Ill just start by saying i dont play serious competitive, and this question is purely out of curiosity after random reading.
So when a card is tournament legal already, and they release a reprint, why would the reprint not be allowed in play? I noticed it mentioned it doesnt have a certain stamp, but if the card is the same, is there a particular reason for this? Cards like the classic collection for example. Anyway sorry if this is a stupid question i was just curious, thank you!
There’s a lot of similar but different wrapped up in this. First of all, the classic collection was advertised from the beginning as more of a “toy”/collectors item than part of the tcg. It just happens to also be reprints from the first gen.
Reprints are done in different ways for different reason. We often get “reprints” in the form of same card with different art in the same gen. Those cards are legal for play.
Sometimes there will be reprints just for fun as prizes. Eg during the BW and XY era, there were league prizes given out that were reprints of cards as far back as DP great encounters. Those cards weren’t legal for play, they were just collector’s items.
Tpci also (still?) releases world championship decks based on the tcg champions’ decks. The backs are different making them not legal for play but also that would be a way to get a guaranteed set of competitively viable cards easily without having to pull them, which doesn’t make good business sense
Not sure what else you had in mind? XY evolutions is an example of “reprints” of OG cards that WERE legal because it was a true re release
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I can add some additional context here. First and foremost, you can use any version of any card as long as (a) card is legal in the format you’re using it in, and (b) the card has the same name and function. So I can build a Standard deck with Ultra Balls from Plasma Freeze, because there’s a legal “Ultra Ball” card and both of them do the exact same thing: discard 2 cards from your hand, search your deck for a Pokemon. I can do this even though Plasma Freeze was rotated out in 2015.
In the past, legality went roughly by year of release, and included set cards as well as promotional cards. Often rotations would look something like “Primal Clash on and Black Star Promos XY35 on.” This often led to situations where cards originally printed in a set would rotate, however their promo versions would remain legal. Since you can use any version of a card if a version with the same name and function is legal, the card didn’t rotate. A good example of this is Yveltal EX from XY Base Set. It should have rotated in 2016 when XY base rotated, but was legal because of a promo reprint in the Shiny Kalos Tins (XY150) and therefore didn’t rotate until 2018.
The way TCG legality works now is based on regulation marks, which are the letters in the white box at the bottom left of the card. Currently all cards with a regulation mark of “F” or later (e.g. F, G, or H) are legal. Now, when a card is reprinted or a promotional version is made, they can keep the regulation mark of the original card such that there aren’t any cards that stay legal longer than they should.
The regulation mark legality also makes it simple to print cards that you don’t want to be legal: don’t give them regulation marks. All the TCG Classic cards aren’t legal because they don’t have regulation marks on them. The Celebrations Classic Collection cards also weren’t legal at any point because they don’t have regulation marks and retain their original set numbering (except for the BW-on cards which remained legal in Expanded).
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