legendary birds we saw earlier though this pattern was used in a reverse holo style and the end of the diamond pearl and platinum era gave us one special last pattern from God itself Arceus has a special subset within the well Arceus set which features a ripple pattern going alongside the text of the card if you aligned multiple cards together the ripple would extend out from one card to the next the next decade give us new cards with HeartGold and SoulSilver pokemon prime these short-lived special cards featured close-up pictures of Pokemon with torn up frames gold names and once again silver borders hg SS also give us the incredibly ambitious Legend cards these cards feature foil and gold embroidery across the entire card they have to be lined up horizontally and they require two separate cards aligned together to complete the picture Shanny Poquelin once again make their return at the end of Gen 4 with this final cent call of Legends these cards don't have any unique holo pattern but they do contain a unique never-before-seen holographic silver border okay I don't think there's anything new about them but it just felt weird to not include them call up legends did give us a foil version of my favorite energy of all time though these heartgold SoulSilver era energies feature important gold and silver pokemon and locations as silhouettes behind the appropriately typed energy moving into black and white we finally have a new holo pattern for the first time in over a decade our new main pattern features horizontal stripes from Gen 5 onward each new generation would introduce a new pattern of foil for its basic holo cards black and white would also introduce a major recurring trend full art variants of cards within the set featuring art and foil that covered the entire card this would start with black and whites Reshiram and Zekrom and in general these full art cards of a grainy texture that you can feel when running your hand over them in noble victories full arts would also extend to include supporter cards as well and they've become a staple and collecting ever since the black and white sets would also begin a new pattern for secret rares while there are a few exceptions to the rule in the beginning like this Meowth most secret rares from this era are shiny pokemon they have a lightly textured large energy symbol over the card text on the bottom half of the card and finally starting with emerging powers we finally get a new type of reverse holo pattern featuring multiple large energy symbols scattered throughout the card reverse trainer cards would do the same but with a pokeball pattern this reverse pattern would stick throughout the rest of black and white and X&Y and finally and possibly our busiest year yet 2011 kicked off a brand new trend mcDonald's promo cards we've seen some simple promo cards with stamps before like the Burger King ones but this new McDonald's line gave us a brand new confetti like foil pattern they've been using the same pattern now for promo cards every year for almost a decade now we've seen special powerful Pokemon cards for nearly 10 years at this point but boundaries crossed give a special powerful trainer cards with the ace spec these cards features foil red and blue text as well as a nearly full card holo treatment utilizing the horizontal stripe pattern across the border and finally in next destinies we get Pokemon e^x capital D capital X uppercase DX that bursts these new exas featured only legendary Pokemon these carts have foil borders that are full of extended art background foil and particle effects they would also continue the trend to fall our ultra rares going strong as well the dark Explorer set debuted secret rare item cards they have a similar pattern to the secret rare shiny pokemon but instead of shinies they feature golden versions of previously existing items just like many other things in black and white this would become a trend for years to come the plasma storm set would give us a brand new form of evil team Pokemon this time themed around Team Plasma these carts of a faint Team Plasma logo in the text box this was the unique blue card border and in the specialty set to close Gen 5 legendary treasures give us a crazy new type of secret rare featuring art of Zekrom and rush RAM that make them look like they are made entirely out of gold this type of pattern has only been replicated a couple of times phantom forces gave us a similar diamond color Dialga secret rare and we also had a return to gold with ultra and a crossbow in dragon majesty oh yeah and they also did a similar full gold treatment with the hidden fates taboos where they added a little bit of color on the characters as well legendary treasures also give us the first radiant collection subset their most recognizable by unique shapes such as music notes and hearts absolutely covering the cards starting with X&Y we got a new main pattern that reflects light in a diagonal line across the card I called this pattern sunlight because it looks like beams of light are falling down from the sky across the Pokemon just like the video games the X&Y TCG set gave us mega Pokemon in the form of mega X's these cards feature golden text boxes a lot of foil and giant foil letters with the Japanese word for the featured attack on the card photo enough the Japanese cars use English letters instead flash fire would also begin the very short and extremely disappointing worst secret rare golds ever pattern I don't know what to call it what made them so bad here I'll just show you here's mega Charizard now here is secret rare mega Charizard it seriously might take you a while to spot the difference but there's just the tiniest amount of extra gold in some of the text borders they're pretty bad the same way we saw foil blue borders for Team Plasma we also got a couple of special team flare tools and phantom forces that feature foil red borders this is by far one of the shortest gimmicks in the pokemon TCG their official name is team flare hyper gear and I think there's only two of them next up is ancient trait Pokemon which began in the primal clash set which had special abilities and featured large hollow foil art that covered most but not all of the card collectors typically call these 3/4 hollows because they aren't quite full arts but they're close for the second time ever break through gave us cards that were intended to be played sideways Pokemon break are instantly recognizable featuring all gold characters and a unique checkerboard foil in the background of the art box breakthrough would also give us a much better secret rare pattern trend these secret rares all have gold borders full art and each card features multiple Pokemon that hang out behind or alongside the principal character