Citrina's Piplup Line* Collection- 50%+ GET + New Binder

Hey there, Citri here!

This thread is going to be a catalogue of my collection journey for my favorite little penguin Pokémon! My collection focuses on raw TCG cards for the binder, but I may also pick up other small, TCG-sized things as well, such as Tosho cards, transport or train cards, sleeves, and other merch that will fit in a binder pocket. Jumbo cards are included in the spreadsheet, and I do have the English ones that exist, but they aren’t a priority at the moment.

Background behind my collection and why I love Piplup

Piplup has been my favorite Pokémon ever since I saw Dawn’s Piplup debut in the anime when I was a child (move over, Vaporeon, a new water type takes your number 1 spot), and I’ve been collecting Piplup, Prinplup, and Empoleon since their release. Piplup was my starter in Platinum (my very first Pokémon game that was 100% mine and not just borrowed from a friend, shared with my sister, or rented from a Family Video for the weekend), and I fell even more in love with the little blue penguin and its family line.

As a result of my Piplup collection starting young, a lot of my older cards are in less-than-ideal condition, and although admittedly, I did take decently good care of my favorites, I also liked holding and handling them a lot, so most, if not all of the edges have some wear and/or silvering. If I’m being honest, that just makes those that much more special to me though!

Over the years, I’ve fallen in and out of collecting consistently, but my love of Piplup hasn’t waned! I started really organizing my collection back in late 2019 and early 2020, focusing mainly on English releases (pictured down below), but I’ve recently decided to start expanding into other languages as well. Piplup cards have been printed in 13 14 (now that we have Simplified Chinese!) different languages as far as I know, and my ultimate goal is to collect all of them. Realistically, I know I’ll never get my hands on some of the more expensive/limited cards (looking at you, SD07 Piplup), but a person can dream!

To qualify for this collection, the card illustration must include Piplup, Prinplup, Empoleon, or Dawn/Hikari/Akari. All of their respective cameos in cards that are not named some variation of the above are also included (such as Michiina Temple or Friends in Sinnoh).

I consider my spreadsheet to be a complete list of all cards that fit into the prerequisites above. I’m only human and I do miss things, so if you know of a card that I seem to be missing, please do let me know! I’m constantly doing research and double-checking myself, but we’re all bound to miss things occasionally!

Live spreadsheet with percentage completion can be found here: Piplup Line Collection Tracker - Google Sheets

Blue: Obtained | Yellow: Ordered | White: Unobtained | Grey: Variant does not exist

Binder Update Collection

06.24.2022: First Binder

These are in order of release date, so first up are Empoleons! While I don’t have a checklist spot specifically for any errors, I do like to pick them up and stick them in the collection and spreadsheet when I spot them, hence the bottom right card. It’s difficult to see in this lighting, but there’s a good bit of holo bleed on it, so I like to take it out to look at sometimes.

The early cards definitely bring back good memories- a lot of these (minus the championship signed cards, of course) were pulled by me back when I was a kid, including the Piplup Burger King promo! My mother was very much against eating out when I was little, but she agreed to buying my sister and I exactly one meal for the promo cards, so I was super, super happy to get my favorite Pokémon!

More childhood cards here- the promo Empoleon LV. X came as part of my first-ever tin, which I still have! The card is a little worse-for-wear, since I used it in my favorite deck for quite some time, but it’s definitely one of my most precious cards. On this page, we also have the Piplup Burger King promo from 2009- another personal pull! I vividly remember my mother’s reaction to my sister and I asking her for Burger King for more cards: “Isn’t that the same thing as last year?” There was a LOT of screaming in that car when I pulled a Piplup and my sister pulled a Chimchar (her favorite at the time).

Nothing too notable on this page besides the POP Piplup- they used to sell the POP packs at our local dollar store, and my mother would occasionally buy my sister and me a pack or two. The magic of pulling your favorite Pokémon as a kid is priceless, I think.

Ahh, the Empoleon FB- I had a deck back in the day that I took to small local tournaments, and that was one of my favorite cards to have in play, next to HGSS Meganium!

RC Piplup on this page was another really cool personal pull- I had been out of the TCG loop for a little while and hadn’t heard of the RC cards at all, so pulling a full-holo of my favorite penguin was super exciting. I had never seen anything like the holo pattern on it before!

These pages are home to some of the only steel-type Empoleon in the TCG! Pretty cool, I think, but I’d love to see more of Empoleon’s second type showcased in the cards.

