As i love everything about the first two gens i felt i was missing out of so much great art by only going for english wotc cards, after all the card that ignited my urge for collecting as an adult was vending series snorlax so i had to have at least that. At first i thought i’d only buy that one but when i was already almost doing so i happened to see a vending poliwrath in my related ebay searches and realised there were so many other cards i wanted in addition to the snorlax. It was quite early phase of my collecting so i wasn’t that familiar with japanese exclusive sets but as i went through the vending sets it didn’t take long until i went hard to complete the set.
I was extremely happy with vending and after finishing i could quite peacefully finish the rest of my wotc sets, and it actually took some more years until the inevitable happened and i went for the two remaining japanese exclusive sets from the same era. Vs series was really a no-brainer but i had some inner fights if i should go for web series since it had a good bunch of repeated arts too but i’m extremely glad i did go for it as the three sets make a beautiful binder and especially in web series some of the classic arts get a whole new life with those lovely e-series borders.
I did also go for the additional cards related to the three sets so there’s also some promos here and for example the masaki set. I also remember some horror moments as the seller shipped my masaki gengar completely without sleeve or toploader, just some cardboard for protection but the card wasn’t even fully between the cardboard pieces.
Nevertheless this binder has some of the best art and cards pokemon has ever produced and i couldn’t think of my vintage or really even the wotc collection without these sets. Vs series still also has one of the best cohesions in any set and is overall one of the best sets there is. I also do have some smaller japanese sets and mini collections in addition to these sets but they can wait until another update.
Vending:
VS:
Web:
