Complete Pokemon Topps Gallery

Hey guys, a lot of you know i’m very much a topps guy but i feel like they are still overlooked by many and i think it’s partly because they haven seen the variety of the cards, especially from later sets, movie sets or some chase cards. That’s why i wanted to share the whole art gallery here and have all the card art archived in one place. While bulbapedia has info of the cards and sets, the card arts are a bit all over the place and there’s also missing a lot of card photos. (Also i’m ofc super proud of myself to complete this goal which increases my will to share them :smiley: )

The cards are sorted by different eras so i’ve combined few fitting sets together. I’ve also flipped the photos of episode/movie cards to better see the art but it also kinda messes the order of them so you have to basically look through those cards as if you were reading manga if you want to see them in right order. For most cards i’m only posting the front but for some cool puzzle cards i’ll also show how the backs look combined. Also, if you peek close enough you can see my avocado socks in some photos.

Pokemon Topps Original sets

Here i’ve included the first sets topps made, Topps series 1-3. There are a lot different holo variants in this set but i wanted to collect the first silver foil print. If someone wants to see all the holo variants @DanielGirardBolduc has some excellent photos posted of them. In addition to the first 151 pokemon this era had episode cards of the Indigo League and Orange Islands anime as well as die-cut cards, pop-up cards, clear cards, puzzle cards and character cards.

Kanto Pokemon:

















Episode/character cards:









Chase cards/rest:












Pokemon Movie Sets

Here’s the two movie sets topps made, The First Movie is basically filled with cool Mewtwo art from Mewtwo Strikes Back + Pikachu’s Vacation and The Movie 2000 with Lugia/legendary birds art from The Power of One + Pikachu’s Resque Adventure. The First Movie had some die-cuts and sticker/puzzle cards as inserts and The Movie 2000 had the famous first appearance cards and authentic film frame cards in addition to few sticker cards (very rare white variants of those stickers also exist). The first card of Mewtwo Strikes back cards is also a promo card not included in packs.

The First Movie set cards + promo:










The First Movie chase cards:






The Movie 2000 set cards:









The Movie 2000 chase cards:




Pokemon Johto sets

I’m including here Johto Series 1 and Johto League Champions sets. European exlusive Johto series 3 also exists but since it consists of only duplicates i’m adding it to later phase of this post.

The core sets include all Johto pokemon except Celebi but i don’t know why it got left out. Also some screen snap cards from anime were added. A big chunk of chase cards consist of sticker cards, all the pokemon from core set received one which means Celebi was again left out. Other chase cards include die-cut cards, pop-up cards and my personal favourites and grail, the famous hologram cards. In die-cuts they added some evolution lines of Johto pokemon but also some Kanto lines that got a new evolution or baby form in Johto region.

Johto Pokemon:











Episode cards:





Sticker cards:











Other chase cards:







Pokemon Hoenn sets

In this section there’s two Hoenn sets, Advanced and Advanced Challenge. The sets feature all Hoenn pokemon except Jirachi and Deoxys, again no idea why they got left out (also i just noticed my pokedex order is messed). Instead they included few random pokemon from Kanto and Johto. Some Hoenn pokemon were separated between sets while some pokemon got featured in both sets but unlike with previous sets the set designs inside this era differ quite a lot from each others. The chase cards from this era include die-cut cards and pop-up cards. Both cards included also few Kanto pokemon in addition to Hoenn pokemon

Hoenn Pokemon + extras:



















Chase cards:








Duplicate sets

In this section i’ll include the sets with only duplicate art. I was considering to leave them out completely but the card designs differ more or less from earlier sets with same art so decided to add them anyway. First sets here are Topps Chrome 1 and 2 and after that the one mentioned earlier Johto Series 3. Neither of the sets had different chase cards in addition to core set, however Chrome sets had the different holo variants as chase cards that a lot of you probably are familiar with. I’m adding an example of those after core sets since, yes you guessed it, it gives me another reason to post my sparkle muk :sunglasses:.

Johto series 3 was released with Johto League Champions in Europe but Johto series 3 only included part of the pokemon in Johto series 1 and zero sticker cards which caused, and still causes, a lot of confusion with topps collectors in Europe because the sets combined leave a lot of gaps in pokedex, even more in sticker set. I really don’t know why it released like that and it honestly quite underwhelming set among so many great other topps sets.

Topps Chrome 1 & 2:
















Chrome holo variants:


Johto Series 3:








Specials

In this last section are some specials, promos and misfits from other sections with some very exciting ones, at least in my opinion :slight_smile: Some of them aren’t exactly gallery worthy but some fun additions i wanted to add to the post.

First one really isn’t that special, i just didn’t know where to include all the set list cards :smiley: but i like the looks of them in same binder page so didn’t want to separate them, instead adding them here. Also, the first set card is a bit tied to next photo.

Next some jumbo (-ish) promo cards, the difference isn’t major but definitely noticeable, added a refular sized topps card for comparison. The bottom rows are non holo with almost identical back to equivalent regular sized cards. The top one instead is silver foiled and it has series 1 set list front art on the back side of it.

In addition to previous jumbo promos, these different shaped chrome jumbo cards also exist. They were released as box toppers in tins of series 1 and 2 releases, hence the odd shape. Every chrome jumbo card had matching art with its corresponding tin.


Next one is an oddity with pokemon cards, basically a 1/1 card. Topps bought back cards from series 1-3 and First Movie, stamped them with a gold 75th anniversary logo and released them in boosters consisting of whole spectrum of topps releases ranging from sports cards and movie cards to everything in between.

This one is a real speciality as a pokemon topps history piece, a promotion poster of the set that never got released, Top 10 Collector Cards. The set was supposed to be released as part of pokemon 10th anniversary but for some reason it got cut out. The set would have featured differently themed top 10 pokemon such as cutest, strongest and strangest in addition to chase cards.


This one is an uncut sheet stores received as preview to promote topps chrome series 1 set release. The front of the card consists of nine cards from the set with either base chrome card foiling, spectra foiling or sparkle foiling. My copy here has spectra foiling. As far as i know tekno foiling was never added in this promotion. The backside of the sheet is different from regular cards, instead of regular card backs it has white back with some information about the upcoming release and the different holo variants the set will have.

And the last one which really doesn’t have any different art, instead i wanted to include it because it has different pokemon names :slight_smile: The first print of The First Movie set was released so early that the Gold & Silver games weren’t released yet in North America, so they instead used names Pikablu for Marill, Donfan fro Donphan and Buru for Snubbull. In second print other names were already corrected but Snubbull was still spelt differently, “Snubble”. I find it funny that an official international pokemon release didn’t have the finished names so wanted to include these cards in the end of this post :slight_smile:


And that’s it, all different pokemon cards released by topps! I hope i got some people to appreciate topps cards more with this post since there really are some hidden gems in addition to great card art and design. Cheers!

57 Likes

Dang mate! Let me give you this medal :medal_sports:

4 Likes

Awesome post. I haven’t messed with Topps since the early 2000s, but this makes me want to pick some up.

1 Like

Holy miltank, this is so nostalgic! I’ve never seen Gen 3 topps cards, thanks for sharing!

1 Like

Great that it already made the impact for some people i was hoping it would do! I’m also hoping that pfm will one day forgive me my poor tag management

1 Like

It’s a great topps resource, nice to see it all in one gallery !

e4-archive is intended for threads that were imported from the old site. Otherwise 8.5/10 on the tags. There’s really no right or wrong way but I’m striving for some level of consistency, so nearly every thread has a least a slight change in tags by me.

You’re already better than the 80% of people animals who make their threads tagless!!! Even worse when they don’t even use the right category :rage::rage::rage:

8 Likes

Awesome job with this. Always been curious to see all the Topps and Bandai cards since so many people don’t know about them, and the photos of whole sets are scarce. Now someone needs to post the whole Bandai collection. Always cool to see the alternate TCGs for Pokémon.

1 Like

@joponnes Wow :partying_face::green_heart:
Thanks for this masterpiece and for all those good ChaseSet Picture :handshake:

I wasn’t expecting to see this complete JS1 Hologram set :hushed::fire:

Really love this complete TOPPS Art Gallery, I can now sleep in peace even If I don’t complete mine. :grin:

Have an awesome summer.
Daniel Girard Bolduc

3 Likes

Amazing!! Thanks for sharing!

1 Like

@DanielGirardBolduc thanks for kind words! And you’ll definitely always be the topps variant king, no matter what other people post i’ll always bow you on that throne :smiley:

@ragingkraken i believe at least complete bandai + bandai anime sets have already been posted here at some point :thinking: i may be wrong too since i don’t atm have time to properly search for them but at least some full non-tcg sets have been posted here earlier. Ofc there are more bandai sets than that and some sets may even lack info of full sets completely, like some bandai zukan sets. I have full bandai carddass 1-4 sets that i can post tho if they aren’t here already

1 Like

This is for the Bandai Carddass Anime collection.

Cheers!

2 Likes

did you have to post this on payday?!

great gallery, incredible work!

4 Likes

This is so cool! I haven’t seen the Hoenn Topps cards before, so that was a treat. There are some hardcore Topps Pokemon collectors, but I always assumed that they were focused on the holo variants (Spectra, Sparkle, Tekno) from Kanto or the “First Appearance” cards from Johto. It’s nice to see a Topps collector who has a wider breadth than Gen 1.

4 Likes

Amazing gallery, Johannes! Love seeing all of them like that. Especially the later sets, which aren’t shared too often. Didn’t even knew most gen 3 Pokémon only has a single Topps card and Seviper is an exception to that rule with two different artwork, which I’m very happy to see. :smiley:

Also, love the info you added with the final few special cards, like the 10th anniversary poster and Pikablu, Donfan, and Buru/Snubble card. :slight_smile:

Greetz,
Quuador

4 Likes

@kris :smiley:

@quuador i was thinking of you when i took photos of the cards and checked which pokemon were in both sets since some were a bit odd choices (for example seviper in both sets but rayquaza in only one), sometimes we species collectors really get these special treats :grin:

1 Like

Ehi! But he’s talking about me!
Can I suggest the non-tcg tag btw?

Very good overview, I’m not into topps anymore but they are cool, I have to admit that

3 Likes

I think you are missing one. I have seen a MewTwo Strikes Back card 00 “Ready for Battle” although i cannot find much for it atm.

I also learned about it recently but the card is still quite a big mystery. I haven’t been able to dig very deep but what i’ve heard only 2 known copies have surfaced and the origin isn’t known anywhere. I’m on a lookout for one and discussing with another topps collector with it but hoping someone would eventually come up with info about it, since it seems to be so rare it’s hard to believe it’s any country exclusive or similar but instead i’m more leaning to it being some kind of event exclusive, test print or something like that

It’s crazy that a card has gone by so long without any light shined upon it for so long now. Glad people are noticing it though. I like your theory on it being an event exclusive. My guess would have been it was packaged with a toy or some Pokémon cereal as an extra prize but I have not able to find anything so far.

1 Like

Do you guys have a photo of it?