I had a conversation on the discord that had me thinking about this question. Which era made the best shiny Pokémon cards? Since shiny Pokémon have ben a thing every era has made some cards that showcased them all with different styles and art, so there is a lot to look at. I would say my favorites are the gold stars. Fantastic art coupled with the charm of the ex era really hits me. What does everyone else think? Let me know! 
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ex-era made them the most elusive, which I think captures the heart of what a “shiny” is.
Neo made them literally shiny, which deserves props. Also the first real implementation of texture on a mass-produced card.
I think Hidden Fates wins the award for getting people to really want to catch them all, though.
All of these did something really well. But I think we can all agree that anything is better than the Platinum shinies.
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imo gold stars are generally the best shinies
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Neo, period. Other opinions are wrong and/or invalid
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Gold stars, especially gyarados and other delta species
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I prefer Neo because I’m a WOTC fanboy, but aside from those, I would honestly say Black & White did a great job with them. Not to mention they gave a Shiny Blastoise for once instead of just Charizard. The description was also pretty neat.
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Neo and gold star are my favorite.
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The discord conversation we were having actually was about BW shinies they are super clean!
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I’d give an honourable mention 4th gen. The Bagon, Drifloon, Shinx etc are fantastic, and show the Pokemon in their ‘natural habitat’. I feel like there’s something to that - the Pokemon look very different but they’re still the same species.
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I prefer those to the random gen 6 promos
Gen 2 and 3 did it best though
+1
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Gen 6 also had shinies in some sets like Steam Siege.
I second this. While something like your goldstars work best for a TCG set (difficult to pull + strong identity + cool art + popular pokemon), the 4th gen ones capture the essence of what the video games portray shinies to be. It’s just a random pokemon with a unique colour scheme, like a genetic quirk. Humans ascribe value to these rare differences but if you’ve ever seen an odd coloured squirrel or pigeon in a park, it might stand out to you but it behaves and is treated as just another squirrel/pigeon by all the other animals. There is a lot of fan artwork out there that will show a scene with a lot of pokemon and there will often be just one coloured as shiny, seemly at random. The Neo Rev shining magikarp card also captures this vibe.
Overall, the lowkey nature of these shinies and the apparent “randomness” of the pokemon chosen is really cool to me. It just really portrays the essence of the video game shiny to me. I’m not a huge fan of the reverse but I think the japanese ones are perfect with the subtle star pattern on the card. My number one favourite thing about the 4th generation shinies is they also have a regular version of the pokemon done in each set. Done in the same setting AND by the same artist. Just further adds to everything I’ve mentioned
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A boring answer, but gold stars > all other shinies. It’s not particularly close, IMO. I like some of the Neo shinings (namely Gyarados), but some of the Neo shinings are kind of ugly. There’s not a single gold star that doesn’t look fantastic.
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No question the Gold Stars! The Neo shinings aren’t great Shiny examples at all because of the silver/grey foil laid on top of the artwork which is awesome but doesn’t correlate well with the shiny form colors of those Pokemon. Gold Stars will always be king of Shiny both in rarity and in execution.
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Was a tough choice but gonna have to go with neo tbh. I love gold stars but neo really made them stand out from the rest of the ‘normal pokemon’ ie normal holos. They had amazing artworks and the pokemon themselves shining or looking refelctive I think was genius for shiny pokemon.
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I honestly enjoy each era’s style for shinies, except the Hidden Fates style. Those cards seem incredibly uninspired to me.
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I would tend to agree with this. Love the textures of neo destiny shinies, and the shining gyarados is awesome (probably the best artwork of all of them along with rayquaza), but the other shinies I find a bit lackluster. Gold stars take it for me. Wish I carried on collecting past wotc to enjoy the chase of pulling one, because I certainly won’t be pulling any now lol
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The best shinys imo are Magikarp and Gyarados. Because you are asking for an era, I have to give to the gold stars. Overall i like the gold stars combined more than the shinings combined. I also really like the shinys from Stormfront to Supreme Victors.
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