👉👈 Would you pay the 'waifu tax' on Scarlet & Violet

Hello people of Pokémon,

This week we've got girl cards vs boy cards in a fight to the...highest price. Also, a guy trying to catch them all catches charges and a 5-year sentence instead. And stay tuned tonight when a Pikachu Illustrator hits ebay for auction. You won't be able to afford it. But if you can, we should def be friends. Call me maybe?

Happy collecting from your friends at Mystery Poke Slabs.

Scarlet & Violet's first TCG release is falling victim to a phenomenon known as the 'waifu tax'

The first Scarlet & Violet TCG expansions released in Japan on January 20th in separate sets. Much of the conversation leading up to the release was about the silver borders. "But our beloved yellow!" Now that the cards are out, the conversation has shifted as collectors have moved to import the sets. That's because the Scarlet ex set and the Violet ex set are being sold for often dramatically different prices (between $30-60) when you check sites like Plaza Japan. The reason for the disparity is what's referred to as the 'waifu tax'.

For the uninitiated, the term waifu refers to a fictional girl or woman (often in Anime, Manga, or video games) that you're attracted to or would consider marrying. This phenomenon previously took hold of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG—this YouTube is a solid oral history. Now it's come to Pokémon. Why? Because in the Violet set you can pull Miriam (seen above). That's...it. That's the power of waifu. As Dexerto points out, we saw some element of the waifu chase in Crown Zenith. A check on Pricecharting for Adaman #GG57 vs Irida #GG63 reveals an ungraded price difference of $11.25.

While this shouldn't be super surprising, the Pokémon Company might want to consider how this effects release pricing and secondaries if they want to keep level-headed collectors happy. UwU indeed 👉👈.

Drug dealer nabbed for blow claims it was mostly Pokémon GO

Raymond Phipps, 41 of Basingstoke (which sounds like a sick Pokémon but is a town in England) was sentenced to five years for being part of an elaborate drug gang dealing cocaine. Surveillance officers tracked him for a year but found him often glued to his screen playing Pokémon GO. The question is whether it was part of an alibi or if Raymond is just a bad employee. I mean, it does sound like a great way to kill time on a drop-off route. His alibi cratered when cops found him with duffel bag filled with almost $16,000 in cash. Out for a stroll trying to catch Palkia and Ho-Oh? Ok, I buy that. But claiming the $16K was a gift from your grandmother? Lol, Raymond. I don't know about your grandma, but mine wasn't dropping 16 racks at the house for my birthday. Grandma's deal in $10 bills and those strawberry candies you never see for sale anywhere. There is no other kind of grandma.

Pikachu grail set to hit ebay with a starting price of a private island

Tomoya Ohno is set to list his PSA 8 1998 Pokémon Illustrator Card on ebay at 10pm ET. Tomoya operates under the Pokémon Club Shangri-La store on ebay. The auction will run 10 days until March 6th and the starting price will be $480,000. For the collector, the choice is simple, own one of the 39 Pikachu Illustrators thought to be in existence, or this private island off the coast of Nicaragua. You can't hold an island in your hand, so there's that.

We all know that Logan Paul paid $5.3 million for a PSA 10, so it'll be interesting to see what a PSA 8 will go for in this market.

The backstory on the Illustrator card is quintessential collector nostalgia. In 1998 Pokémon held a contest in the Japanese Manga monthly CoroCoro Comic. The "Pokemon Card Game Illust Artist Contest" called on readers to draw and submit their own Pokémon card.

In the January issue three winners were awarded 20 cards featuring their own illustration along with one copy of the Illustrator Pikachu card drawn by Atsuko Nishida—one of Pikachu's creators. Later, 20 more contestants were chosen to receive an "Excellence Award," which landed them a copy of the Illustrator Pikachu card.

Fast-forward 25 years and we have 23 copies of the card certified by PSA. We'll assume the remaining 16 in circulation are sitting in the attic of a home that may or may not be worth the price of the card itself. Crazy.

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🔗 Quick hiiiiiits

Been collecting but flirting with playing TCG? CBR has a guide for that.

The Pokémon Company has committed $200,000 to relief efforts in Turkey and Syria. They'd previously donated $100,000 to the NAACP and Black Lives Matter in 2020, and more recently $200,000 to support Ukranians following the invasion by Russia. Love this company.

NFL Quitter Update: Blake Martinez is claiming Blake Breaks has brought in over $5 million in the last 7 months. 🤯

Video of the Day

from Reddit: u/ruotm0 has started to re-create the Kanto region in Minecraft and his flyover is incredible. He's 4 months into the build and not done yet.

UwU 👉👈