Hi all,
First time poster, long time lurker! I was recently home for Thanksgiving and found my copy of the 1999 Pokemon Collector’s Guide. Thought it might be a cool share to see how the hobby has changed (or hasn’t changed) from 20 years ago.
My copy is very well-loved. My parents bought it for me in elementary school, since we couldn’t afford to buy a lot of booster packs, but they figured a book with all the pictures of the cards was the next best thing. From what my mom told me, I must’ve sat there reading it for hundreds of hours, since I was able to basically memorize what every card did from base set to fossil. On the schoolyard playground, I became “the guy” if you wanted to know what a card did, or how rare it was. The kids at my school also had a decent amount of Japanese cards, so I often acted as a “translator” for kids playing with them. Sometime I’d get “paid” for my service with a few cards here and there 
The guide has several sections, each devoted to different things to collect. But most relevant to this forum is probably the TCG section. It looks like the top 5 probably hasn’t changed much in 20 years:
The guide gave prices for Japanese, 1st edition, and Unlimited prints for each card. Some of them are remarkably accurate for this day and age:
Since the guide came out near the end of 1999 (Fossil was released in Oct 1999), it doesn’t have prices for any of the english Fossil cards:
The guide also included images + translations for all Japanese cards printed up to that point, including Southern Island, and sets like Gym Heroes. There were a few kids at my school who had managed to get their hands on these, and I was pretty much the only kid who could tell you what they actually did.
There were also images for more obscure promo sets, like the VHS Intro decks from Japan:
As for other collectibles, the guide also covered Topps trading cards, Figurines, and Flipz Lenticular cards that I have no recollection of existing:
There was also a section on “becoming a secondary market master”, which amongst other things, told you how to identify counterfeit cards. Even in 1999, these were apparently enough of a documented problem that this book was able to specifically call out the “Q-Boy” cards!
Thanks for taking a walk back down memory lane with me! Curious if anyone else had a copy of this book, or any other cool late 90s / early 2000s materials that surround the Pokemon craze.
