A friendly place for species collectors

Hello everyone,
I was’t sure what to title this thread. I’ve always really respected the idea of species collecting and have recently decided to commit to collecting psa 10 copies of every Japanese salamence (and as far as other languages I’m not yet sure). I’m a long way from finishing this goal as a lot of ex era salamences are really low pop! But I have some nice things. I wanted to start a thread where other species collectors could post their collections and updates on their chosen species and share in their excitement when new cards are released for those species.

So to kick things off I will share a picture and ask you guys a few questions.

What is your current grail for your chosen pokemon/pokemon line collection (that you either have or don’t have yet)?
For me it’s probably ex dragon frontiers 1st ed salamence, a recently graded pop 1 psa 10! Sadly I don’t own this.

What cards are you wishlisting for your species?
Sparkle salamence pleaasseee.

When was the last time a card of your pokemon was released?
Salamence had a few releases this year in darkness ablaze and blue sky stream but no alternate art just yet!

Looking forward to seeing updates on any and all pokemon species collections, the more obscure the better!

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Cool thread idea! I would love to see a bunch of species collectors all in one place, like in this thread! Here’s a link to my thread, dedicated to my love affair with Girafarig:

KromaticLanturn’s Girafarig collectionTo answer your questions:

  • Current Grail - It’s front and center in my collection thread, but it has to be the Tropical Mega Battle VS Will’s Girafarig in English. It’s unlikely I’ll ever own one, but a boy can dream!
  • Wishlist - I’m not complicated haha. A character rare full art would be sweet, but just an updated holo of my Giraffe would be amazing!
  • Last time a card for Girafarig was released - That would be Vivid Voltage/Legendary Heartbeat. So November 2020 was the last time we saw a Girafarig release. All things considered, that’s pretty good! I know some other species collectors on here that have been waiting leagues longer than that for a release of their mon.

I’ll leave you guys with a pic of one of the more rare Girafarig cards out there. This is the Bastiodon the Defender exclusive alt art, which can only be found within that pre-constructed deck product. I spent quite a while hunting down the Unlimited variant, and had to buy the whole deck to actually get one. It has an alternate art to the Secret of the Lakes (Mysterious Treasures in English) release, with the art completed by the same artist, Midori Harada.

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My thoughts exactly on the thread, I would love to see this become a megathread for species collectors! As far as your collection goes, remarkable! I’ve always liked girafarig and I’m happy to see you have almost every girafarig card. Good luck hunting the english tmb card and I hope more and more girafarig get released.
Question, would you expand beyond english and japanese?

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@sherotgc Thanks! Yep, I’ve been dabbling in other languages for Girafarig cards lately. Speaking of, I’ll need to update my thread soon. I’ve been acquiring those other language cards very casually so it stays fun and I don’t get burnt out. Thanks for asking!

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I’ve got 2 main collections going on. Eeveelutions and Skarmorys. Eeveelutions is common enough and way too large, so I’ll go with Skarmory here. I mainly started it because it was a cheap alternative to Eeveelutions and I’ve loved it since I found it in Ruby/Sapphire (because I don’t think I ever saw one in my gen 2 playthroughs). It took me years to figure out it’s a Gen 2 Pokemon, so it’s my favorite forgotten Gen 2 Pokemon. Right now, I’m trying to collect every card in every language. So if anyone has some foreign ones laying around, I’ll gladly take them off of you.

Anyway, the main points:Current Grail - This one is simple. It’s actually one of the first that I managed to pick up for my collection. Japanese unlimited World Champions Pack Skarmory ex. Apparently the pack didn’t sell all that well, due to the planned tournaments it was going to be sold at being shortened or cancelled. On top of that, it’s not exactly a sought after card, so it doesn’t pop up all that often. I managed to find one in a random lot of ex cards on Mercari. So I guess it went from somewhat rare, to pretty much the cornerstone of my collection.
Wishlist - A Steven Stone Skarmory CHR or a Shiny Skarmory. Pretty simple. Probably wont happen ever, but oh well.
Last release - Fusion Strike/Towering Perfection. Really recent release, and I’m a big fan of the artwork on this one. Good job Pokemon. Thank you for doing Skarmory justice.

