Couple questions about Japanese Misty's Tears

[salaryyy]

So I’m learning something about the Pokemon TCG every day and I’ve just found out about the ‘no rarity’ versions of cards that appear in the Hanada City Theme Deck, which includes the banned Misty’s Tears card. This leads me to two questions…

1. Apparently (results of an arduous 2 min Google search) the Hanada City No rarity versions are rarer. But is that really the case? Without paying attention to it at all, 8 of the 10 cards I have are the no rarity versions.

2. Which set was the Japanese version of the card in? The english version was in Gym Challenge, but I’ve seen some sources say that the Japanese version was in Gym Expansion 1, whereas others say Gym Expansion 2.

Thanks as always for the help!

[pichufan]

I certainly can’t give a definitive answer for 1, but it was a common card in the set vs. a guaranteed card in the theme deck (2 of them) - the distribution of both is probably pretty similar.

For 2 it was part of Japan’s ジム拡張第1弾 リーダーズスタジアム Gym Expansion 1 Leaders’ Stadium set which was equivalent to the English Gym Heroes set - obviously this card didn’t feature in Gym Heroes. Questions like that can be easily answered on Bulbapedia for future reference: bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Misty%27s_Tears_(Gym_Challenge_118) and bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Gym_Heroes_(TCG).

[muk]

It was released in Gym 2 (=Challenge):
m.bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Misty%27s_Tears_(Gym_Challenge_118)

Bulbapedia is usually the only source you’ll need for 95% of all TCG questions.
Regarding rarity, no one can tell and I don’t think it matters too much price-wise at the moment.
You have two guaranteed copies per deck, but almost certainly way more regular Gym 2 boosters with the usual pull rate produced in total. Psa pop report shows almost 5x as much graded regular Gym 2 set version compared to the Deck Version (~1000 vs. ~270)

Edit: well, PichuFan was faster.

[Berndos]

I was surprised when I found that the PSA pop was 1:4 between deck and set versions of the card while the price didn’t reflect that rarity ratio at all, but then I found that all my set versions had much more vibrant colours, like just better contrast and saturation. Imo they look better. So maybe that eye appeal is a factor that keeps both fairly evenly priced, then again maybe people just don’t care right now. I believe though that even iver the long term both versions could stay relatively close in demand.

[joetehman]

@Berndos

I was surprised when I found that the PSA pop was 1:4 between deck and set versions of the card while the price didn’t reflect that rarity ratio at all, but then I found that all my set versions had much more vibrant colours, like just better contrast and saturation. Imo they look better. So maybe that eye appeal is a factor that keeps both fairly evenly priced, then again maybe people just don’t care right now. I believe though that even iver the long term both versions could stay relatively close in demand.

This card is one that is graded incorrectly all the time. Most of the time it was graded, it was listed under Gym instead of the decks (pretty true for most of those gym decks). So I wouldn’t use the PSA pop to determine that.

[salaryyy]

@joetehman

@Berndos

I was surprised when I found that the PSA pop was 1:4 between deck and set versions of the card while the price didn’t reflect that rarity ratio at all, but then I found that all my set versions had much more vibrant colours, like just better contrast and saturation. Imo they look better. So maybe that eye appeal is a factor that keeps both fairly evenly priced, then again maybe people just don’t care right now. I believe though that even iver the long term both versions could stay relatively close in demand.

This card is one that is graded incorrectly all the time. Most of the time it was graded, it was listed under Gym instead of the decks (pretty true for most of those gym decks). So I wouldn’t use the PSA pop to determine that.

That’s a pretty good point, thanks