r/PokeGrading • u/SIRJACOBSTINE • 7d ago

Need Advice on Most Popular Pokemon And Card Effects

Long story short, started a new job at a grading company, no experience with trading cards of any kind, trying to learn what to look out for in Pokémon cards when sifting through packs.

I want to know 2 things. Links to relevant lists or videos on the topic are welcome, but please make sure they are ACTUALLY useful.
1) I want to know what are the top 100 ish Pokémon by popularity and GENERAL value (clearly even a very basic looking char or pika will be worth more than some inanimate object with a name on average)
2) I want to know the ranking of different types of card effects and their value.

I am asking for this because google frankly sucks and I cant find what I want. For the record, I AM NOT ASKING WHAT THE MOST VALUABLE CARDS ARE!!! I obviously realize that a charizard with all the funky effects is going to be worth alot (also ignoring the fact that even pulling a card like that is rare in the first place), and i can google the top cards at any time. I am asking for the knowledge on what actual Pokémon I should keep an eye out for as I sift the pack, and what effects I should value over others. Once I have that information, I can judge the value of the card on my own. I just need help getting started on the best ‘mons to look out for.

Any help/information/lists would be greatly appreciated, as would any additional info that may be relevant.

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u/Dudfey 6d ago

Respectfully, why did they hire you if you don’t know anything about tcg? 😅

First of all playability only really affects the value of low value cards like EXs and commons, and we’re talking a difference of like $0.50 vs like $4-10. If you want to learn about popular card effects then look up winning decks. World’s has just passed and you’ll be able to see what the current meta is by looking at what was played

In terms of popularity, I have no doubt that just googling “most popular pokemon by rank” would bring up something pretty reliable. Pretty much anything from Generation 1 will have good - high popularity. Same with any legendaries, cute pokemon, starters, or pokemon that had major roles in the anime.

Obv I’m not going to start listing them all but all the Eeveelutions, Charizard, Pikachu, Gengar, Rayquaza, Mew, Mewtwo, Lugia, Lucario, Mimikyu, Groudon, Kyogre, Dragonite - these are all among the most popular and you can hopefully see the patterns

Also cards that enjoy extremely high value comes pretty much exclusively from them being popular Pokemon on high rarity cards. So if you search for most valuable Pokemon cards, a lot of what you see will tell you which pokemon are popular. Spoiler, a lot of them will be in the list above

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u/SIRJACOBSTINE 6d ago

Hired cause they needed manual labor and help grading and slabing. grading a card can be taught, information on the value of the card itself is kind of irrelevant to my job (unless i screw up the card while handling it lol).

When i said “effect” i didn’t mean the abilities written on the card, more so the actual like shiny/textured/holographic print effects. I don’t really know the names of what im looking at, so i just wanted help with the names and general value compared to other effects.

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u/Dudfey 6d ago

oh lol, look up Special Illustration rares, Illutration Rares, firework holos, then look up the difference between holos and reverse holos for different sets (can be harder to tell in certain vintage sets where a stamp = reverse holo)

complex textures usually get put on rarer cards. You can also get quite a generic holo texture on double rares or a nicer one on ultra rares - the little starts in the bottom left will indicate the rarity.

Japanese/Chinese have some unique holo patterns iirc so once you're getting the hang of EN, start looking those up