The Base Set Charizard of Splinterlands

Greetings Splinterfolk!

The purpose of this post is to start a discussion around which Splinterland card has the most resemblance to a base set Charizard.

At the end of 2018, I decided to quit playing DotA 2 competitively. I spent the majority of my teenage years competing in local tournaments and pub stomping with friends until the early hours of the morning. Understandably so, I managed to accumulate a substantial amount of skins and cosmetics. Before I quit DotA 2, I knew I wanted to sell my in-game items to buy something special in order to remind myself of all the amazing people I met and the memories that we made together.

The value of all my in-game items was easily $1,000+ but there wasn't an easy way to turn DotA 2 in-game items into fiat currency besides from selling the entire account at once, which there was little to no market for or at least that I could find. In the end, I decided to sell my items on the steam market place. I then proceed to buy CSGO keys and sold those on a third party website (I think it was called OP Skins) before finally withdrawing to PayPal. I lost a significant amount of value to steam taxes, selling below market price, and withdrawal fees. I think I was left with around $800 or so in my PayPal account.

Now that I had the cash, all I needed to do was settle on what to buy. I knew that I wanted to buy something that I could look at occasionally and reminisce about my good old gaming days. I eventually decided to buy 3 copies of the complete Pokémon base set collection. I guess it was pretty lucky that I decided to do that based on the current state of the Pokémon market. While I was flipping through my binder the other day, it made me think about which Splinterland card shared the same level of prestige as a base set Charizard.

For anyone that is not aware, Pokémon has seen a resurgence of popularity in the past couple of years and Pokémon cards have especially exploded in value. For example, in March of this year, a 1st Edition Shadowless base set Charizard rated PSA 10 was sold for $420,000 at a PWCC auction. Interestingly, a base set Charizard card is not the most expensive card in existence as that title belongs to the Pikachu Illustrator card. Logan Paul actually purchased a PSA 10 copy of the card in 2021 for $5,250,000.

So why is there more of a prestige around a base set Charizard compared to a Pikachu Illustrator? I think it simply comes down to nostalgia. Many people, like myself, remember playing with it at school in their deck or trying to trade pretty much anything and everything just to have it. It just had that cool factor. It also helps that it is more accessible than a Pikachu Illustrator card.

I think that it is an innate feature of any TCG to have a holy grail card. Pokémon as we know has the base set Charizard. Magic the Gathering has the Black Lotus. Yu-Gi-Oh has the Dark Magician or the Blue Eyes White Dragon. So what is the holy grail card for Splinterlands? I propose that it is Yodin Zaku.

At the time of writing this article, Archmage Arius is currently the most expensive card in Splinterlands with a price tag of $1,500 for a regular foil edition. There is currently no list price for the golden foil edition but we can assume that it would be higher than any other gold foil card. A regular foil Yodin comes in at a $300 price tag which is actually the same price as an unlimited base set Charizard that is in good/near mint condition and is not graded. As we know, the most expensive card in any TCG does not necessarily mean that it is the most prestigious.

One of the main reasons I believe Yodin to be a Charizard equivalent is because of the cool factor. A cool factor can be extremely profitable as we see with Pokémon marketing Pikachu and Charizard heavily. Likewise, the Splinterlands team has chosen to market Yodin with their most recent decision to create a plushie form of him. In addition, Yodin is a powerhouse, just like Charizard, and dominated the meta for quite some time.

What do you think? Is there a better choice besides Yodin? Or is Yodin the embodiment of Charizard?

While Splinterlands does have a referral program in place, it only benefits the referrer and not the referee. Therefore, it is up to us (the existing players) to create our own referral program to help new players enter into the game. Here is how mine works:

• Sign up for Splinterlands through my referral link here.
• Once you buy the Summoner's Spellbook, I will receive 500 credits ($0.50) which I will use to buy DEC, cards, or both to help you start your Splinterlands journey.
• All you need to do is comment below the IGN you used to sign up with. Once I have verified it, I will reach out to see what you would like to spend your $0.50 on and then send it over.