D3F14NC3's Collection Down Under 🦘

[joponnes]

Naturally loved this update since e-series are a hit for me, hoping to see them finished too one day even if it isn’t a priority for you right now i think most times people like e-series so they can cope with stuff like double amount of reverse rares in expedition but you might be struggling with the idea more

[D3F14NC3]

@ReganRampage

The caterpie is pretty fun to look at too.
Not a thought between those eyes

Maybe it has that expression because it’s seen some things we couldn’t comprehend.

[UKLugia]

I love the e-series artwork, just can’t afford to collect it when I haven’t finished the Base-Destiny sets yet. Only have a few random cards that I have accrued along the way. One of them is the holo Zapdos from Aquapolis though which I absolutely love and is probably worth a lot more than I originally paid for it as a random ebay impulse purchase back when Pokemon was unpopular and the cards practically given away, they were so cheap.

From your cards, I LOVE that crazy Komiya Charmeleon. But then there is that oddly cropped Golem that looks like he’s about to take a power dump

Nice pictures; thanks for sharing! Enjoyed looking at those arts.

[D3F14NC3]

Charmeleon is one of my favourite Pokemon and that one is certainly the most unique (at least from the WOTC era). That Zapdos of yours would be a prized card for sure.

[D3F14NC3]

I thought I would show something a little different from cards. My original green Gameboy and my original Pokémon games. My dad and brother bought me my Gameboy for my birthday. It came with Tetris plus they also bought me a couple of other games to go with it. The Jungle Book and the Lion King. I played those game a lot but I could never beat them. I no longer have those games (they actually weren’t very good games in retrospect) but I did keep my Pokémon games.

Pokémon Yellow

Fast forward a year or so and the Pokémon games came to Australia. I saved up my pocket money and my very first game I purchased from Toyworld was Pokémon Yellow Version. I love that Pikachu follows you around. My friends had Blue and Red and were always jealous that my Pokémon would follow me in my game. Out of the trio, Pokémon Yellow is my personal favourite. I named my character “Ash” as I always thought that was who it was. Unfortunately, the ravages of time seem to have corrupted my game. It does still start but it appears to have loaded into a random location and my stats and Pokémon are all different. I did have a complete Pokédex including Mew (more on that in the next section).

Pokémon Blue

I wanted to complete my Pokédex so I purchased Pokémon Blue Version. By this time, the Gameboy Colour had just released and a received it as a present from my mum (I can’t recall if it was for my birthday or Christmas). This meant I now had two Gameboys so with the help of a link cable, I could trade between my two games. I did also occasionally trade with friends which is where my Mew came from. My friend had gotten it at an event. I spent hours trading back and forth to fill my Pokédex on both games but I was still missing a few from Red. Unfortunately yet again, the ravages of time seem to have corrupted my game. My character name is different and my Pokédex is no longer complete. But it does still work. I also learnt from friends in school about the MissingNo glitch and duplicated my master ball and rare candies to level all of my Pokémon to 100. I caught MissingNo once and it turned into a Rhydon that knew fly which was interesting. It’s amazing that everyone knew this glitch pre-internet.

Pokémon Red

I was on holidays at my grandma’s and we were walking around the neighbourhood when we came across a garage sale (some of you may know it as a yard sale). I saw a copy of Pokémon Red Version for $20 and purchased it. There was no box or anything which is why I don’t have the packaging for Red. But I didn’t mind because it allowed me to complete my Pokédex. My game still works perfectly. I was last standing at Cinnabar Island so clearly some nefarious glitching was underway. I am going to backup my game save to preserve my original Pokémon for the future as they hold a lot of great memories for me.

[Bingbong]

Beautiful collection and loved that you still have such strong memories about all the games!

[brendantheclayboy]

Phew… adore this post a great deal! The best man. Love the green gameboy, looks cosmic as hell. There is no better color! Years back I posted my game collection as well, but didn’t include the boxes, so it’s really great to see you’ve kept them in excellent condition! Funnily I included pokemon green (jp) in that post, so your color scheme still matches.

In the US if one has a garage, they call it a garage sale, and if one doesn’t, they call it a yard sale!

But most remarkably, if all 3 colors haven’t had battery replacements, and they are still booting up like that, that is astonishing. Granted, they really only pull from the battery when in use, unlike the gen 2 games with an internal clock, but to have them be about 25 years old at this point and still have a working battery is amazing. I’m not sure if you have access to a soldering iron, but you can dirt cheap pick up replacement batteries and pop those out and replace, and they should work good as new. I’ve done it with some dozen cartridges at this point.

Excellent 5 star post my good Aussie. The jage/emerald satin luster of that gameboy has me like this:

[rtas]

Sir take your cubone to a pokemon center lol

[D3F14NC3]

It’s destined to remain fainted for all eternity.

[D3F14NC3]

Thank you! I am looking into battery replacements now. I’m surprised everything still works. It has been about 5 years since I last powered these on.

[SeasidePokemon]

Something about seeing an original GameBoy next to those cardboard boxes is just so incredibly nostalgic. I love how they still have the price stickers on them, it’s the cherry on top. Thanks for sharing!

[D3F14NC3]

Dark Charmeleon Collection

Something a little different to my usual English WOTC collecting, I decided I wanted to collect every Dark Charmeleon card variant with this artwork and to the best of my knowledge, this is the complete list excluding any misprints.

I wanted to collect this specific card for a few reasons. Firstly, the Gold W stamp card (bottom right) was the exact card which got me into collecting Pokémon cards. It wasn’t my first card but it was the first card where I made the conscious decision that I wanted to preserve it in mint condition. I made my mum buy a packet of Kraft Cheese Singles to get it when I was a little kid and I decided to keep my copy sealed, even though my friends all opened theirs. It’s funny to think that card was in a packet of cheese in the supermarket fridge at one point.

