What would a Pokemon TCG museum/gallery look like?

General
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Last year they hosted an online exhibition for cards throughout the years, but what would one actually look like physically and could it work?

I don’t think even Japan/TPC/international has a physical copy of every card they’ve ever made and there are so many different variations, promos, stamps etc. throughout the world.

But what would it focus on? The Pokemon themselves (eh…), the game? The artists? The distribution? What would be interesting enough that would make people actually want to visit it?

If it would not work, then is there any way to make it work? For example, making a Pokemon museum (maybe this already exists) or a Nintendo museum (maybe this exists as well?) or perhaps a trading card museum?

I thought about this visiting my local LGS and seeing Magic and Pokemon cards being displayed behind the glass cupboards. Although I don’t collect Magic, there is so much nice art, like in Pokemon, but is the only way to appreciate it either buying it (not so accessible) or in incomplete databases online (not the same)?

I would guess it would have to delve into the artists themselves, though that would dilute the Pokemon theme of the museum/gallery. There actually isn’t enough cards yet for them to have sections dedicated to individual Pokemon.

Different kinds of product, packaging, stamps etc would be cool but also seems too brief and playing/decks are cool but doesn’t have anything to do with the art.

I suppose if a comprehensive database with excellent UI/UX ever released, that would satisfy the curiosity in me, but so far nothing has. (Think Bulbapedia, the official websites, pkmncards, pokumon, limitless etc. and more all being combined)

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It May Be true that they don’t own every type of cards, but for sure they could provide High quality scans, printed illustrations of the cards or even print duplicates just for the Museum.

I think there would be an overall historical stage both for distributions and the card game itself, some focus should be on the card game, linked products (like official playmat, deck boxes, ecc…), on some major artists and if well done, there should be space for every artists, even if smaller for someone.

As for variations or error cards I don’t think they would handle it well enough to be absolutely complete, I’ve discovered some errors in this forum that are 20 years old and I couldn’t find anywhere before landing here, so for that there will always be some report to the museum like “ehi big professor, you missed this cut-in-half error zard from the 3rd print of base set”.

Worst part would be answering your question “Who will be interested in that?” It’s just so much work to put together that costs money (think just at renting a space to set everything up, and well setting everything up) and I would be really unsure it can pay off just enough to stand.

TL;dr: let’s just dream for a Museum, dreams are free, safe and can be as we want them to be

3

Cards, unfortunately, do not display well in a gallery: they’re just too small for more than one person to get a good look at. What I would love to see is the original art, though who knows whether or not that still exists.

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While I would love to see an exhibition of the history of pokemon cards, the amount of space needed would be humongous. Just a display of english decks takes up a massive amount of space. Youd need a whole wing of a museum to get close to accurately touching on the products and cards that have been released.

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seeing uncut sheets displayed would be cool, as well as product boxes and things before they become the products we see on Target shelves.

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Alot of museums are a conglomerate of personal collections donated by an individual or family, especially upon death of the collector. I think that would hold true for Pokémon as well.

Also I don’t think the museum needs to display “every card ever printed”. That’s unrealistic. No one walks into The Met and expects to see every Andy Warhol painting. Instead it should focus on exhibits based on what items they do have; cards, plush, sealed, uncut sheets, other memorabilia etc.

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