Chesnaught-EX 2014 Tin

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here back with another PTCGOpA update!

This time I have opened up a Chesnaught-EX Kalos Power Trio Tin (that is its full official title it seems!) I bought it along with the other two tins that come in the collection (Delphox-EX and Greninja-EX) from Card Team for £28.75 altogether.

The Chesnaught-EX tin.

It came with the promo, a code card for the tin on PTCGO and four different booster packs; Flashfire, XY Base Set, Plasma Blast and Plasma Freeze. A good variety. 

As usual, I'll put up pictures of my pulls down below, but if you don't like spoilers then I suggest checking out my video opening on my youtube channel.

Lets start off first with the promo:

Chesnaught-EX promo card XY18

I don't know why, but it's bald skull like chrome head weirds me out, even though I'm quite fond of this Pokémon!

Three rares: Cofagrigus from Plasma Freeze, Floatzel from Flashfire and Simisage from XY. 

I also got a reverse-holo rare in the form of a mean looking Team Plasma's Chandelure from Plasma Freeze.

But the Awesome Pull Award for this opening must naturally go to this beautiful ultra rare card; Virizion-EX from Plasma Blast.

Overall this was a good opening. I think I needed most the rares and reverse-holoncards that I got. I most defenitly needed the Chesnaught-EX promo card and am happy as hell that I got that Virizion-EX - it is quite possible my first EX card for Plasma Blast!

Thanks for sticking with me for this adventure, please stay tuned for the next one. Lets hope it's as awesome as these past two have been!
Bye for now!

Hoenn Collection Box

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here, happy as a clam, because today I bring you not only a box with lots of lovely promotional stuff, but also some great booster pack pulls!

Today I open the Hoenn Collection Box, the last piece of Pokémon TCG merchandise I purchased before starting this PTCGOpA.
I bought it from Chaos Cards for £14.95. A decent price for something that offers so much extra promotional stuff.

Here is the box with all the lovely goodies displayed. Three XY promo cards, a pin, a Jumbo card and three booster packs!

Before I go on showing you images of the contents I will tell you that I got some very good pulls. If you want spoilers, keep scrolling down. If not, click here to check out the video opening of this box and join in the suspense with me!

Lets start off with the contents we know I'm going to get in the box:

The Jumbo card with the pin. The Jumbo card is of Primal Kyogre-EX from Primal Clash, which is played in the same manner as a Mega card for the mechanics of the TCG (well, for the normal sized card anyways, Jumbos are not tournament legal!)

A more detailed look at the pin. It has all three Hoenn starters together, very cute!

The three Hoenn starters as XY promos! It's very hard to say which of these cards is my favourite they all look so good.

The Torchic and Mudkip came out fine, the Treeko sadly has a visible dent on the back of it because of the packaging (curse you Nintendo!)

And now finally for the contents, in reverse order of both coolness and openings:

A Honchkrow rare from Phantom Forces. Easily the least exciting card I got in this box, but a card I do not yet own none the less. 

A Full Art AZ trainer card!! I actually pulled this guy from the very first Phantom Forces booster pack I've ever opened, talk about good luck!

It also happens to be the first full art trainer card I've ever gotten!

As if AZ wasn't enough, this box keeps giving. A Mega Kangaskhan-EX from Flashfire. But not just any old ultra rare M Kangaskhan-EX, oh no; a SECRET RARE Mega Kangaskhan-EX!!

You can tell it's a secret rare because of the gold bordering on the card as well as this cards number in the set (109/106. 106 is how many cards are in the set; any cards that go beyond that are secret rares)

Needless to say, I am overjoyed. I was happy enough to get three promotional cards from this box, so imagine my surprise when I get both a full ultra art rare and a secret rare card!

I'm not actually a fan of these secret rare cards' designs since they're the exact same one as the ultra rares but with a gold framing, that's all. But I'm just so happy to have gotten a secret rare card in a box like this that I ended up not caring at all. Just what I needed after a long dry spell of pulls.

Well this was exciting. Do you think the next adventure can top this? Stay tuned to find out!

Till next time Poké-trainers!

Xerneas-EX 2014 Tin

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here and today I'll just do a quick update for this adventure, because honestly, it wasn't that great!

This adventure I open up a Xerneas-EX 2014 Spring Tin. Bought from Card Team together with the Yveltal-EX tin for £19.75.

