Which Pokemon card artwork is most sentimental to you? I would love to hear a story about how you obtained the card or why the artwork elicits such a strong memory for you.
For me, it has to be Base Set Ponyta. I used to carry this beautiful fire horse around with me everywhere as a child. I’m talking in and out of school, daycare, at home, etc. Some of my earliest memories of Pokemon cards include this Sugimori artwork.
too many to narrow it down to 1…
I really love ex-dpp era and most of my childhood collection falls in these 2 eras. The stamped cards really captured my eye and were some of the first cards I bought when getting back into the hobby.
Salamence Delta Species - Easily one of my favorite delta species cards and was always one I would stop and stare at while looking through my binder.
Armaldo Delta Species - another delta species that I have great nostalgia towards. The steel/other type dual delta species cards were my favorite.
Mewtwo Lv. X Tin Promo - While I don’t have any memories opening ex era packs, I do vividly remember buying and opening DPP tins. I recall being in Target/Walmart and seeing tons of these tins. The Mewtwo one is pretty sentimental to me. Many of these lv x cards are still fairly cheap which is great!
There are so many to choose, but my southern island ledyba is special. This was my first southern island card, I traded for it at the Saturday toysrus meet up. It was Japanese exclusive and one of the first “new” Pokémon I saw besides pikablu. I carried it around with my other holo cards in soft sleeves, in cargo shorts. One day the top corner creased from running around. I have it displayed in my office, and need to get it graded. Here is that exact card:
Not sure if it’s my most sentimental but Base Set Mewtwo comes to mind. I found this card just laying in the street with a few others while walking home from my friends house. Since then I’ve always had a soft spot for this art. Pokémon truly was everywhere back in the day.
Despite my undying love for Torchic, Dark Dragonite from EX TRR is hands down the most sentimental card for me. I’m a Gen 3 kid, and although I had Base Era cards passed down from cousins, my first Pokemon TCG product I ever bought was a James Theme Deck in 2004♥️ My Grandma took me to the local card shop and I remember distinctly ripping that deck open and seeing this beautiful holo Dragonite. Funnily enough, her and I were reminiscing about this pretty recently because she obviously aware of my lifelong obsession with the TCG. I now own gem mint copies of all versions of this card and I truly cherish my Holo Dark Dragonite more than any other card in my collection. :’)
To be honest, I just have nostalgia for the vibe of the hobby as a whole in 1999/2000. I wouldn’t say i have any sentimental cards but the most memorable for me is definitely this…
This was before gen 2 released, i traded a kid on my estate for this card and was so excited. A few hours later his mum chanelled her precursor Karen spirit, marched round to my house and demanded to my mum to reverse the trade (I have no idea how they even found my house as we weren’t that close). My mum called me downstairs and made me trade back. 8 year old me was mortified 
Hmmm… maybe i should buy a PSA 10 of this…
This card is what made me fall in love with Salamence as a 11 year old kid and will always be special to me.
But I have to say there’s also something weirdly nostalgic about Jungle Pikachu for me as well. It’s basic but gives the old school chonky Pikachu feel and I’ve always preferred the card over Base Pikachu.
Ok I have to include a Rayquaza as well and I guess any holo card from Ex Emerald has sentimental value to me because I used to be obsessed with the set back in time when it was new and it’s still my favorite TCG set.
Swampert ex def comes to mind first. I also used to carry him around in my pocket with me everywhere i went when I was young. Anything from FireRed Leafgreen and Team Magma vs Team Aqua are super nostalgic to me
My most nostalgic artwork has to be the Leafeon from Rising Rivals.
Back in second or third class Leafeon was my favourite Pokemon and the newly released set was Rising Rivals. One day before school a friend of mine showed me his newest ‘‘treasure’’ and I wanted to trade some reverse holo cards for the Leafeon. He declined my offer but I didn’t give up - every day I’d ask him for the card and after a few weeks we made a deal. I traded my Great Encounters Reverse Holo Wailord (which was in our ecosystem the strongest card as it had 200hp) for the leafeon.
I was so happy that I put it immediatly in my pocket and went playing football with the other kids.
As I got home my pants were green from sliding over the pitch - my mum was furious as those pants were merely a week old and therefore she wanted to wash them right away.
I completely forgot my newest prized posession.
That’s the card now
Definitely Rocket Abra, which I’ve posted about before: Pokemon Cards With a Story Attached - #10 by stagecoach
But in the interest of mixing it up, I’m really attached to Jungle Vileplume as well.
I did not get many good cards as a kid, so I clung to what few holos I had. None of them were my favorites, or cards I would have chosen, but they were all I had. I would often offer to trade them for other cards I actually wanted but I was rarely taken up on that.
My next door neighbors were two brothers with a lot of cards between them. They had a stack of cards that were specifically for trades and I was sifting through them to see if they had anything I wanted. In truth, they didn’t really. But there was a Base Set Chansey in there. It was not a card I coveted, but I knew it was really rare and not a card I saw often in other collections. It was rarer than any card I had at the time, so I asked what they wanted for it.
