Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures 2: Slurpuff - Furious Fists Triple Blister Pack

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here bringing you the next episode of PTCGOpA 2!

Today I open up a Slurpuff Blister Pack. I bought this pack in combination with another pack from chaoscards.co.uk. Together they cost me about £17.31 since I bought them in combination and got a discount from Chaos Cards' then loyalty scheme.

This'll be my first opening of Furious Fists booster packs!

Now lets get straight into it! Scroll down for images of the cards or check out the opening on youtube here: clickity click!

First the promo card:

Slurpuff! This one is Promo XY15. The picture up above does not do justice to the holographic pattern which makes it appear as if Slurpuff is being surrounded by glittering pollen as it walks through a patch of flowers. Very beautiful. 

A rare Golurk and reverse-holo Hariyama. I love how dynamic they look! This seems to be a theme for a lot of the Furious Fists artwork.

And the two holos! Slaking and Landorus, both keeping up the trend of looking dynamic, as if they're halfway through an attack charge.

 Overall a great blister pack opening. I got myself four rare cards in all, two of which were holographic cards, which definitely beats the ratio you usually get for XY sets. I'm happy ^^

Thanks for watching/reading. See you guys in the next adventure!
M'bye bye for now!

Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures 2: Thundurus-EX - 2013 Fall Tin

Hi all!
I'm the Amateur Collector and welcome to my second PTCGOpA S02 episode! (That is as long to type as it is to say!)

Today I open up a Thundurs-EX Fall 2013 tin! It's a great tin filled with 4 Team Plasma related booster packs (one Plasma Blast, one Plasma Freeze and two Plasma Blast packs).
I got it in store at Forbidden Planet for £12.99 (around a little over $19 USD).

This was a great tin that provided me with many cards that I did not have before! Click here if you want to see the video of the opening, otherwise keep scrolling down to see what I pulled.

First off:

Thundurus-EX BW81 Black Star Promo. This Thundurus is in its Therian Form.

As rares I got an Azelf from Plasma Blast, a Keckleon from Plasma Freeze, a reverse-holo Porygon-Z from Plasma Blast and a reverse-holo Beheeyem from Plasma Blast.

Infernape holo!! I know the tinsel holographic pattern isn't peoples' favourite pattern, but it works quite well on this guy.

And finally, the cherry (or egg as it were) on the cake:

A secret rare Exeggcute from Plasma Blast!!!

If I was going to get any of the secret rare cards from any Plasma series booster pack, it would be this one.

I just love how they randomly decided to make Exeggcute a shiny secret rare.

So overall I'm very happy with this opening. I basically got 6 rare cards out of four booster packs (2 rares, 2 rare reverse-holos, 1 holo and a secret rare! Wooo!). 

Lets hope this trend keeps up!

Thanks for watching/reading and see you in the next adventure =)

Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures 2: Eevee - Legendary Treasures Triple Blister Pack

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here with my first episode of PTCGOpA season 2!!

First off, a little explanation of the format for this adventure. Each episode I will randomly choose a product to open from a raffle that has the names to all the merchandise I have to open. This way it guarantees that each adventure will be unpredictable and varied. It's more fun that way!
I will film a few openings in one go due to time restraints in real life, but I'll upload the opening individually throughout the months (I'll aim for about 2 to 3 videos a week), this way there will be a steady stream of videos for PTCGOpA 2 for a long while, even if I end up going to live abroad again!

So with that little explanation out of the way, lets get cracking.

We start off this adventure with none other than the Eevee Legendary Treasures Blister Pack (rather apt considering Eevee can sometimes be a starter Pokémon!)

This Eevee was purchased at chaoscards.co.uk for £8.95 last year. I think the Eevee blister pack is still available, but prices for blister packs overall have since risen on the website.

If you'd like to check out the blister pack opening without any spoilers, avoid scrolling down and just click here instead for the video.

Now then, here is what I had to open:

This blister pack contained 3 booster packs, a coin and of course the Eevee promotional card

Eevee promo card BW97 with the Zekrom/Reshiram coin.

