It’s been a while, I’m back with a couple of collection updates from the past few months.
First of all, I’ve been admiring Cardmarket EU from a distance for a while now, since they have such a nice selection of non-English non-Japanese cards that are hard to find elsewhere.
A few months ago I finally signed up and found a UK-based forwarding service. And shortly after going into full kid-in-candy-store mode on the site, these showed up:
Also, at Anime Expo this year, between the usual overpriced cards you find at conventions, I spotted a 4th print base set Machamp in really good condition.
I figure they assumed it was unlimited, since the price was actually pretty good and I’m not used to that happening at AX.
Hey there everybody - I seem to have a knack for disappearing from forums for extended periods of time, but I’m hoping to start becoming more active on here again. The collecting’s still going strong though, so I thought I’d introduce a new collection I’ve been working on recently.
I’ve always been fascinated by the minor differences between similar cards across various eras and languages, and there’s a particular type of card that I feel exemplifies this best (and equally importantly, tends to be relatively cheap).
Introducing… the basic energy collection!
As a kid I remember finding energies interesting, especially during the e-card and EX eras where it felt like every time I opened a pack the whole card layout had changed again.
As I collect more of these, I think it’ll be interesting to see all the forms these have taken over the years. I’m planning to include Darkness and Metal energies from before they were considered basics too - and hopefully they don’t add a 10th basic energy anytime soon and mess up the layout of my binder.
Hey there, a couple of recent collection updates today. First of all, I received some international cards for my various ongoing collections - nothing too fancy, almost certainly spent more on shipping than the actual cards, but it’s still fun to see these all show up:
Now I finally have full sets of those BW promo Eeveelutions in Japanese, English, French, Italian, and Spanish - which might be all the languages they exist in, I haven’t found any others yet.
Also, got some SM12a stuff a few weeks ago - here are all the usual suspects, as well as a few of my favorite arts from the set:
Fun fact: all of the Korean expansion sets from the Sun & Moon era actually have their own unique complete set of basic energies. By “expansion sets” I mean the ones ending in “+” or “a” or “b”.
These are all basically identical, but they always print the set number on them, rather than using a generic print for a whole era like other languages do. I’m not sure if this trend goes farther back or if it started that generation.
So since Korean booster boxes are pretty cheap, and you’re (almost…) guaranteed a complete set of 9 from a 20-pack box, I went ahead and bought a box of a few different sets:
Love the Energy Search for the one missing Darkness Energy, haha.
And to answer your question: Korean sets started doing this with the SM era. I have a few Korean Energy cards from the XY era, but those are without set symbol. The Korean 20th Starter Pack (XY Generations in English) contains all Energy cards for example, but without any set symbol. Same applies to the Korean reverse holo GX Battle Boost set.
PS: I also have the Korean Energy sets for Fairy Rise (sm7b) and Dream League (sm11b) in my collection in case you were looking to buy more Korean booster boxes (I might have a full set among my duplicates for the Fairy Rise set since I opened a few boxes; will check later). It might even be possible that all Korean SM era sets contain Energy cards tbh, but I’m not sure.
Thanks, that’s good to know about the XY sets, I’m not as familiar with that era. I actually already have a set of the SM7b energies, I opened a box a while back in search of Vulpix - but I appreciate the offer!
A few months late posting this one, but this past December I decided to finally buy something I’d been looking at for pretty much the entire Sun & Moon era. These were getting harder and harder to find, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss out - so this was basically my Christmas gift to myself.
Presenting the newest addition to my collection, which isn’t a card but resembles many of my cards: the Sapporo Snow Festival Alolan Vulpix!
