Now here's something I never thought I'd own; The rarest of all Monster Rancher figures, the legendary Phoenix! Found only in the 18-pack of Monster Rancher figures released way back in 1999 as an ultra rare. Playmates had the admittedly genius idea to assimilate the game's unique ability to give you monsters based on the compact disc inserted into the PlayStation into the merchandising, making it so each set of figures - 4 packs, 8 packs and the most expensive 18 packs - each had their own assorted of random figures thrown in to encourage repeat purchases.
The catch was that, like trading cards, the figures were randomly chosen, had a rarity aspect on top of that AND each sku had their own unique rares, so you could technically buy an 8 pack and get nothing but 4 pack uncommons and not even see a rare from the 8 pack lineup.
The Phoenix, which was at the center of the anime's plot line for the first two seasons, was only available in the $20 set of 18 figures and was the rarest figure of all; Meaning that you could buy multiple $20 packs and see most everything the line had to offer, but never see the Phoenix.
So few of the figures were ever found, and the ones that were fell into the hands of adults that could afford to drop that kind of money back then. Nowadays waiting to find one of these pop up on ebay is a long drawn out waiting game. When I randomly did a search for this last week, only one had been listed and sold prior to that was last July. I was surprised as heck that the seller accepted my offer.
I need maybe three figures now. None of which are even remotely as rare as this one.
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