Hello everyone,
I’m starting this thread as a way to keep a record of my collection and to share it with you all.
Some of you may already know me from Instagram. Since the beginning of this year I’ve been absent from social media because, in my opinion, the current collecting environment – especially on social platforms and in some Spanish circles – has unfortunately become heavily money-driven rather than collection-driven.
At the moment, this forum is the only place where I remain active. It was also one of the very first communities I joined years ago when I came back to the hobby in a more serious and committed way.
For those who don’t know me: my name is Francisco, known online as SpanishPokellector. I’m a 33-year-old Spanish engineer. Like many of us, Pokémon marked an important part of my childhood, my teenage years, and continues to be part of my adult life today.
My collection is primarily focused on the Spanish language. For sets that were unfortunately never released in Spanish, I also collect them in Portuguese, both because of the similarity between the languages and the geographical proximity, but also because the distribution and rarity, especially during the EX era, is very comparable to Spanish releases of that time.
1999 - 2000 GAME BOY SEALED GAMES
With that said, I want to begin by showing the games that started my connection with this wonderful franchise for me: Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow.
All three copies are sealed and graded by BetaGrading, a company specialized in European seals. After a bad experience with WATA, I personally consider them the best reference for European video game grading.
From here, I’ll try to move forward in chronological order.
1999 - SPANISH BASE SET 1ST. ED.
When I started collecting cards, I thought a lot about how I could make my collection different from others, how to personalize it and make it as special and unique as possible.
I decided to focus on getting signatures from Mitsuhiro Arita, since he is one of the few illustrators who still signs today and he is responsible for artworks on many of the most iconic cards in the entire hobby.
In 2022, I attended my first Arita event at PAU together with my brothers. It was a crazy experience, honestly with very poor organization and with attitudes from some people that left a lot to be desired.
Despite that, I keep very fond memories of the event. It made me feel deeper inside the Pokémon community and it also changed the way I saw many aspects of the hobby.
At this event, I obtained the first signatures of my collection for Base Set: Charizard, Gyarados and Venusaur.
Looking back at it now, simply having these three cards signed already makes them incredibly special and unique to me.
There might be higher grades out there, but the difference between, for example, an early cert PSA 10 and a more modern PSA 8 or 9 feels minimal and, nowadays, somewhat relative. What truly matters to me is owning the cards that create so much nostalgia in my life, signed and sketched in person.
There are a few other signed Spanish Base Set Charizards, but Arita signatures basically end there. There are no other Arita sketch signatures on Spanish cards that I did not personally obtain. Every signed card you will see in this thread is population 1, except for the Charizard.
With those three signatures, here is my full Base Set.
2000 - SPANISH JUNGLE 1ST. ED.
Continuing chronologically through the sets, the next one I managed to complete was Jungle 1st Edition in Spanish.
I would say that the majority of the cards were graded by myself. It is a set with extremely low population numbers and it is very difficult to find copies in true near mint condition.
Following my idea of making the collection as special and personal as possible, last year I attended the Dublin event together with my brothers and some friends in order to expand the signatures within my collection.
At this event I was able to get Clefable, Electrode, Kangaskhan and Wigglytuff signed.
The sketches are wonderful, and being able to see them on Spanish cards is something incredible. It gives a completely different identity to my Jungle master set and makes it truly unique.
2000 - SPANISH FOSSIL 1ST. ED.
Continuing with the chronological journey, the next set is Fossil 1st Edition in Spanish.
This is a wonderful set, with incredible artworks and cards that are very hard to find in near mint to mint condition, in my opinion even slightly more challenging than Jungle. As many of you know, it is also a set that features numerous illustrations by the master Mitsuhiro Arita.
I was able to get the three legendary birds signed at the Cologne event, which was a very special, fun, and extremely well organized gathering. These three sketches are incredibly meaningful to me.
Muk and Raichu were signed at the Dublin event last year as well.
With all of these sketches completed, I was able to finish the Fossil set and, with it, achieve my goal of having every Spanish WotC era holographic card illustrated by Mitsuhiro Arita signed with a sketch.
Unfortunately, in Spanish we did not receive any additional WotC era sets besides Neo Genesis, which will be the next one I show. Sadly, that set does not contain any holographics illustrated by Arita.
2001 - SPANISH NEO GENESIS 1ST. ED.
This is, by a very large margin, the most difficult set to complete in Spanish.
After Fossil, WotC stopped releasing sets in Spanish until Neo Genesis appeared. Even then, the distribution of this set was the most limited of any Spanish release. For reasons that are still unclear, it was only distributed in certain South American countries and never truly made it to Spanish retail stores. The unlimited version is considerably more common and much easier to encounter.
This makes completing the set extremely challenging, especially in near mint condition.
Fortunately, after an enormous amount of work and with the help of several fellow collectors, I managed to complete it. With that, I was able to achieve another important milestone: completing every holographic card from the WotC era in Spanish, all in 1st Edition.
SPANISH WOTC BLACK STAR PROMOS (HELP NEEDED)
As a final chapter, more as a bonus section, I want to mention a part of the collection that is still incomplete and where I will likely need help from the community.
The Spanish language has something wonderful but at the same time incredibly frustrating: we have very little, and sometimes almost no information about how certain cards were distributed. The Black Star promos are a perfect example of this situation.
Some of these cards are virtually impossible to see. As many of you already know, examples include Flying Pikachu, Surfing Pikachu, and the Pichu reverse holo.
These are three cards that I would absolutely love to obtain and truly dream of adding to my Spanish collection. They would represent an incredible milestone for me. If any of you could provide information or potentially help me track them down, I would be extremely grateful.
Beyond those, there are other promos that are equally elusive, such as Marill, Togepi, Cleffa, Smeargle, Scizor and Igglybuff. I do not own these either, and I would love to be able to add them in the future.
Then there is Psyduck. Still extremely rare, but slightly more attainable than the ones mentioned above, with an estimated population of perhaps 10 to 20 known copies. Fortunately, I do own one example of this card.
I want to emphasize that any help or information that could lead me toward finding these cards would be tremendously appreciated.
With this, I will close the WotC era chapter of my collection for now. In the next update, I will continue with the EX era.
Thank you all for reading.
