(12-19-2012 03:16 AM)Nenya Eun Wrote: Which means if you unpack a Valentines 2011 now, it might hide White Russian, but not Bali Seal.
It can never hide Russian White, because that's been retired.
It can never hide Balinese Seal Lynx unless Balinese Seal Lynx has been demoted from a Special Collection trait or the box is question is part of that Special Collection.
We've been given to understand that few (none, as I understand it) traits are introduced in normal starters. And we've been given to understand that few (some do, but not many) of the Special Collection traits are demoted to normal starter traits and made available to normal starters.
Logically, they must limit the number of Special Collection traits which eventually make it down to normal starters. Otherwise the number of traits would grow and the odds of getting something 'good' in a normal starter would sink.
Also, logically, they must move some Special Collection traits down to normal starters to replace those retired which were available to normal starters. Otherwise, eventually, either they would be forced to stop retiring those traits or normal starters would have nothing left to hide.
This brings up an interesting point of record keeping.
We have Saga's charts working out the dominance relationships.
And we have deerylou's charts recording what was discovered, when.
But what we don't have is a record of whether a given trait could be proven to have come from normal starters. All we have, at this point, are the (appropriately) vague hints in the various announcements and the Our Cats section.
If we had that, then, if one wanted, say, Balinese Seal Lynx, and one wanted to do it on there own, from a starter, one could check the chart. If it was discovered from a special collection and has never been observed to come from normal starters or other special collection starters, that would greatly influence the decision process when looking for a starting point.
Here, "normal starter" means, to me, not only the generic starter packs available for sale but also defines the set of traits possible with all (other, future) Special Collection packs.