Click here for the video opening or just scroll down below to see what swag I got.

The Xerneas-EX 2014 Spring Tin comes with a promo card, 4 booster packs and a TCGO card for this tin.

The beautiful promo card Xerneas-EX XY07.

All the booster packs yielded were rare cards. 

I did manage to get a reverse-holo rare though, one I still needed.

I usually don't complain about getting rares, but I have hit a dry spell for holos and ultra rare openings for a long while now. It'd be nice to get something shiny =P

Still, 5 rares out of 4 booster packs and a beautiful promo that I still needed ain't too bad. Be thankful for what you get ey?

Stay tuned for more openings. Let's cross our fingers for better luck next adventure!

Krookodile-EX Box

Hi all!

I'm the Amateur Collector and I've opened myself up a Krookodile-EX box as part of my Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures 2!

This box cost £13.60 and was purchased from Chaos Cards.

As usual click here to check out the opening on video or/and scroll down to check out the pulls I got!

Here is the box in all its Krookodilian glory!

Here are the promo cards, the Krookodile-EX XY25 with its Jumbo equivalent.

The rares and reverse-holo rare. 

I don't know why, but I'm really digging that Butterfree.

And two holographic cards, wooo!

Rhyperior and Delphox, both from the XY Base Set boosters.

Overall I'm pretty pleased with this box. No ultra rares, but I did get two holos out of four booster packs which is an above average pull rate. 

Krookodile looks really cool too, but I was bound to like it since Krookodile is just an awesome dude-mon anyways!

Well thanks for reading/watching, hopefully this spells out a trend for future good pulls. They are really needed after the dry spell we've had this past week in terms of pulls. Stay tuned to see if things really do get turned around! 

M'bye bye!

2 Flashfire Checklane Blister Packs: Honedge & Skiddo

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here!

Today I have not one but two checklane blister packs to open from the Flashfire series. Both packs come with a booster pack, a coin and an exclusive promo card; a Skiddo and a Honedge.
Individually they cost me £3.45 from Card Team.

If you look at the picture bellow you will see that one of the blister packs (and the promo card within it) got damaged. I am not sure when this occurred. I very much doubt Card Team would send out damaged goods, so I believe it got damaged either during transport (curse you Royal Mail!), by being forcefully shoved through the letter box (curse you again Royal Mail!!) and/or by being badly stored by those to which the package was delivered to (I was abroad when this package was delivered).
Well whatever happened, it means I'm going to have to purchase myself another copy of the damaged card (the Honedge). Thankfully, it does not seem to be expensive to buy individually at all.

Anyways, as usual click here to check out the video or scroll down to view the pulls I got.

It might not be immediately evident, but the blister pack on the right hand side is quite bent on the bottom left. This sadly also affected the promo card inside.

Two awesome coins. My favourite of the two has to be Chespin. Not necessarily just because Chespin is my favourite of the Kalos starters, but also because this green reflective colour goes very well with the coin and image.

Promo card XY11 Skiddo! 

This image does not do justice to just how sparkly that holofoil is!

My damaged Honedge, Black Star Promo XY12

As you can see, this card has been bent quite severely bent at the bottom =(

And these are the rare cards I pulled from both blister packs. A Snorlax and a Durant.

Again, I am disappointed that the promo card was damaged, especially since they are the main reason I purchase these kind of blister packs in the first place, but I am lucky that it does not cost much to buy separately. 

Well, not the most amazing of openings. But I can garantee you that the next adventure will be epic ;)

Stay tuned to see exactly how epic it is! 

Deoxys-EX - 2013 Fall Tin

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here.

Today I open the Deoxys-EX Tin, I got it on ebay for £11.45. At the time of purchase this was a good price. Now, it's an even better price. These tins go for anywhere between £15-£18.

If you want to check out the video, click here.
Keep scrolling down if you want to see what pulls I got.

The tin itself.

This is the promo, part of the BW Black Star Promo collection.

(This picture was taken from Bulbapedia since I forgot to take a picture of my own like a numpty!) 

As you can see, I did not get the greatest of pulls.

Five rares is good, but none of them were holos or ultra rares.

So I'm not overly happy with my pulls this time round. I don't usually mind pulling rares if I don't have them already, but out of five rares I already own three of them.

Oh well, stick around and lets see if the next opening will be better ey! 

See you!

Trevenant - Furious Fists Triple Blister Pack

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here with an opening for my PTCGOpA series!

This time round I've opened up a Trevenant blister pack for the Furious Fists expansion. I bought this one along with the Slurpuff blister pack for altogether £17.31 from Chaos Cards.

Click here if you want to see the video opening of this blister pack or simply scroll down below if you want to see the pulls I got.

The pack itself

The promo card, Trevenant XY14. I like the dark imagery, it goes well with the Pokémon's design and typing.

And here are the pulls I obtained. A Jynx, Pangoro and Gothitelle - all rares.

So sadly nothing special but they are all cards I needed to further my collection (even the Gothitelle that I originally thought I had already).

I do like the artwork where you see the Pokémon battling, they are very dynamic and a great homage to the overall franchise, cause you know, that's pretty much the point of it; monsters beating each other up!

I look forward to opening up more packs from this set and checking out more of the dynamic artwork.

And that's it for today's opening. A fairly straightforward one. 

Tune in next time to see if I open up anything more exciting!

Opening 24 XY Base Set Blister Packs

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here with another exciting opening of Pokémon TCG  merchandise. And I'm very excited for this one. I'm opening up an entire box of blister packs! Specifically, 24 blister packs for the XY Base Set.

I bought the box from iguk.co.uk for £43.59. It was originally £46.59 (already half the retail price) and I got a further £3 reduction which IGUK were kind enough to give to me due to a previous failed order.

Naturally due to the large amount of blister packs I opened I have LOADS of pictures to share with you guys, and had to break the opening into four separate videos, all of which you can watch here:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

And here comes the swag!
Rares, reverse-holo rares, holos and ultra rares, there is a lot to show off!

These are all the rares I got. As you can tell I got a few repeats, but that's to be expected from an entire box of packs! I didn't actually have most of these though, so overall I'm happy with these ones.

I got 6 reverse-holo rares. Although I don't focus on completing reverse-holo sets, I'm always happy to get rares none the less!

Only four holographic cards sadly, but they are good ones! I'm especially fond of the Vivillon! I'm eager to get the alternate pattern Vivillon.

I got 4 ultra rare cards in this box. One of them, this Venusaur EX, was a double! Indeed I already pulled this guy not long ago.

(excuse the poor quality, just check the other picture in my other opening in the link above, it's the same type of card)

Here's an ultra I was happy to pull, Emolga-EX! Yes I know it is not worth much, but I love the rodent! One of my favourite electric types in the video game.

I got this wonderful card. This Yveltal-EX will compliment my Xerneas-EX nicely.

And last but not least...

Mega Blastoise-EX! With this card, I have both the Mega cards from this set. I'm very happy.

So although I got a few doubles in this box, I ended up getting many cards that I needed for my collection, putting me quite a few steps closer to completing this set. 

I was shocked to get so few holographic cards, even though I know the ratio for holos is low in XY, I didn't think I'd end up with only four - the EXACT same amount of ultra rares that I got. Which begs the question; what are their actual collectable value?

Either way, I'm very happy with what I got and look forward to opening up a whole booster box for this set! I wonder when that'll be? Stay tuned to find out =D

Garchomp-EX Collection Box

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here, opening up a Garchomp-EX Collection Box as part of my Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures series!

I ordered this box from Chaos Cards a while back while it was on pre-order special offer (it cost £14.45 and came with a free pack of sleeves!). The price for this box has since jumped up by about £4 from what I can tell.

This box had some fantastic pulls. If you can tolerate my rambling, I'd suggest checking out the box opening on my youtube channel!

If you don't fancy that however, just scroll down and check out the swag I got.

First off, the promotional cards! You get the Black Star Promo Garchomp-EX, number XY09 in the set.

The rares: A reverse-holo Rhyperior, a beautiful card despite featuring a Pokémon I'm not overly fond. I also got a rare Starmie and a holographic Gogoat (my second one in this adventure).

And here are my stars! TWO EXs!  A Venusaur-EX to compliment the M Venusaur-EX I got in the previous opening, and a Full Art Latios-EX! (actually my second one)

This was a great box! What can I say? I may have gotten some doubles, but they are great ones.

CAN'T WAIT FOR THE NEXT OPENING!

See you guys round!