The Dawn’s Piplup CHR is what actually pulled me back into collecting Piplups when I first saw it- Dawn is my favorite character, and Piplup is my favorite Pokémon, so I knew I had to pick this one up, but my lovely partner bought it for me as a surprise before I had the chance, making it another one of the most special cards in my collection. The promo Empoleon V is from a tin my partner bought me as a birthday gift, as well as the alt art Empoleon V. We also scoured McDonald’s hoping for the promo Piplups (since I find a lot more joy in pulling them myself if they’re in modern packs instead of just buying the singles, however more expensive that may be), and we did get both of them eventually! These pages especially hold a lot of really good recent memories.

And finally, some cameos to round out the end of the binder. I like picking up one ETB to open of new sets when they come out, and imagine my surprise finding a tiny Akari hiding out in this Scyther’s artwork! I have yet to get my hands on a reverse, but it’ll come soon enough.

As an honorable mention, this 3D Piplup card I made with extra Brilliant Stars bulk:

08.02.2022: 9-Pocket Upgrade

Over the past few months, I’ve been working on slowly amassing my collection and getting everything transferred over to the new binder! I decided to go for a 9-pocket this time around, but I may upgrade to a 16-pocket in the far future, depending on how the non-English collecting side goes. With this binder upgrade, I’ve also resleeved all of the cards into ultrafits instead of the penny sleeves I had been using. I just think they look cleaner, but that’s a personal preference.

Most new additions I’ve already posted here in the thread, so I don’t have as many notes for this update as last time, but I hope y’all enjoy the photos anyways!

The main new thing of note is the last card in the last image- it’s a Kansai transport card! I’ve decided to pick these up when I can, along with Tosho cards and phone cards featuring Dawn/Piplup line. Since I’m not actively searching for them, I’ve only added the ones that I own or are on their way to me into the spreadsheet under the “others” section. This will also include Topps and other non-TCG cards as I find them, since I just think they’re neat but have no real desire to collect all of them like with the TCG.

09.01.2023: Yearly Compilation
12.17.2023: Mega Non-English Update
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Really cool collection, and the 3D card is absolutely lovely.
Good luck if you aim to collect in all languages!

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Thank you so much, I appreciate it! Finding languages outside of English/Japanese is going to be a bit of a pain I feel like, but hunting cards is all part of the fun imo.

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Mail day today!

The Empoleon and Prinplup are both from the 2008 World’s deck and have the promotional back. The Majestic Dawn Piplup reverse holo (the one with the berry) I was starting to doubt even existed, and I probably paid too much for it considering the condition, but I’m happy to finally have it in my possession, so I don’t care too terribly much.

The other Piplup is officially my first Japanese Piplup! Although it wasn’t the first I ordered, it was the first to come in, and by pure coincidence goes with the rest of the CGI artwork today.

Last but not least, in reality, I’m actually most excited for the Roseanne’s Research. This one is the 2010 World’s deck signed version, and has been strangely difficult to get ahold of compared to the other deck variants!

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Today’s update is (mostly) Japanese this time around!

I found some good deals recently, so I decided to go ahead and pick up a few of my favorites. My absolute favorite Piplup is the CHR (a bit obvious), so getting it in Japanese is particularly exciting.

The English card of this batch is a trainer kit Piplup I’ve been hunting for quite some time- it was listed as coming from the other promo kit that contains Piplup, so it was pure luck I happened to come across it searching for cards I still need.

In other news, I got a new binder! This one is a 9-pocket and holds quite a few more cards than the 4-pocket, so I’ll be updating the main post here with the new layout when I can.

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love this, I’m also collecting piplups right now and just picked up a couple of those roseanne’s researches

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Always nice to meet another Piplup fan! :smiley: The Roseanne’s Research (and more recently, Roseanne’s Backup) are some of my favorites- they’re just so cute!

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Today’s mail day is a compilation of the past few days here, so let’s get into it!

First up, we have another World’s promo as the one English card of this set! I only have a few more English cards left (that are going to be even a little possible to get ahold of), so I’m happy to have this one crossed off finally!

The other notable card in this set is the DP Entry pack Empoleon right next to the English Piplup- the foil on it is a pattern I haven’t seen too often and looks really pretty in person. Other than those two, the other cards are just Japanese bulk, but still nice to have nonetheless.

This set has the PPP Piplup promo (Japanese), another (damaged) World’s promo (English) - you can barely see it, but there are a lot of surface scratches on it, and the back is in rough shape. Since it’s going to be a binder copy, I don’t particularly mind that much at the moment, but I may replace it in the future if I can find one.