They took a look at my cards and one of the brothers said they wanted my Vileplume, which was great. Fine. Take it. Of course I would trade Vileplume for Chansey. I was stoked and made the trade and was really glad I now had a rare card I could show off to other kids for once.
My first chance to do so came soon. Shortly after another boy came over with his cards. We laid on the floor and flipped through each other’s binders discussing trades and his mother, who was far more involved in his hobbies than mine was, reminded him not to trade any of his 1st Editions.
1st Editions? What’s that?
His mother explained to me the concept and showed my how to tell 1st Edition cards from regular prints. I had never heard of this before, and I had never noticed the stamp on the cards, but as we went through my collection we discovered I had a bunch of them mixed in my collection. I was elated. Rare cards! I have rare cards! Woohoo!
But after the shock of this new information began to settle, I thought back to my Vileplume. Now that I knew what the stamp looked like and what it meant, I was thinking back to that trade and was pretty sure mine had been stamped. I was bamboozled. I lost my rarest card.
So I asked the kids next door if I could trade back and they said no. I begged and pleaded and they said no. So I did what I had to do — I cried to my mom, who called their mom, and made them trade me back. I actually got to keep the Chansey, too. These were the perks of being a crybaby.
When I got my Vileplume back it was indeed 1st Edition, so I moved it from the second page of my binder to the first to show it off more prominently. I still would have traded it for a Blastoise or a Charizard or something, but I loved being able to brag about 1st Editions and initiate other kids into that concept.
My memory of most of my childhood cards has faded by now, but not this one.
For me it has to be Dark Blastoise
I have this memory when I was very young, going with my mother to see a doctor to another city. After seeing the doctor we went into a local library and she bought me a booster pack, and this card came out. I was super excited and it is a card that I can see clearly in my mind from that memory.
Ooyama Kouichi’s Magikarp and Wailord GX really got me back into Pokémon cards a few years after moving to Japan, so it makes me feel a kind of nostalgia for those early days of being in Japan, buying stuff on Yahoo Auctions, and having a lot of fun rediscovering cards again.
Other than that, base set Gyarados and the Overgrowth theme deck which of courses takes me back to 1999 UK high streets and much more carefree times where everything felt new and exciting.
I still remember pulling this card from a pack at blockbuster. They had an old push vacuum, and if I was short on a pack they let me vacuum the store to make up the difference 
When I first started collecting I had no access to set lists so I will never forget when my best friend brought this card to school. I tried for weeks to trade him for it and he finally caved for my T17. Still have the card to this day!
I have to pick just one card?! If I had to pick, it’d be this dark hypno. The rare in my first pack. With the holo, such acool card.
BUT, if I had to pick one item that was the most nostalgic, it’d be these coins, from the original Japanese gym decks, my friend Miho gave me. AND the Erika’s Vileplume that came with that first, Tamamushi City Gym deck.
The entirety of Base set, but if I had to try and pick a few without getting a headache, some of these were the very first cards I saw and some of them were the very first cards I pulled:
Add images
Base-Rocket has a ton of cards that are nostalgic for me, despite me having relatively few compared to later generation cards. Base Charmander is in my top arts for wotc.
Has to be EX Dragon Frontiers Salamence ex for me. Just an incredible card, one I always idolized as a kid but could never trade for. Once I got back into the hobby I was able to acquire one (thanks @milhouse) and it’s been in the collection ever since. Japanese one came a few years later!
Jungle Pinsir. I’ll never forget going with my mom to one of the local card shops (remember when every town/city used to have multiple card shops and that was where you got your singles from?) and seeing that Pinsir inside the glass display case. My eyes immediately fixated on it, and I decided to get it. To this day, every time I see that Jungle Pinsir, I have a visceral reaction.
Even though Base Set was my introduction to Pokemon cards, Jungle remains the most nostalgic set for me. Something about the art just screams nostalgia to me. Not even just the holos, but commons and uncommons like Eevee, Exeggutor, Butterfree, Rhydon, Weepinbell, etc. It just takes me right back to sitting outside my grandmother’s house comparing binders with the neighbor kid.
I’m really enjoying reading through this thread, its nice to see how everyone has such fond memories from childhood.
For me, my favorite art/ card would be the Jungle Electrode, this thing has a permanent spot on the desk in my office. I grew up fairly poor, like dad let his kids eat first and he ate whatever was left over kinda poor. So anyway, being poor meant being on food stamps and getting a little cash assistance from the state government in the form of a debit card.
At the beginning of each month my mom and I would walk to the local 7-11 to withdraw the cash assist from the fee-free atm. At the time I wasn’t old enough to work, but old enough to know that I shouldn’t ask for things and strain the budget. One day while my mom was at the atm, I went to the front counter and admired the Jungle booster box display they had next to the cash register, my mom saw this and asked if I wanted one and I said yes. My mom and I got scalped paying 7 bucks for a booster pack at 7-11, but I did end up with this.
This thing is like my own personal time machine that transports me back to such a special memory, a physical mile marker in my life’s timeline.
Side note, my family and I all made it out of the hood and my mom is still the best.