Secondly, this is my all-time favourite card artwork by the legendary Kagemaru Himeno. I love all of her artworks but the posing, colours and composition of this particular card are unparalleled in my opinion.

And finally, if you didn’t already realise from all my ramblings in this post, it’s simply my favourite card. When I think of Pokémon cards, this is the card that comes to my mind.

From top left the cards are:

• Japanese Unlimited - Rocket Gang .
• Japanese 1st Edition - Pokemon Web .
• Japanese Unlimited - Pokemon Web .
• French 1st Edition - Team Rocket .
• French Unlimited Edition - Team Rocket .
• German 1st Edition - Team Rocket .
• German Unlimited Edition - Team Rocket .
• Italian 1st Edition - Team Rocket .
• Italian Unlimited Edition - Team Rocket .
• English 1st Edition - Team Rocket .
• English Unlimited Edition - Team Rocket.
• English W Stamp Promo (Gold Stamp) .
• The card I’m holding - English W Stamp Promo (Silver Stamp) .

A couple of things I found interesting while completing this collection. Firstly, the artwork was changed for the non-Japanese versions. Additional shading was added for the non-Japanese card art. This makes it look edgier than the original Japanese version which may have been more fitting for the “Dark” theme they were going for. I certainly thought it was really cool as a kid.

Secondly, by far the hardest card to collect of all of these was the Silver stamped promo . It’s exact release details and backstory aren’t known. The Gold stamp is common but the Silver far less so. I only see one or two per year listed on eBay compared to daily new listings for the gold stamp.

Thank you for reading about my favourite card!

[bbobrob]

A bit late, but love seeing binder pages of different variants of the same card. And with an art as good as Dark Charmeleon’s, this page is a beauty! And the fun added rarity of the silver stamp gives it even more character! (It’s a shame the total set is 13 cards and not 12 though—makes for awkward bindering )

[D3F14NC3]

Thank you. Yes the 13th card makes the binder a little wonky. Maybe they will have reprints of this are in the future to help me create a second Dark Charmeleon page.

[joponnes]

Even later than @bbobrob ! But a lovely update, i’ve said it earlier too but it’s always a sight to see this many variants side by side. Also, have you considered to build the second page of misprints, miscut and similar ones to have two complete pages? Since the origins aren’t clear the silver stamp could be considered to be a different release outside the official ones so you would have one page for official releases and one page for more obscure cards

[D3F14NC3]

Thank you. I have thought about collecting error Dark Charmeleons as well. Those would move to the second page if I do. I’m surprised this artwork was never reprinted apart from the Japanese Pokemon Web set.

[UKLugia]

Very nice! Good information about the added shadows on the non-Japanese art as well…not something I’d noticed until seeing all the versions side-by-side.

I hope we get the answer to the silver W stamp one day but I would theorise it was maybe a printing error for the normal gold version. But who knows!

One of the top card arts in the Rocket set for sure though. This and Dark Golduck are probably my favourites.

[D3F14NC3]

Thank you. Dark Golduck is my second favourite after Dark Charmeleon.

[D3F14NC3]

While I’m slowly working on some larger collection goals which will take me quite a while to complete, I thought I’d share some smaller parts of my collection. I haven’t posted these before as it’s more of the random bits and pieces, rather than actual cards (apart from the Pikachu collection). Those items which many of us accumulate over our collecting career and wouldn’t necessarily consider part of your main collection.

Pikachu World Collection

This is my original copy which I have owned this since I was a kid in the 90s. I bought it from Toyworld with some of my pocket money. I really love the Birthday Pikachu and I’m glad I resisted the urge to write my name on it as a child.

Pokémon Binders

These are some original binders from my childhood. The small binder was my very first one. My collection quickly outgrew this binder and after that it became by doubles binder for my rare cards. I would take it around to friends’ houses to make trades.

I then upgraded to the larger ring binder with Ash, Misty and Brock on the cover. This was my main binder for over a decade until I upgraded to newer ringless binders a few years back to better protect my cards. The other two binders I purchased later as my main binder filled up.

I no longer use any of the ring binders but I do still use the smaller one as a temporary binder until I have time to move new cards across into their proper binders.

Pokémon Coins

My small collection of coins. The ones from 1999-2000 I obtained as a child out of theme decks and starter sets. The bottom two likely came with bulk purchases I made much later. My favourite is the Chansey with its simplistic design.

Card Lists, Rule Books and Damage Counters

These are my original cards lists from when I was a child. We didn’t know about all the different variants like Shadowless back then. As far as we knew, if it was marked off on this list, our collection was complete. You can see my original pen marks as I checked off which cards I had.

As far as I can remember, I never had a rule book as a kid. I found the Dragon Frontiers one much later at a market. The Version 2 copy was actually a recent acquisition and formed part of my E4 Secret Santa gift from last year.

The damage counters I have had since I was a child and came out of theme decks and starter sets. I never played personally and at the time I didn’t know what these glass beads were for. I even wrote Nintendo a handwritten letter to ask them and a kind lady replied to me and sent my some Nintendo stickers and posters with her reply.

[orannge]

Thx for sharing those personal details surrounding your collection and showing the items you connect so much of your own memories with.

I think it is priceless, that you are still in possession of the items of your childhood. Nothing one aquires after this can recall the same emotions.

And even though there is no monetary value in partially crossed out card lists, nothing will have more impact on oneself and make a collection really feel special and meaningful.