The Empoleon LV. X in Japanese was a great find that I’m also really happy about! The English version was my first Empoleon card, and having the Japanese is really exciting as well.

The Project Piplup promo (and its insert next to it) is by far one of my favorite Piplups, drawn by one of my favorite artists, Saya Tsuruta! The insert card explains what Project Piplup is- essentially spreading the cuteness of Piplup around the world!

The last two cards feature Dawn/Akari! The left is one of the Advent of Arceus movie promo, and the right is from Dark Phantasma. I follow the artist of the Dark Phantasma card over on Twitter, and instantly fell in love with it. Though it doesn’t directly feature Piplup, is does have an Akari cameo, so into the collection it goes! It’s also just a gorgeous card in the end.

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Your Piplup-line collection is comprehensive af! Im in the process of building a Turtwig-line collection and I feel the same exact way about the New York 08 stamp turtwig lol. Best of luck!

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That’s so exciting!!

I’ve pretty much given up on ever acquiring the San Diego stamp Piplup- even if it did pop up for sale, there’s no way I could justify the price for one card at the moment. The elusive stamped ones really throw a wrench into comprehensive collections, lol.

Full-line collections are always so cool to me- best of luck with your Turtwigs (and Grotles and Torterras)!

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Awesome collection! Not sure if you collect non-tcg items, but I saw the Pokemon Center dropped Dawn and Piplup canvas art today that looks really good and fits your collection well :slightly_smiling_face:

https://www.pokemoncenter.com/product/710-95606/pokemon-trainers-dawn-canvas-wall-art

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Thank you, I hadn’t seen that! I absolutely love that artwork, it’s so cute- definitely will have to pick it up for the collection as well!

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The main post has been updated with the new binder and new additions (finally!) Also added in a section in the spreadsheet for phone/transport/tosho/etc cards since I got my first transport card in the other day.

Missing from the binder is this lovely Pokémon Day Piplup, courtesy of @TorterraSimp - thank you again for letting me purchase it from you! He’ll be going in the binder soon, but I had already taken photos of the binder before the mail came today… next time though!

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It was a pleasure doing business! Good luck filling out the rest of your binder!

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Two Tosho cards are here!! As I’ve mentioned before, while card-shaped, non-TCG items aren’t a main focus of my collection, I do like to pick them up when I can.

I didn’t even know there were perfect-fit sleeves for this style of card (they’re a little smaller than traditional PTCG cards), but they came together in one, so I’ll have to try to find more sleeves for the other cards I have of this size.

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While I initially was going to wait until after Baltimore regionals to do an update here, the Chinese promo Piplup from @eeveeteam just came in today, and I am absolutely ecstatic! (Thank you again for the heads-up for this one!)

Also in this batch are the unlimited Empoleon 070/092 and the cosmos foil variant of Empoleon 037/172 found in the new Infernape V boxes!

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My first French card is here! I didn’t actually know that the Countdown Calendar promos were released in French until I stumbled across an eBay auction for this one looking for the English variant. I ended up snagging this one for a steal!

Alongside the snowflake stamp Piplup for this update, we also have a Japanese promo that is absolutely adorable.

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I am so, so excited for today’s update!

One of the most hard-to-find cards I’ve been on the hunt for over the past few years is this 2008 World Championship Promo Piplup! I got lucky stumbling across a mislabeled listing, but he’s finally here. The condition is exceptional as well, which I’m particularly happy about considering a lot of the deck cards I’ve come across have been less than ideal.

With this one in hand and another English card on the way, I’ll only need 5 more to complete my English goal of every (reasonably obtainable) line card, cameo, and variation! (SDCC Stamp and Tropical Winds are a pipe dream for now, but who knows.)

For the rest of the update, I have a little family photo! Included are my first Korean and Thai cards for the collection. I’ve said it before, but the CHR is by far my favorite art, and the Thai script is lovely as well.

The Korean non-holos are flimsier than other language prints, but the reverse holo feels thicker than it’s other language variants, which I think was interesting to note.

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Really great to see again another species collector! What are the 5 realistic to get ones you are missing? Too bad starters usually always have a ton of stuff made so the probability that they end up in super expensive stuff always exists :E

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That’s the thing about starters, they get a lot of merch, but they also get a lot of merch, yknow?

I’m missing these 5:

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The Prinplup has been proving the most difficult to find, so I’m really just waiting to pull the triggers on the others until I can get ahold of the Prinplup. Luckily the others are easy enough to snap up when I get the chance, but my priorities have been in other places recently!

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