I’m seeking 600dpi scans, unwatermarked, of all complete sets in all languages to begin storing away in the event of a future database.
These scans must be produced by you and not simply fetched from someone else’s work. Each card must be a separate file, though you can scan as many at a time as you like. Only the fronts are necessary. Will take reverse holo and variant scans, but these are secondary to regular set cards.
When you submit them, you are allowing them to be used by me or the Elite Fourum as needed and do not retain any rights to or ownership of the scans. The goal is to create a free open source comprehensive guide. Of course you can still use the images however you like. The retention of rights solely pertains to us being allowed to give everyone else access as freely as they desire to clean images.
Message me if you are able and willing to help!
If you have questions or concerns, message me too!
Just as a general note: I’m aware of some of the sources out there, but everything is modified in an identifying way or used as some sort of strings attached source.
I want to create something truly open source. Pokemon information should be freely available without politics getting in the way.
Thanks for the overwhelmingly positive response via PMs so far. I really appreciate all of the offers to help!
And I’m glad we can share a goal together. Free information without a political agenda and for the sake of hobbyists. It’s an admirable one.
So far most of the missing scans are Japanese sets. Emphasis is on modern sets. If you know anyone interested in being involved in the project, just let me know.
One clarification: If something were to be done with them that somehow drew attention to a particular entity all involved contributors would be specifically credited. The relinquishing of rights strictly serves to keep people from attempting to come back later and say “Well these are MY scans.” But I’m not too worried about it. Only the immature would be aversed to this idea in the first place, so we expect those contributing wouldn’t even try to play silly games down the road.
I would love a site like serebii or pkmncards.com where you have options to have all cards of a specific set or pokemon shown together as thumbnails/smaller images. Id kill for that, it would make collecting easier and harder (for its easier to see.your wants). Yet, it will be a massive project! Good luck
I agree, @aj1 which is why I have that setup on my pikachu site. If the data is stored in a database (or Google sheets like mine) then having it coded into a website is just a matter of setting up a template to populate pages. Obviously this project has a long time to go before it’s ready to be published but I’m always happy to explain how I did my site from Google sheets if it’s of help to whomever ends up setting up all this data and website.
Hello, I am now here, but i have been reading this forum for a long time. But this thread made me finally register. Why? Because this was something i wanted to do for a long time and I have already thought a lot about it. As this is a thing you need to do properly from the start. I know that it’s not something somebody can do on his own, especially me with basically no collection. I wanted to suggest a community project like this but i currently don’t have time to organize it and as a newcomer my request for help wouldn’t probably be looked in in the same way as when somebody like Churlocker brings it to your attention. So thank you for that!
And what now? For most card games sadly no such public collection exists, so we don’t exactly have a guide on how to do this and what are the pitfalls, except for one project. That project is obviously for the biggest game out there - Magic the Gathering, but we should look closely at how it works and gather all tips that will be useful for a Pokémon variant. The project is located here. The people there already have a few years of scanning, post-processing and methods of sharing experience, so it would be wise to maybe even make some form of contact.
How do we want to store the images?
There is always the problem of legality of doing such things. It’s maybe better for the files to be stored on p2p basis (torrent files with big updates, cloud folders for small new releases) as slightlymagic does it. Other options are of course some kind of a web frontend. Before that i would try to secure some kind of agreement with the project from TPC officials.
Setting up a platform
Probably a new section of this boards for the project to discuss new additions, maintain a want list, etc. Stuff like scaning guides, quality standards and others need to be setup fast, before everybody does it his own way. One piece of advice i got from slightlymagic is to always take only scans of full sets, as piecing a set from multiple scanners can be hard. Rare cards and promos can obviously be scanned on a piece by piece basis.
Anyways I am glad that this has started and i hope i can contribute to this. Good luck to all of us.
This is fantastic help! I will pursue everything mentioned here.
If you send me a message, I’d be glad to have help working on this from you. Alternatively, I can provide my email address and we can work together communicating in that fashion. It would be hugely appreciated.
This seems to be a good reference point for some legality discussion and a potential rough idea on a disclaimer if we go that route vs getting express permission from TPCi
I think this is a great idea, and it’ll be very satisfying to tick off the missing cards one by one. I will likely be purchasing a scanner later in the year so hopefully I can help out in some way if any cards that I own haven’t been added by then, unlikely as that may be.
Send me a message with what you have and I’ll let you know what’s missing from the list still that you have. That way you don’t put extra work in just to double up on stuff we’ve got.
