Always love seeing your collection posts! Great update 
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Ahhh thank you, that really means a ton!
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This update is for the spreadsheet enthusiasts (and has given me something to do today other than work which I definitely should be doing)!
I’ve added another page to the spreadsheet- the Illustration Breakdown! Link here: Piplup Line Collection Tracker - Google Sheets This pulls data from the previous sheets and sorts it by release (Eastern or Western) all under whatever illustration it is. I sort my own binder via artwork, and I wanted a way to total how many of each card art I was missing. Not only that, but this makes it significantly easier to search for promos as well, since I know what art I’m looking for and can skim listings easier than trying to zoom in on the set number when it isn’t listed in the title.
Artwork is numbered in order of Japanese release (roughly- some of the promo numbering is a little off, but it’s close enough for my liking for now). Some illustrations are sorted as “x.1” and “x.2”- this is when the illustration is the same, but the card isn’t a direct reprint, such as the normal color and rainbow full art, or with non-tcg promo inserts listed with the card they came with.
As usual, these numbers are automatically-updating, so when I check something off the list on another page of the spreadsheet, it updates on this last page as well. Neat!
I’m still waiting on cards to arrive, so I have none to show for today- hopefully this makes up for it though!
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Today I was able to check off a major collection goal I wasn’t able to meet last year with the addition of my first Russian Piplup! With this card, I have at least one Piplup in every language it was released in.
I’m super happy about this pickup, and it’s been a long time coming. This one will fit nicely in with the rest of my little blue penguins 
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Back again with another update, and I’ve got a lot of new things to show today! I’m currently in the middle of a move, so I haven’t had time to sit down and write a big post like this, so we’ll have a compilation of a few different things from the past month or so here.
First is this lot from @yamahap45 of a majority of the Traditional and Simplified Chinese cards I was missing! The exclusive reverses are especially stunning.
Next, I have this Simplified Chinese CSMPcC non-Holo Blastoise & Piplup GX. This card feels like a really nice proxy, haha. If I don’t look at it while I’m touching it, it feels like a regular Pokémon card, but it’s just really strange to see the GX art without foil.
After that, we’ve got two cards that I’ve been eyeing from afar since getting back into the hobby- Tropical Wind 2007, Portuguese and Spanish copies! I never thought I’d own one, let alone TWO Tropical Winds, and I am absolutely ecstatic. The foil is gorgeous in person.
There was a whole lot of the different languages up for auction last week, and I had set myself a budget per card. It looked like two of them would end within budget, and I was debating which one to bid on to have the best chances of success. Upon encouragement from my lovely wife (“Just bid on them both, if you get both then great!”), I ended up winning both the Spanish and Portuguese versions. Funny how that works.
My CardTrader order came in yesterday as well! In total, this one order added over 70 new cards to my collection, making my total completion percentage 50.46%. I can proudly say I now have over half of all Piplup line (+Dawn/Hikari/Akari) cards that exist This also completes one of my 2024 collection goals to have 50% or higher completed by the end of the year! Overall, a series of super exciting additions!
Finally, you may have noticed that 50.46% complete means I have a total of 493 cards (not including signatures and errors), which is coincidentally both too many to fit in my current binder and the number of Pokémon in the Sinnoh Pokédex. To house all of these, naturally I ordered a new binder as well- this massive 4x4 1000-card monstrosity. I cannot possibly adequately explain just how ridiculously big this binder is. I love it.
3x4 binders don’t feel that much bigger than 3x3s, and I knew this one would be bigger, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer size of this thing. The 16-pocket pages of this Piplup tome look phenomenal, and I’m super happy with it. It took about an hour and 15 to transfer and sort all of the cards into this one, and it was 100% worth it to have all the cards in one place.
Like I said above, I’m in the process of moving, so I’ll take updated binder photos for the main post in this new binder when I find the time. Thanks for reading this giant update if you made it this far, and happy collecting!
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The possibilities of different binder page layouts of that binder 
really nice pickups, congrats especially on hitting that halfway mark!
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Thank you so much!! Yeah, the pages have been super fun to layout in the 4x4- definitely worth!
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Your piplup evo line is super impressive! Empoleon has been a love of mine as well since DP. Im a sucker for anything like royalty or regal looking and he is just 
.
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What a cute Pokémon to species collect. Love it!
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Mail day!
First up, we’ve got the Battle Party Combo Blastoise & Piplup GX, but this time in holo! This was an exciting print to find, since they’re only present in tournament-style preconstructed decks, and there’s only a small chance of the entire deck being foil.