Here is what I got in the booster packs:

Three rare cards; Gallade, Toxicroak and Empoleon. And one Zapdos reverse-holo (ordinarily a holographic card).

I did manage to get one holographic card. This Samurott, looking really cool with its battle stance.

Now Legendary Treasures has a bit of a quirk you see. Not only do you get ordinary cards and reverse holos, but you also get two cards that are part of a subset known as Radiant Collection. There are 25 of them to collect, some of them even EXs and Full Arts. All the RC cards I got in these packs were commons and uncommons, but the chances of pulling an "Ultra Rare" is actually quite high for this subset. Anyways, here is a look at the RC cards I pulled:

Each card has a special holographic foil going across the whole card. Check out the video for this pack opening to see the foil in better detail.

So this was a great opening for  the first episode of the adventure. I got 5 rares out of 3 booster packs, that's a good ratio! My favourites so far have to be the RC Serperior and the rare Toxicroak (it just looks so cool).

I look forward to opening more Legendary Treasures booster packs, this is a great set for collectors with lots of unique artwork, a cool subset and a high chance to get Ultra Rare cards. I admit I have to learn the shuffling trick for this pack though, it's different to all the other BW sets so far and I got very easily muddled up haha.

I would like to apologise for the quality of these pictures, sadly my scanner is currently not functional, so we're gonna have to make do with photo pictures instead!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to follow me, to leave a comment and/or to check out my youtube channel.

See you next time!

Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures 2 - Teaser of what's to come!

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here and - oh my! What's this? Another post so soon after the last one?

Yup, I'm just going to do a tease of some of the Pokémon TCG merchandise that I'll be opening for the upcoming PTCGOpA.

Woo! That's a lot!

Which one catches your eye? Which one are you most excited to see open? Let me know in the comments bellow!

See you soon!

Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures - Season 2 (starting real soon!)

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here with an exciting update!

I am back in my home country and have put aside a space and some time to start the next season of Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures (PTCGOpA)!!!

Keep reading for a quick history and explanation of what exactly PTCGOpA, or scroll down straight to the video to see what this next Adventure has in store for you!

In 2013 my love for the collectable card game known as the Pokémon TCG got rekindled due watching many youtube videos of people open up various Pokémon TCG related merchandise. It reminded me of my excitement of doing the same as a child.
I have always been a Pokéfan and have never stopped playing the video games, however I did give up on the TCG due to money, change of environment and also simply that I had no one else to play and trade with as I got older.
But youtube showed that there are many people from all sorts of demographics still playing and/or collecting the card game. I loved sharing in the excitement as they'd open up booster boxes, packs, etc and ultra-rare card and such.
So I decided to buy some of the recent TCG merchandise and chronicle myself getting reacquainted with this TCG franchise, and sharing it with the Internet. And so Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures was born.

I enjoyed doing it so much that I have decided to do it again. This time with far more merchandise and a better understanding of where to buy them, how to video the openings, etc.

I won't ramble on anymore, here's the trailer to tease what kind of stuff I'll be opening:

I'll go into some more details in the next post.

Hope you're as excited as I am for this!
Stay tuned and see you soon!

Attack Mode, Metabee!

Hi all!

The Amateur Collector here and today I have am awesome collectable figurine to show off from an old show I use to love watching as a wee wipper snapper (okay, maybe not THAT old, but fairly old).

This is a figure of Metabee from the Medabots franchise.

First a little bit about the franchise: Medabots, alternatively Medarot, is a Japanese cartoons, manga and video game franchise based on large sentient robotic toys used to fight each other by children. It's essentially Pokémon with robots, but there is a twist to it (that I shan't spoil!)
Metabee here is the main character from the cartoon series. He is fiercely independent, snarky and temperamental, but very hard working and does develop a strong bond with his human "owner" Ikki.

