Ken Sugimori’s original watercolor art for Pokemon inspired me as a kid to pick up the pencil and paintbrush. Now 20+ years later I’m still drawing (check my stuff out here), so I thought it was only fitting that I also collect TCG cards that showed his work off.
I limited my scope to just his vintage watercolor artwork, which meant that collection stops at Gen 2. Here’s the first page of my binder:
#001 - #006
Sugimori illustrated 2 watercolor stock arts for each of the Gen 1 Pokemon. Once for the Red / Green Japanese release, and then again for the Red / Blue release overseas. In my binder, I’ve arranged them next to each other in the order they were released.
Now you might squint at that Charmeleon down there and think “Man that’s weird, I’ve never seen that card before”. And you’d be right! Many of Sugimori’s watercolor stock arts were never printed, especially many of his Red / Green ones. As I was creating my binder, I grew dissatisfied with the gaps, so I created my own placeholder cards:
Each placeholder card features a piece of TCG-oriented trivia about the card. They are printed on 330 gsm black core cardstock (similar to Pokemon’s) with a nice smooth matte finish. I even made a custom back for them too that pays homage to Sugimori’s style and the American TCG that I grew up with:
Here’s 2 more pages in my binder–I’ll update this thread with more as I complete the pages. Be sure to right click and open the image in a new tab so you can zoom in and read the fun trivia facts!
#007 - #012
Poor Squirtle never had an art printed, and the R/B Wartortle +Caterpie art was only printed on what I assume to be non-existent Sample Set 1 demo cards.
I stuck a light stamp Metapod in here to show off the difference in ink, and filled out the rest of the Caterpie line with placeholders.
When possible, I tried to get 1st edition copies (though I refuse to pay $20 for a 1st ed Caterpie nowadays…). Blastoise was far too expensive in 1st edition to keep in a binder.
#013 - #018
Strangely enough, the Weedle evolution line mainly had their R/B arts printed instead of the R/G ones (Thanks Koga).
Pidgeot unfortunately didn’t have either art printed, though the R/G one was featured on BS2 boosters, and the R/B one was used in a digital card in the Gameboy Game (notice how the Pokemon Power on the placeholder card says “virtually printed”)
#019 - 024
A rather boring page here other than the 1st edition Lt. Surge’s Fearow, which happens to have one of my favorite arts in the set.
I also messed up when printing my placeholder cards here…see if you can spot the error(s).
#025 - 027
This page is the house of mouse–meaning that all the Pokemon here have the category, Mouse Pokemon
Unsurprisingly, Pikachu has 6 different Sugimori watercolor stock arts. The Jungle one is the W stamped promo as well!
The Raichu here is neat since it’s a no rarity base set one, with the error number #025, which is supposed to be Pikachu’s number. Someday PSA will recognize the error and I’ll consider getting it graded, but for now it gets to chill in my binder.
Somehow I never got around to getting a 1st edition Fossil Sandslash…despite it probably being the cheapest card on the page.
#143-#148
I opened a no symbol Snorlax as a kid, so what better place to show it off than here!
Poor Articuno didn’t have any stock arts printed on TCG cards, but I did call out the TMB phone cards and the lottery phone card.
The Zapdos is pack fresh–I wanted to try and find a 1st edition copy but they’re a little to pricey to keep around in a binder. I loved playing the the GB version in my FTK deck featuring the GB Zapdos, Sccop Ups, Itemfinders, etc. Good ol degenerate fun.
I could honestly say that the 1st edition Moltres are also getting to be a bit too valuable, but they just look so nice in here and I haven’t found “downgrades” yet to keep in a binder if I send these off to get slabbed.
Not much to comment on for the Dratini through Dragonair line. I wish the R/B art for Dragonair got printed somewhere, it’s one of my favorites!
such a creative binder. I can’t wait to see the rest!
