Variety streamer Félix “xQc” Lengyel expected to win big when he spent $500 on Pokémon Trading Card Game packs. But he didn’t.
And xQc was frustrated when he thought a Darkrai EX he opened was worth much more than its real value.
“Darkrai is worth a lot, it’s a very, very rare card,” xQc said while browsing card website TCG Player. “It’s full art, full foil. It looks nuts. I even have to go to page two because it’s so rare.”
When he found his card in the catalog, his excitement was over. The card is worth $2.47 at best.
The Darkrai EX that xQc got is tagged as an Ultra Rare card, which is the second-highest rarity tier that a Pokémon TCG card can have. But this doesn’t make the card exclusive enough to turn it into something a collector would want to spend a lot of money on. Still, that Darkrai card is the sixth rarest card of the Legendary Treasures collection, which is the set that xQc was opening packs from.
The highest rarity tier in the game is Secret Rare. If xQc had opened one of the two cards of that rarity that are part of the set, which are Zekrom or Reshiram, he could’ve sold them for about $38. They’re the most expensive cards from the Legendary Treasures collection, which has been sold normally since 2013.
What generally makes a card become expensive in most trading card games, including Pokémon TCG, is how useful it is for the competitive scene or how many times it was printed and distributed. Since Legendary Treasures is a standard expansion that anyone can buy, its rarest cards will likely never be much more expensive than they are today.
XQc was probably looking for a card like Championship Arena, which is the most expensive Pokémon TCG card right now. It’s on sale from $1,500 to $2,000 since it was exclusively given to competitors of the Pokémon World Championships 2005. This made Championship Arena an expensive collector’s card that might never see play again.
We’re sorry, xQc, but buying standard expansions of any card game will likely never make you rich. It might not even let you earn back the money you spent on them. At least you now have a huge set of 2013 cards that aren’t even usable in standard format tournaments anymore.
