Hi, I’m still relatively new to the Pokemon TCG and one thing that confuses me a lot are reverse holofoils.
As far as I understand and have heard from others (feel free to correct everything wrong I say), reverse holos were introduced to the TCG at some point (I don’t know when but probably not from the start, I’ve never heard about a base set reverse foil Charizard). Since their introduction, every card in a set has a chance to be a reverse holofoil card. How these look changes from one set to another. In general, reverse holos are worth less than their rare holofoil counterpart.
With that in mind, here are some questions:
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If I have a reverse foil of a rare/uncommon/common card (i.e. a card that wouldn’t have any foil at all), wouldn’t that make the reverse foil more valuable than the ‘original’? For example, Sandslash from Delta Species is a Rare, so it has no holographic foil. But in the reverse foil version, not only is there a holographic pattern, Sandslash itself is holographic. Which confuses me even more because I heard someone say that reverse foils only make the background holographic?
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Is there a guide on reverse holos, preferably with pictures as to how reverse foils for each set look like?
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Are the pull rates for a reverse variant of a rare holo the same as the pull rate for rare holo itself?
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The last question specifically concerns the later (more recent) sets of the EX era (Delta Species - Power Keepers). During that time the reverse foils almost seemed to upgrade the normal holos: The holographic picture stayed the same and in addition, they made the font of the card title and HP golden (and added the stamp of the set to the lower right of the picture which might be an upgrade for some but not for others). Do you think that in the future, the reverse holos from that era will outpace their normal counterparts in terms of value? Or will the standard variants still be the most valuable variant as with most other reverse holofoils? To give a hands-on example, if you were to invest in the Charizard from Crystal Guardians, would you buy the normal or the reverse foil variant?