art as the hip children of today might say these are squadron goals while the same reverse holo pattern would keep on trucking through the X&Y generation steam siege gave us dual type Pokemon which led to some pretty cool duel type reverse hollows splitting the energy foil right down the middle we'd also see a return to radiant collection with the second sub set in generations once again all kinds of fun completely unique foil patterns emerge with shapes like snowflakes sweets and even a Magic Castle these collections truly are some of the most distinct Hollow patterns we've ever seen in the history of the game and I hope we keep getting more like it but before we get too far into the future how about one more throw back into the past the evolution set contained reprints of mostly art from the base set and to celebrate it they recreated the original stars pattern from 1999 it is distinctly different though it's a little lighter on the pop-out effect but it's also a lot bolder and easier to see here's Charizard in Charizard side by side from 1999 and 2016 and now that we're in Gen 7 we get another new main pattern it's subtle and similar to Gen sinks but with wavy streaks instead of straight lines I like to think this was made to resemble the waves of the Aloha and Shores or maybe they just thought it looked cool what do I know Sun and Moon also breaks a long reverse holo trend by giving us something slightly different it's still energies and pokeballs but this time the design features one huge stamp to the left and tons of smaller ones to the right the capital e XV exes finally retire here as well making room for the new pokemon GX these cards feature special one-time attacks to replicate the Z moves from the games they have a lot of stylistic similarities to the exas with card art but their most noticeable by their clean borders which feature a silver foil and a thin black strip we'd also later get the tag team G X's which featured multiple Pokemon on one card actually fighting together new gold item cards came in Sun and Moon sometimes even repeating gold cards that we got in black and white the difference of Sun and Moon cards is at this time even the item cards of a full art treatment with gold foil from top to bottom a few years later in unified mines they'd also extend this gold art treatment to stadium cards as well and even the energy went gold with gold borders and shiny marks for these secret rares at the time of this video these are the most expensive foil basic energy in the history of the game the mini Sun shinin legends gave me one of my absolute favorite cards in the game this special Mewtwo secret rare dubbed Mewtwo by a lot of collectors this card is a subtle texture and foil around the tube and a rainbow foil over Mewtwo itself I've talked about this card in the past but like I've said the camera really just doesn't do it justice it is one of the best looking foil patterns they've ever done in my opinion and around this time we also got another new company based foil promo pattern this time a sequin style foil that became exclusive to General Mills products like cereal and fruit roll-ups I have a soft spot for these cards because I got to do a promo stream for them on the front page of twitch where I was asked to eat cereal and open pokemon cards crimson invasion give us a small variant two hollows and G X's with the new ultra B subtype these cards feature a black and crimson foil accent in their effect boxes particularly with the GX cards almost 15 years ago we had the Pokemon star but now in 2018 we have the prism star these cards which could be Pokemon trainers or energy all feature mirror foil over the prism rule and the main icon at the bottom of the card each card also has an entirely black border toward the end of the Sun and Moon era we got this massive subset so big that it was bigger than the actual scent the shiny vault in hidden fates gave us a ton of cards featuring shiny pokemon these carts have gold sparkles and textured starbursts that are similar to the rainbow secret rares and Sun and Moon would end with a bang in cosmic eclipse giving us one final secret rare that is one of the absolute coolest these cards all future important trainers throughout pokemons history alongside the Pokemon they're representing these cards have a full art foiled treatment except for the border which remains the classic plain yellow and finally the time has come for the present sword and shield gives a new standard holo pattern this time looking similar to black and whites but vertical instead of horizontal the new reverse holo pattern continues that same theme of pokeballs and energy but this time it's in the form of tiny banners that stack vertically the specialty pokemon card of sword and shield is pokemon v and v max representing the Giganta Manx feature in the games these cards have black foil borders black accents and a giant black V in the top left corner of each card I've made the joke a hundred times already but I still cannot believe that they have made V cards that will never not be funny to me rainbow secret rares also return although this time they have much more color and texture than the Sun and Moon versions also for the first time we see rainbow supporter cards not just pokemon and finally to continue with pokemons mad obsession with bling sword and shield continues to dish out the gold the pattern this time around makes the entire card gold background text boxes empty space except that main item er character starting with the newest set rebel clash which came out just as I finished the script this gold treatment also extends to pokemon cards which also feature for what feels like the 20th time today shiny pokemon and that is everything at least so far I'm sure my list isn't perfect but it took an insane amount of time to catalogue everything and it was a massive dis Daljit rip going back through the entire history of the Pokemon Trading Card Game all at once I hope you enjoyed this more laid-back and relaxing style of video if you saw a card that you particularly liked - remembered let me know your favorites in the comments section below as always thank you for joining me on this channels wild adventure through games in the digital space and on the tabletop I'll see you guys again next time with more gaming content [Music] you

Channel: TheJWittz

Views: 207,140

Rating: 4.9673123 out of 5

Keywords: Pokemon tcg, Pokemon card, Pokémon TCG, Pokémon Card, Base set, retro, 90s, Hidden Fates, Cosmic Eclipse, Rebel Clash, Sword and shield, Switch, Unified Minds, Ultra Rare, Secret Rare, holo, holographic, V Cards, rarest, most expensive, Charizard, Collection

Id: TjlU_WKhS8w

Length: 24min 10sec (1450 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020