I’ve finally got my Facebook account back up and running. About time, huh? Come join us at Facebook.com/nick15pokemon! Now to keep this and Twitter AND Instagram update… oh boy…
One other thing, I just feel like sharing this video with you guys, because I think it’s very beautiful seeing Korean, Chinese and Japanese traditional instruments being played together:
The Actual News:
Just a few little updates for you fans of McDonald’s AND secrets… but one at a time, of course!
First off, I’ve been having incredible luck with my McDonald’s pulls… I FINALLY completed my nonholo set when I pulled a Snivy. It took me 28 Happy Meals, but I finally did it! And all without paying a naughty scalper in the process. That said, I have officially determined which cards belong to which slot in the pack. I’ve also been updating the McDonald’s page in general, adding new scans of the promo packs and items you get in them. I’m actually now only missing three of the ten possible packs you can get, and only three of the remaining vinyl stickers you can get in the #3 packs. You can still at least see what I’ve got there now.
Geepers! Look at all these stickers!
But that’s the boring stuff. You’re here for… the SECRETS!
Well first off, apparently some sneaky people have been taking advantage of the fact that the paper packs used by McDonald’s are slightly translucent, and are actually able to see what holofoil card a pack actually has. Take a look:
Hmm… don’t see it? Here, lemme fix the levels a bit…
There we are. See the “Pika…” of “Pikachu”? Well, it definitely doesn’t look like it says “Mudkip”, that’s for sure! But yeah, apparently it’s not bad enough that scalpers have been buying up all the packs, they’re selling the ones they KNOW aren’t very good (ie don’t have a Pikachu holofoil in it) on eBay in the hopes that people don’t catch onto what they’re doing. Of course this isn’t to claim that EVERYONE is doing this, but rather, more of a warning that this is a possibility when you buy McDonald’s packs on eBay.
But if you’re looking for a rarity that maybe even the scalpers don’t know about… check this out: somewhere along the line, Nintendo or McDonald’s or whoever designs the actual McDonald’s promo packs might have done a spot of redesigning after an initial batch of packs had been sent out. It’s hard to explain what I mean, but maybe this animated GIF can help explains things a bit more:
Notice something going on in the background there? The “Pikachu Tail” symbol behind Pikachu has shifted! Now this might not be a big deal for normal people, but for collectors, these kinds of changes can mean big business, as they represent a potential rarity that might be worth collecting. Afterall, we’re dealing with an industry which places a varity of values on various variants of the same item… just look at the different “F-Face” variants on Billy Ripkin’s 1989 Fleer card:
Now so far I’ve only been able to confirm ONE promo pack that has this redesign: the “Dark White #1” pack seen in my animated GIF. The reason why it was redesign is because, I suspect, it didn’t match the way the other packs looked:
Notice how the bottom ones all seem to have half of Charmander’s face cut behind the top edge of the table? The alternate “Dark White” one cuts ALL of Charmander’s face behind it. … Hmm… maybe the “Dark Blue” is also a variant, but I don’t have one myself to know for sure (the one in the image is pulled from an auction page).
In any case, I don’t own the “alternate” style… but maybe if you do, then you might have a minor rarity on your hands! Keep it! (NO WAIT, give it to meeee instead!!)
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Anyways, that’s all I have to share today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll have something cool to share as well! We’ll just have to see…