Fair (poor) condition seems to be the average for any French card listing that isn’t modern.
Why does it seem French has the worst condition cards, and gets premium pricing for some reason?
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Anecdotal story.
I lived in France during the initial Pokemon boom. I was too old to be interested then but my brother did collect.
In his school you would not just trade cards, you would “battle” to get them.
This involved placing your card face down on the pavement and tapping on it with your hand to try to flip it. Your opponent would do the same and the first one that missed lost his card.
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Well that would explain why some of the older French holos I’ve bought are in such bad condition. Interesting.
I checked the Cardmarket listings for this particular card and the condition distribution is as follows (note that Cardmarket shows 300 listings max, so listings with unreasonably high prices for their condition are excluded where applicable, I also only counted listings and not the number of cards available per listing to simplify things):
English
PO - 39 (5.34%)
PL - 66 (9.03%)
LP - 80 (10.94%)
GD - 118 (16.14%)
EX - 128 (17.51%)
NM - 296 (40.49%)
MT - 4 (0.55%)
French
PO - 18 (13.74%)
PL - 23 (17.56%)
LP - 14 (10.69%)
GD - 23 (17.56%)
EX - 35 (26.72%)
NM - 18 (13.74%)
MT - 0 (0%)
German
PO - 34 (9.71%)
PL - 42 (12%)
LP - 49 (14%)
GD - 92 (26.29%)
EX - 73 (20.86%)
NM - 56 (16%)
MT - 4 (1.14%)
Spanish
PO - 2 (2.99%)
PL - 0 (0%)
LP - 3 (4.48%)
GD - 9 (13.43%)
EX - 19 (23.36%)
NM - 29 (43.28%)
MT - 5 (7.46%)
Italian
PO - 38 (8.28%)
PL - 73 (15.9%)
LP - 67 (14.6%)
GD - 111 (24.18%)
EX - 101 (22%)
NM - 68 (14.81%)
MT - 1 (0.22%)
Portuguese
PO - 1 (2.56%)
PL - 3 (7.69%)
LP - 8 (20.51%)
GD - 8 (20.51%)
EX - 11 (28.2%)
NM - 8 (20.51%)
MT - 0 (0%)
Dutch
PO - 3 (6%)
PL - 8 (16%)
LP - 6 (12%)
GD - 10 (20%)
EX - 11 (22%)
NM - 11 (22%)
MT - 1 (2%)
So if we just look at Poor and Played cards, so cards in really bad condition, we get the following ranking of how much of the total supply shown on Cardmarket they are:
French 31.3 %
Italian 24.18%
Dutch 22%
German 21.71%
English 14.37%
Portuguese 10.25%
Spanish 2.99%
On the other hand if we look at Near Mint and Mint cards, the ranking is as follows:
Spanish 50.74%
English 41.04%
Dutch 24%
Portuguese 20.51%
German 17.14%
Italian 15.03%
French 13.74%
So, in conclusion while I first thought that it was just anecdotal evidence or a coincidence, it looks like you may be onto something there. The average condition for a French card would however rather be between Light Played and Good (so overall comparable to German and Italian, albeit leaning more towards the Light Played side than them).
12 Likes
Wow thanks for doing so much work on this!
My main experience is with the French McDonalds cards that have exclusive holos. I ordered so many in “very good” condition only to find out they were scraped by concrete 100 times. Maybe French culture is to overcondition a card (say its NM but its LP)
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As a foreign language WOTC collector…. Welcome to my reality.
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Dealing with french collectors, I always got the impression that they have to deal with a lot of scarcity, even way back in the day.
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French buyers: oh, you have a PSA/CGC/BGS WOTC card… SUPER interested. Please sell it to me! oh no no no, it’s not mint, much too high of a price. Lowball!
French sellers: Same card, eBay BIN 3x the price or best offer. (Offer set $20 below list)
Not every one is like this but the negotiation is brutal.
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It is just as bad on eBay when I offer more than cardmarket and get laughed at.
@joponnes that McDonald’s eevee lmao
Edit oops it didn’t post. This is the “LP” one joponnes helped me grab. It looks fine in a binder but amusing to be considered lightly played. Note jp did their best there just wasn’t a lot available
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That is 100% my experience. In no planet is that LP, but a lot (not all) French sellers don’t have the proper education on how to condition cards. It’s like there are moms selling them for their kids thinking the cards look ok
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I had a look on ebay UK out of curiosity and there are quite a lot for sale but even the most expensive ones at around £90 have some sort of damage or obvious whitening. Even worse is that every single copy is better being sold by the same seller so there’s no market competition.
I played that same stupid game, but it was for panini soccer cards lol
For Pokémon cards the most popular game was to put cards against the wall and try to hit them to win. You could throw marbles, rocks, whatever 
“NM”
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Fr.Rakuten is where I sourced my McDonalds Eevee cards. This would have been called NM on there, haha
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We never played the flip game at the school I went to during the first years but two schools later I was informed of what it was and that they did it all the time. Almost couldn’t believe it at first, thought they were a bunch of neanderthals.
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The one joponnes got me was listed lp
To be clear, no disrespect to the French. I admire their complete and sometimes violent refusal to raise retirement age
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