Secondly, we’ve got the Professor Program stamped Roseanne’s Backup! The Professor Program cards are the most recent English printings of Piplup-adjacent cards (this one has a little Piplup bookmark as a callback to Roseanne’s Research!), and unfortunately add to the list of nearly-unobtainable English cards on the list. As far as I’m aware, there are 4 copies of Friends in Hisui, Friends in Sinnoh, and this one- Roseanne’s Backup, all having the following variants: just the Professor Program stamp, Staff stamp, Top 8 stamp, and Champion stamp. The regular versions are a bit pricey but aren’t that difficult to find, but the other three variants of each likely won’t make it to my binder any time soon.
Either way, I’m excited about this pickup! It’s a card I’ve been hunting out for a good price since I heard about this print, and she’ll look great with the rest of the Roseanne’s prints I have.
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Lovely additions, nice to also hear the background for both of them since they aren’t the most common ones!
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Back today with a single-card update, courtesy of @eeveeteam !
Whenever people message me with piplup cards from lots they’ve purchased or come across or what have you, it really hammers in what this hobby is all about for me. The community aspect of Pokémon card collecting, and even more specifically species collecting, brings me so much joy. There’s something very specific to Pokémon species collectors that we can all share in, whether it’s that one XY8 unlimited card or a hard-to-find Russian common that others unfamiliar with the hobby niche don’t really get the significance of, and I just love it. I’ve gotten several cards from other species collectors here on e4, and it makes me happy that we’re all (sort of) looking out for each other in that regard.
This Spanish Burger King promo Piplup now has a home safely in my binder with its friends.
Got into a little bit of a ramble there, but thank you for reading if you made it this far. Happy collecting everyone!
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Mail day Monday brings an exciting little penguin- the Russian Breakthrough Prinplup!
I just recently acquired the Russian Piplup from the same set, and I’m so excited to add another Russian card to my collection.
I now own 2 of 6 Russian Piplup Line cards after keeping my eyes peeled and hunting them down for about two years now, and while I always knew these would be a tough find, I think that makes the acquisition even more fulfilling.
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I didn’t realize these would come so soon, or else I’d have saved yesterday’s for one bigger update, but here we are.
Both 1st Edition and Unlimited copies of the Empoleon Half Deck (DP Entry Pack, not to be confused with Entry Pack ‘08) Empoleon! These cards differ from the DP1 prints of Empoleon by not having a rarity symbol and having a different foil pattern.
These are also the last two Eastern release prints I needed for this artwork, so that’s an added bonus here.
This foiling is absolutely beautiful, and similar foil effects have been used on other half deck cards and various promos (Sapporo’s Pikachu being a recent example), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen this particular star foiling before on Pokémon cards. It absolutely glitters in person.
Next, we’ve got some various Korean cards! Dark Rush Piplup and Prinplup, along with a Red Flash Empoleon that has some serious holo bleed. I wasn’t expecting the bleed on this one, and it doesn’t show up very well on camera, but it’s great in person.
With these, I now am at 502 cards for this collection, not including errors, misprints, and signatures. I can’t believe how far this little collection has come, and I’m so happy to be able to share it with all of you.
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Beautiful collection of penguins! Piplup’s cuteness can’t be overstated 
Species collecting in all languages is such a big venture. Even moreso if you’re collecting the whole evolution line. I don’t know if it’s something I’d want to pursue in the future, but it’s certainly fun to follow along your journey!
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Thank you! I remember when the gen 4 starters were revealed, and I was absolutely enamored with the cute little penguin.
All-language collecting really is a journey, and one that I doubt I’ll ever complete. There are just too many expensive cards and not enough funds (or time, honestly), to catch them all, and I’ve accepted that.
Going for the entire line + Dawn is a huge goal, but I’m enjoying the hunt. It’s exposed me to really neat cards and releases I wouldn’t have paid much attention to otherwise or have even known about, in some cases. Documenting variants and niche releases is a big part of the enjoyment for me, personally, and I’m glad you’re enjoying following along!
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Awesome additions once again, especially loving the foil pattern on half deck empoleons! Congrats also breaking the 500 individual card milestone, since i’m only collecting slime in english and japanese it’s such a pleasure to watch others go all in with languages and see the different card variants flooding in
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So wonderful to meet the amazing person behind this project it’s been an immense help to my collection! Good to see so many avid Piplup lovers out there! 
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That was a wild experience, and a pleasure meeting you as well! E4 really out here bringing people together 
YOOOO this is a fantastic collection! I plan to make a thread about collecting caterpie, diglett, meowth, inkay, and wobuffet, and I just wish that I could get my collection this far!