What’s the consensus on the Best Of Game promo range released at the end of WotC’s tenure to commemorate their best cards? I’m struggling to build up a feel of what these cards are/were
The pop seems quite low but the prices aren’t that high - has a bit of a world championship deck feel about it.
I can’t understand why, for example, the Dark Venusaur isn’t much more expensive considering it’s the only English release. There’s also a ‘Winner’ variant which would presumably be a more limited ‘minor trophy’ release.
English promos and trophies, I feel, sometimes need someone to tell their stories, otherwise they don’t gain traction like Japanese equivalents or high-profile English set cards. The Best of Game cards are cool, a nice purchase if they’re still cheap.
I love the Best of Game Promo’s, but they will not gain “Trophy” status. They are simply Promos and were released similarly to most other league promos in WOTC era.
As far as winner rarity, I would say there is one winner card for every two non-winner cards. The pack distribution was done a little odd. It seems like each league was given 3 packs of 8 cards. Two with non-winners and one with all winners
I usually try to get the packs sealed when they are available at the right price
I think these are pretty cool niche subset… not many people collect them. I have a complete Winner stamped set minus Rocket’s Hitmonchan and Hitmonchan Base that I got as part of a collection I bought maaaany years ago. If not for that, I may not know they existed.
They’re slowing selling out on various platforms in good condition. Interestingly I think some of them were never properly distributed (ex the event Rocket’s Hitmonchan was at never fired), so in those cases there are ONLY “winner” editions and the non-winner editions don’t seem to exist.
All Rocket’s Hitmonchan and Rocket’s Mewtwo have the winner stamp. I have never seen the Professor Elm with the winner stamp, other than the Troll & Toad listing. I’ve reached out to T&T several times inquiring and they told me they only have the non-winner. T&T uses stock images, so I’m not sure where they got that scan.
Oh sorry I misread your initial post–I think we agree then, the Rocket’s ones all have winner stamps only. I’m wondering why only those were released out to the public? Seems odd to have one but not the other, unless they printed all the winner stamps on the same sheet and distributed them to TOs ahead of time. Since the other events never fired, maybe TOs never got their allocation of the non-winners?
I really like these cards! I mentioned in another thread that the card I miss the most which is at PSA right now is my Dark Venusaur “Winner” card. It isn’t particularly valuable, but it’s special to me because of the way it was obtained.
Eventually I would like to collect a complete PSA-graded set of all the WOTC promo cards. When most people think of WOTC promos they focus on just the Black Star promo set. There are others like the Best of Game cards which are overlooked. Hopefully they get more attention in the future.
The Winner Rocket’s Hitmonchan and Rocket’s Mewtwo were the most scarce and expensive compared to the other Winners and Non-Winners when I first learned about and completed the set. I think they still are, but I haven’t kept up. Not sure why the Winner versions appear in general since the events were canceled. Could be they were distributed ahead of time like you mentioned. I think I read somewhere they were given to TOs as a “thank you” even though WOTC knew the events weren’t going to happen - could be completely wrong though.
I started with the Black Star Promos because those were the promos I remember having as a kid. Another really popular one is Southern Islands. I think the W Stamp, Best of Game, and Energize Your Game promos are often overlooked because they are smaller sets and the distribution of cards was more limited. The 53 cards in the Black Star Promos set had a ton of ways to obtain a variety of cards.
commenting to say this is the set ive been going after/completing next. gary hoarding i should have expected lolll. some of these are very rare in psa 10.
