Finally had a chance to lay out my decks again. The variant boxes are coming along nicely, every box in the photo is a physically different variant, probably a half dozen more that werent in the photo. Many were upgraded to sealed… well… it feels that way on my wallet but now that Im counting, not as many as I hoped for. I have 3 left in the mainline decks that I am searching for (Kalos starter collection which had 1 of the kalos starter decks and a pin of the starter) and that would let me have at least 1 variation of every english game-legal retail-available deck from base to the most recent V battle decks (waiting on them to be delivered).
Why do I keep specifying english boxes? Because there is no known list which decks were printed in which languages. The base starter and base decks should have language variants in Dutch, German, French, Korean, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, which is an extra 40 deck boxes alone, with an unknown amount of the later decks in other languages. I know jungle and fossil can be found in Dutch, Spanish, German, possibly french, and possibly the other 2 spanish based languages (again, another 24 decks). Rocket was made in Italian (+2), Tempest was made in German (+1), Neo decks were also in Italian, German, and French (+18). E-series decks were also in Italian and German (+12). Total up to Ruby/Sapphire that Ive seen tallies up to 95 non english decks, with an unknown amount missing from that. Currently I’m only at about 15/95.
Why do I keep specifying game legal and retail available? There were several decks which were made for demonstration only or made using nongame legal cards. These are famously the Trainer deck A and B (I have the boxes for display, just no contents) but also World championship decks (64 decks starting from 2004 to 2019). There were also demonstration decks for Jungle that there is minimal information about (I have water blast but little hope of finding a reasonably priced power reserve). These had literally no difference in cards (standard unlimited versions) and merely had a simple deck box with a stuck on logo for what the deck was.
Why do I say at least 1 variation of? Not only did the Gen 1 and Gen 2 decks have variants, of the 29 Gen 3 decks, from ex dragon to ex breakthrough all decks had a english and an english international version. The contents seem to be the same but the boxes had slight logo differences due to the nintendo copyright. Thats an additional 18 decks. There are also nonenglish variants here but I am for the most part omitting them from my collection for now since they are very hard to track down without any kind of information. I think there are Italian, french, and maybe german versions but it is unconfirmed which sets had which languages.
Some fun numbers:
There are approximately 465 total english decks and products with unique packaging (including international english variants), granted 64 of those are World championship decks.
Total numbers of name specific decks at this point: 206. Currently Im at 203/206 with 192/206 sealed.
There are a total of 44, if you count tempest, name specific decks in Gen1 and Gen2. Lots of these have print run variants and international box variants.
Other types of decks and deck products really began being released at the XY time period, much more so than scattered product before. Legendary battle decks, trainer kits, battle arena decks, challenge boxes, etc.
- 44/44 Gen 1-2 no variants with 35/44 sealed up to Ruby/sapphire
- 81/108 Gen 1-2 w/ english variants with 41/108 sealed up to Ruby/sapphire. There may be another 12 that exist but I am still researching.
- 4/4 WOTC special collection boxes with 2/4 sealed (Thunderstorm and Tempest larger giftboxes not sealed)
- 29/29 Gen 3 no variants 27/29 of the name specific decks sealed
- 34/47 Gen 3 w/english variants 32/47 decks sealed
- 35/35 Gen 4 sealed decks. I have recently upgraded my last open deck (HS Unleashed Chaos Control) to a sealed copy.
- 22/22 Gen 5 sealed decks. Good news for me, very little extra product with decks came out at this time.
- 27/27 Gen 6 sealed decks, I have picked up my last standalone sealed deck (Froakie) to complete the 27/27 sealed
- 3/6 Gen 6 special boxes for the Kalos starters with the Kalos Starter Collections still completely missing.
- 28/28 Gen 7 sealed decks (includes Lets play double pack)
- 9/9 Gen 8 sealed decks
- 4/4 V battle decks sealed
- 2/2 V Battle double packs sealed
- 5/20 Gen 5 specialty boxes sealed
- 16/16 Gen 6 and later challenge boxes sealed (there may be another 2 that exist)
- 8/8 sealed battle arena boxes
- 9/13 trainer kits sealed, (2 of these missing are the ex trainer kits in cardboard instead of plastic)
- 3/3 sealed league battle decks
- 8/8 legendary battle decks (includes the newly released trainer legendary box for the ho-oh and lugia decks)
- 3/3 sealed epic collection decks
- 2/2 sealed battle academy boxes (One was an amazon release only that was bundled with extra packs)
- 3/3 Battle stadium decks (sadly with the Blaziken deck not sealed)
- 1/1 sealed trainer toolkit
- 3/4 demo deck boxes (not sealed, missing Power reserve)
- 3/64 World Championship Deck boxes, probably going to regret not getting these early.
And I always love getting some unique japanese deck products. The Ash vs Rocket deck, VMAX decks, Misty/Brock gym decks, VS half deck, etc. These are just fun to have in a collection.
Upcoming deck news: New trainer toolkit and new battle academy box coming soon. We’ll see if any more variations of old product pop up as the 25th anniversary comes out and Pokemon clears out old product.
Really though, next update will be of actual cards.
just need the Eeveelutions deck to finish the mass-release decks. Not sure if I’ll get to red label or gold stripe decks anytime soon haha
). All but 30 decks shown are sealed. Kinda wish I had higher ceilings since Im not going to be able to finish XY or after but I am very happy with what is up. So close to done catching them all, hopefully can finish in 2023.