Now for the toy itself. This one was developed by Bandai, for the D-Arts collection. Although I do not see anything about it on the packaging itself, it seems to have Revoltech maneuverability to it (not sure if that technology was applied to it).
I found this guy in Guangzhou's Comic City area, in a small shop and if memory serves well he cost me about 250RMB (roughly £22) if not cheaper. The box was not in wrapping seal, leading me to believe it is either second hand or taken from the factory. This is sadly pretty common in China. It could just be however that the wrapping seal was taken off to allow customers to look inside and inspect the goods beforehand, something they allowed me to do many times before making a purchase.

Anyways, without further ado, here are some pictures:

The box is a nice bright yellow to go with Metabee's colouring. The little window to view the toy inside is shaped like a Medal (the Medabot's soul/computer chip) which is pretty cool.

The box is a little damaged as you can see, but the figure within is secured very well.

The sides of the boxes are pretty cool. I'm particularly fond of the one that appears to give you Metabee's height measurements. 

And here's what's inside! 

I won't bother going into too much details in regards to the accessories. Instead I'll just show them on the figure itself via mostly cool poses! =P

Out the packaging... 

... and ready to Robattle!

Throwing a tantrum again!

Time to cool down, remove his medal!

The movability and pose-ability of this figure is great. The details are also great, not so much in that the figure looks "realistic" or anything, but that they included details in places you wouldn't think they'd need to bother, such as the exoskeleton of the face behind the visor! 

I must admit that one of the joints is sadly looser than the other but it doesn't affect the poses, so it's a small fault that I can live with. It is however not the only fault my Metabee came with. As mentioned above, there's a good chance this is second hand or a factory reject that was taken, some of the paint on the sides is worn off and one of the "eye visors" has a blotch on it. Luckily, the paint is not noticeable unless you look closely, and the eye blotch is not visible once put on the face.

I'd like to point out how awesome it is that the Medal is included as part of the accessories! I should warn you though, it's veeeerrrry small, so make sure to keep it safe and secure so not to lose it!

Eye blotch! Luckily not noticeable once on the figure.

Teeny Tiny Medal, barely a fraction of my palm.

Behind the mask.

Overall this is a purchase I'm quite happy with. I've seen this figure around on ebay, usually from a HK seller, with the toy itself usually going for around £35 and the shipping being ridiculous (international shipping, amaright?)

This figure is a must for anyone who has nostalgia for this old TV series, or who still follows the franchise (it's still surviving in Japan). It is very posable, not too expensive as far as D-Arts figures go and pretty unique as far as mechas go.

Good news to anyone who want more than just Metabee though, he has one of his old friends/rivals joining him in this collection =D

I'll leave you with that last picture above as a hint to what my next figurine post will be about ;)

Also don't forget that my next Pokémon TCG Opening Adventures series is coming up soon, preparations are on the way!

Lots to do, lots to open, lots to show!

See you all next time!

Opening 4 Flashfire Booster Packs

Hi all!

Welcome back to another blog post, this one being a Pokemon booster pack opening!
I'm still in China, so as usual these are booster packs I found in Hong Kong at a good price of 30 HKD (i.e. £2.50).

This time round I found some XY Flashfire booster packs! It was my first time opening up any boosters from this set, so I was pretty excited.

Enough chit-chat, wanna see what I got? Check out my opening video on my youtube channel; here.

OR

Scroll bellow to see pictures of what I ended up pulling.

Out of four packets I got two rare cards, the dynamic Lopunny and the sour looking Qwilfish.

My holo is a Carbink. The holographic pattern is not very obvious on the card due to the picture's dark background as well as the sleeve. It looks good though.

And an Ultra Rare Full Art Kangaskhan-EX! So glad to have gotten this one!

I'm not going to rant on in this post, I'm just glad to have gotten these cool new cards. Out of 4 packs I got a really good ratio, a holo and an ultra rare? Thanks Hong Kong! You're booster packs have been giving me great pulls all these months!

Anyways, that's the end of this post and of any future booster pack openings in China. Next time I do a Pokemon related update it is hopefully when I'm back in the U.K. Once there I'll start the next series of Pokemon TCG Opening Adventures. I'm excited and I hope y'all are too.

This doesn't mean I'll (completely) neglect this blog until then though. I have at the very least one more post to make. 

So hang around! Till next time.