And here’s the picture of my grail card. Unlimited Japanese Skarmory ex. Love the artwork and the card in general. So happy to have randomly found it while just searching ex cards online. Not always a huge fan of the old school ex artworks with their weird early CGI-like artwork. But this one’s grown on me.

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Since @ragingkraken passed on the Eeveelutions, I will roll with it.
Current grails:
Wanted - Eevee Fan Club.

In Possession - Espeon and Umbreon Gold Star. These were the last 2 cards I got to make my English master collection 100% complete at that time. It was a huge milestone when they arrived, and ironically they both arrived Fedex on the same day from different sellers.

Most wanted card:
New Eeveelution(s) of a new type, specifically one that will utilize a different energy type in the TCG, such as dragon. This will provide more variety of the card colors in my collection. If it was like a poison type that uses grass or psychic, that would be repetitive for me.

Latest release:
Well the earth is turning today, so most likely an Eeveelution card was released.

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This thread is a great idea! My main collection goal is every Ampharos card in a PSA 9 or 10, as well as all Sunkern and Sunflora cards in a 9 or 10. Ampharos has quite a few cards, some pretty expensive, but Sunkern and Sunflora cards are mostly pretty manageable thankfully.

Current grail: For Sunkern, definitely Natta Wake. I was fortunate enough to have that be the first Sunkern card I got. At the time I didn’t even know about how great its release was, I just thought the art was amazing. Definitely lucked out because it would be a lot harder for me to afford at its current price. For Ampharos, probably the For Position Only Ampharos, or Neo Revelation PSA 10.

Wishlist cards: Probably some kind of alt art, or character rare. I’m admittedly salty about Flaaffy being the one to get the character rare, but it makes sense since it’s so playable.

Last released: Ampharos cards come out pretty frequently, there are quite a few in SWSH, the most recent one is in Evolving Skies. The most recent Sunkern and Sunflora are from Cosmic Eclipse.

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Man @jonbo, those Natta Wake cards just hit different. Love that Sunkern!

Very cool thread. I have just recently decided to dedicate myself to articuno collecting. I’ve always been a fan of the birds and wanted to dedicate myself to one species and landed on Articuno. Just got done with the spreadsheet and I will for sure be active in this thread

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Making the spreadsheet is the fun part. Finding out about all the cards you didn’t know existed is awesome.

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What’s up fellow species collectors. As you probably know, my favorite Pokemon is Flareon and I’ve been working on a species collection of either PSA or CGC graded Flareons in 9 or up. My current grail is this card:

According to the PSA & CGC pop reports, no one has graded this card higher than an 8 so search continues! Haven’t been able to find a raw copy in mint condition, if anyone has a copy would love to buy it from you

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A fellow Salamence collector here :grin: I recently completed my Salamence collection with all Japanese and English variants in a binder. I have most of them graded too but still missing a few, but that has slowed down a lot for me especially since it’s so difficult to send cards to PSA from Europe these days (and expensive)

I also collect Rayquazas and Flygons and I have the similar goal in mind as with Salamences, to get all English and Japanese variants in binder and graded. But I know with Rayquazas it will never be complete as a lot of them are eeeexpensive. But I’ll get what I feel is reasonable.

What is your current grail for your chosen pokemon/pokemon line collection (that you either have or don’t have yet)? - I would love to get the graded Salamences that I’m still missing but they are hard to come by and if I come by they usually are at a price point I’m not happy to pay.

What cards are you wishlisting for your species? - Something similar with Salamence and Flygon as full art / alt arts like Ray got in Evolving Skies.

**When was the last time a card of your pokemon was released? -**All of them had new cards quite recently. I have collections for Alolan Vulpix and Ninetales too but those probably won’t get cards anytime soon if ever again, unfortunately.

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Love this thread concept! Awesome seeing unappreciated Pokemon getting some love :blush:

For me, it’s the best starter, Chikorita!

What is your current grail for your chosen pokemon/pokemon line collection?
Mine is the e-series McDonalds Chikorita in a PSA 10. It’s not too expensive of a card right now, but prioritizing some other collection goals first.

What cards are you wishlisting for your species?
I want a competitively viable Chikorita so that it can be printed into a character rare with either Ethan, Lyra, or Krystal!

