Hi all, I started collecting just a few months back, so most everything is still in the works. I’m still deciding where I want to draw the line or where I want to focus for some collections, but for now, my main goals are:
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A Hoppip, Skiploom, and Jumpluff species collection
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A complete reverse holo Expedition set
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A complete Sekio artist collection
Let’s start with the round boys!
Being a second evolution, Jumpluff (+ pre-evolutions) gives rise to some nice looking binder pages! Unfortunately though, with his organization, some Hoppips are left out (I’m looking at you random Expedition Hoppip and second Lost Thunder Hoppip), so they were thrown into a back page for now. It should be a crime to print Hoppip set cards without the intention of printing the entire evolution line. The last Jumpluff to complete the unique arts–the EX Team Rocket Returns Jumpluff–was bought from @brendantheclayboy on Ebay before I knew it was his account 
Some favorites:
Favorite art set: EX Team Rocket Returns
Favorite Hoppip: Natta Wake Hoppip
Favorite Skiploom: Evolving Skies Skiploom
Favorite Jumpluff: VS set Erika’s Jumpluff
I started the collection with the intention of just one card for every unique art of Hoppip, Skiploom, or Jumpluff–cameos, variants, and non-TCG be damned. But after browsing through some other people’s species collections, I found that I didn’t dislike variant collection as much as I would have thought, so I’ve decided to adjust my collection goals to include all English and Japanese variants. I am excluding the Frankensteined English + Japanese E3 sample Hoppip for now though. Because it is a monstrosity (and way out of my budget). And I’ll also welcome whatever non-TCG items I decide to pick up along the way.
(I’ll eventually crack the Natta Wake Hoppip out of the case to put in the binder, but I haven’t had the heart to break it out yet)
I also made the little dudes via crochet, so these are obviously part of the collection too! (I need to make better stands for them. I’d like to make nice little wooden stands, but I have no experience with anything woodworking, so it will probably take a while before I give it a go)
Next up is my set collection goal: a complete reverse holo Expedition set.
I chose this because I really like the design of the E-reader cards, so I wanted to finish one of the WotC E-reader sets. Of the three, Expedition should be the most available and cheapest (as far as I’m aware), due to the lack of Crystal Pokemon. I chose to go for reverse holos, because I like reverse holos and the reverse holo versions of cards are cheaper than the holo versions (although with so many reverses, it probably ends up being more expensive to complete the set this way). These don’t really have any order at the moment because I feel I have too little of the set to organize it well, so I’m just slotting any new cards in as they come. Conditions will vary, but the nice thing I discovered about the Expedition reverse holos is that they still look pretty good despite some scratches/blemishes.
(One thing I’m not quite looking forward to is spending relatively large amounts of money to get essentially two copies of the other not-as-photogenic Expedition Charizard 
)
Lastly, we have an artist collection! There are a ton of great artists, and you could get completely caught up in collections of any of the long-standing artists of the TCG, so to ease myself in, I started with Sekio–just all unique cards, ignoring variants.
Sekio has great soft/cute illustrations, and best of all, they just recently started in the Pokemon TCG, so all the cards so far are cheap modern cards. I still have to catch up with the latest Salandit and Oranguru from Crown Zenith, but I think I should have all one of every unique card for now (let me know if anything is missing though!).
Some of my favorites are the Buizel, Bidoof, Chinchou, Shellder, and Bellsprout.
To complete this collection, I pretty much just ordered 80+% of it off of TCGplayer. And although it was great to assemble the mostly complete collection, I felt like the method of collecting was too… inorganic (i.e. just adding everything to a cart and checking out). When most everything is just modern commons/uncommons, there’s no real need to hunt for anything or scan for good prices. So I think, for the time being, for cheap cards for any artist collections, I’ll try to refrain from just ordering everything in bulk off TCGplayer and will try to obtain the cards through other means: picking through bulk at stores, trading with others, or picking up cards through collection buying. It probably will be more expensive and things will probably progress a lot slower, but I think I’ll find it more fun.
That’s everything that’s organized for now! I also just have a bunch of random artist cards and cute-looking cards stowed away, but I’ll have to figure out some way to give those cards some semblance of organization. I also started on the Vending Series very recently, but haven’t put them together yet (they’re just sitting in a pile). I’m eager to start either a Wooper+Quagsire species collection or a Chinchou+Lanturn species collection too, but I’ll try to stay a bit more focused for now (Lanturn has some really great looking cards though…).
If you made it all the way here, thank you for following along, and I’ll make updates as things roll in!
Wow, what an update! I’ll be keeping tabs on this divine page!
And yes, non-TCG is in a way even more exciting, because I know close to nothing about all the random Pokemon products out there, so I’m almost always running into something new! And I haven’t started getting too much into it just yet, but it seems like there’s more of a hunt in non-TCG, which keeps things interesting too!
I was originally not too hot on both of these, but after seeing your collection and some other collections of species collectors, I realized I kind of like seeing all the different variants lined up. And it’s even more fun to hunt for cards that differ only slightly, like a holo bleed Secret Wonders Jumpluff or code variants (I’m not sure which sets have different code variants, but I’ll look into it at some point). And the non-TCG side is just so full of stuff to explore. You have so many different Muk/Grimer items, and I imagine discovering new items that you didn’t know existed before keeps things exciting and interesting. Just took a look at some Amada stickers today, but I still have some research to do before I dive in!
but about the code variants, 
and about the excitement of non tcg and impossibility of knowing all of it, what is atm the most fun part of collecting is just going through japanese marketplaces looking for grimer and muk stuff and bumping into something i’ve never seen before, i really enjoy the freedom from stress when not looking for something and just seeing if i bump into something fun!
As for the ex codes, here is a 
I think I’d like to just figure it out on my own though. I find it a lot more fun to discover new things organically (like the Natta Wake Hoppip I wasn’t aware of until someone put up the full set on the Recent Purchases thread).
If you ever decide you want a full list in the future, or want to check a list you’ve made yourself, lmk. And if not, that’s completely fine and up to you as well. Either way, enjoy collecting, and best of luck! 