When was the last time a card of your Pokemon was released?
With unique art (so not counting the 2021 McDonalds promo), the latest Chikorita was a Sun/Moon Promo in Japan. Fingers crossed for a Sword/Shield release!

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@ragingkraken I would imagine that certain unlimited sets are providing trouble for a lot of species collectors! I’d imagine you are looking for the wcp eeveelutions as well? Thankfully for me I have a minty salamence ex from unlim wcp heading off to psa on an economy sub pretty soon. I really do hope it gets the 10 as its gonna be really hard to find another 10 candidate in the future. Coincidentally its my favourite card also.

@xzini salamence gang rise up! (Come back to discord)

@lamplamp TIL that there is an extremely rare and hard to grade cracked ice variant of flareon, I’ll be on the lookout for you!

And to the rest of you guys, awesome collecting!

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Being a species collector is great I actually think it is one of the best ways to learn about the niches within the Pokemon hobby. If I was going to give someone advice on where to start collecting Pokemon without much prior knowledge I would say collect your favourite Pokemon!

A lot of the time you have to research the releases and rare sets yourself and it is fun learning about new cards that you never thought existed or a new cameo. Also once you complete your card goals there are plenty of peripheral TCG items to collect, probably one of the best examples of this is the University Magikarp.

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What a great thread idea! I am a Greninja collector, so a lot less things than Salamance I am sure. Have a spreadsheet to track all of the ones I have, I need, what are ready for grading, in both English and Japanese.

Current Grail:
My grail for Greninja is the 218/XY-P TV Tokyo Lottery Ash-Greninja EX. Only 100 of these were given out to callers who called TV Tokyo in a 6 day window in late 2015 to promote the XYZ anime. So I doubt I will ever get my hands on one, they are insanely expensive! Aside from that one, I have 4 other cards I am missing from completing my master set.

Wishlist:
Honestly, I just wish that one of the amazing Greninja cards from the Illustrator Contest end up winning, I would love to add one of those to my collection!

**Newest Released:**As I am sure most people are aware, the most recent Greninja is the Sparkling Greninja from Battle Region. Not counting Radiant Greninja in Astral Radiance yet because its not out yet!

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Charmander collector here! I’m collecting all cards in all languages, really difficult but also fun. Collection thread is HERE.

A great part of collecting all languages is that it’s not all about throwing money at it to get the cards but rather hunting down and actually finding a copy. Navigating foreign language sites and getting parcels from around the globe is a challenge too!

**What is your current grail for your chosen pokemon/pokemon line collection?**Definitely the Snap Charmander as there were only 20 copies made which were given to winner of the contest. Sadly will be forever out of my price range :slightly_frowning_face:

**What cards are you wishlisting for your species?**A full art card of some sort would be amazing, but probably unlikely as Charizard gets all the love.

**When was the last time a card of your Pokémon was released?**Vivid Voltage was the last card, which also got a released as a promo in Battle Styles blisters. In Asian languages, it was recently reprinted in VMAX Climax.

Rarest cards in my collection are the Japanese unlimited versions of the e-Series 1 cards:

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@sher I still have to get to the unlimited wcp Eeveelutions. I’m sure I’ll have some problems, but it’s also a popular enough Pokémon that I’m sure it’ll be easier than the Skarmory.

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I collect four Pokemon, so I’ll list each:

**What is your current grail for your chosen pokemon/pokemon line collection (that you either have or don’t have yet)?**Zapdos - Tropical Mega phone card
Squirtle - Pokemon Snap contest prize
Eevee - Sample Set EeveeGothitelle - Uh… Any that I don’t have? I guess? Gothitelle isn’t exactly the most beloved Pokemon by TPC.

What cards are you wishlisting for your species?
Zapdos, Eevee, Gothitelle - Yuka Morii cardsSquirtle - A shiny Squirtle

**When was the last time a card of your pokemon was released?**Obviously, Eevee is the most recent one, with several in the upcoming Pokemon Go set alone. Zapdos and Gothitelle last got a card with fresh art in 2020 (though I suspect Pokemon Go might change that for Zapdos), and shockingly, Squirtle’s only rep since 2019 - the SuMo era - is a McDonald’s reprint!

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For Zapdos, is it just Zapdos, or do you also collect Galarian Zapdos too?