For over 18 months, the Pokémon TCG has been extremely difficult to buy, let alone collect. As the feedback loop of scalpers and collectors has driven prices on new and re-sale cards into outer space, the hobby has been spoiled for casual customers and kids who just want to keep up with the meta and play the live game. But the good news is there are still fantastic ways to enjoy the fine art of Pokémon card collecting, none of them involve physically attacking another person, and they’re often a lot cheaper, too.
For many of the last 30 years, a goal of many a Pokémon TCG fan was amassing the so-called “master set.” This is a complete collection of every single card included in a specific Pokémon set, including the reverse holos, all the pretty full-art cards, and if you’re an absolutist, all the promo cards associated with the set as well. To achieve this, people would spend a fair amount of money on buying packs of the specific set and ripping them open, likely until the majority of the basic cards and reverse holos had been found. At that point, the foolhardy carries on buying packs with the increasingly unlikely chance of filling in gaps for the rarer cards, while the smarter collector switches over to trading and buying singles. This is, if anything, the most fun portion, not least because it can be a far more social act—visiting card shows, rifling through cabinets in specialist stores, and meeting up with others at trading evenings.
It’s this latter part that can still be so well enjoyed in so many ways, without the need for seeking out new products or waiting in lines to overpay for scant restocks.
So get yourself a binder (side-loading slots, please—your cards will fall out of those cheaper top-loading binders, and it’s the worst), and get to work. But first up, where can you get the cards?
Where to find Pokémon cards
In a world where you can’t buy new packs because the scalpers got them all, and you can’t buy classic packs because you’d have to remortgage your parents to afford them, how exactly are you supposed to buy Pokémon cards? Well, the magic is in the world of “singles.” That is, buying or acquiring one card at a time. And there are many ways to do it.
Card stores
Right now, even the most dedicated of card stores is struggling to stock new Pokémon product. Allocations have shrunk as larger chain stores have realized their buying power during this bubble, and many of the most faithful stores have been mightily screwed over by The Pokémon Company as a result. However, this also means their other specialty becomes all the more important: reselling singles. If you’ve been in such stores, you’ll know they have cabinets stuffed full of pretty and rare cards, and often you’ll find full-art cards you might be after in such collections. But what’s less obvious is that these shops are also very likely to have binders behind the counter stuffed with the less flashy cards, often grouped by set, and here you can find even more treasures for a simpler collection. And if you want to go even more granular, ask to see their bulk! These will be enormous cardboard boxes packed with the least expensive cards, but often containing exactly the ones you’re after.
Trade nights
While visiting your local card store, ask about any trade nights they know about. This is where collectors get together, perhaps play the live game, and then pore over one another’s binders looking for finds. Bring along your own collection of spares, and then spend the evening haggling away to get the exact cards you want without spending any more money.
Card shows
Card shows are only growing more popular: large-scale events where regional stores, smaller websites and even overseas companies will set up stalls with incredible selections. These make for a really lovely day out, not least if you can get yourself to one of the various Card Party events.
Specialist websites
Some consider it cheating, but I believe it to be impossible to avoid. There are a fair few online sites that’ll match you up with other collectors to buy or exchange cards. In the U.S. there’s TCGPlayer owned by eBay; in Europe there’s CardMarket; and a new site called CardNexus recently launched working in both. I’m most used to CardMarket, which has a really neat “wizard” where you can create a list of cards you’re looking for, and then it’ll find you the fewest sellers that can fulfill them all, thus cutting down on shipping. But, I should stress that just completing a set this way really spoils a lot of the fun. I use it for the cards I just cannot get any other way, like the last handful of reverse holos I just got to finish my Crown Zenith master set.
Idea #1: Every card of your favorite Pokémon
The Pokémon TCG has been around for 30 years, and over that time every single pocket monster has appeared on at least a handful of cards. So why not set out to collect every single card your favorite Pokémon has been featured on?
Now, this is a tougher ask depending upon who that Pokémon is. If your fave is Charizard or Pikachu, you might want to also think of a second-place pick—not only are there hundreds of individual cards for those ‘mon, but they are also some of the most expensive cards you could find. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars for some. I mean, you can still go for it, but you should probably prepare to have some permanently empty slots in your binder. However, if you especially adore Shaymin, or have a heart for Heatran, this is a much more achievable endeavor.
My personal favorite is Mantine, the manta ray–like creature with an adorable smile, and it makes for a perfect pick for starting out at this pursuit. There are only 16 Mantine cards in English, and criminally the Pokémon has never received a full-art card. (There are five Mantyke cards too, and Mantine’s precursor does have one larger-image card.) To start collecting them, I went to Serebii‘s page for the creature and made a note of all the listed cards. I wrote the set name and number of each on the front of spare Energy cards, and slotted them in order into my binder. Then, as I managed to find each card, I would victoriously swap out the placeholders until every spot was filled. Then, that having proven quite easy, I’ve started work on finding Japanese versions of each, too.
I’ve also done the same for Ralts and Spinarak, and I’m now working on Mawile. Best of all, they all fit in the one binder.
This sort of collection has recently been hugely popularized by videos from DeepPocketMonster, such as his multi-part Collect Every Gengar Ever series. It should be stressed that Pat Flynn is a multi-millionaire, and his efforts are on a scale that’s unrealistic for most. The videos are hugely entertaining, some of my favorites, but aim smaller—next time you watch, notice just how many times he pays $300 for a card, then $600 for a collection box, then $250 for another card…
Idea #2: Collect all the cards by a certain artist
As you get more into Pokémon card collecting, you’ll begin to recognize the styles of specific artists. One of the best aspects of the TCG is how The Pokémon Company uses so many different artists, and allows them to use so many unique styles. Some are incredibly distinct, like the intricate, abstract work of Tomokazu Komiya, or the bold, bright colors of Jerky, the former responsible for 276 cards since 2000, the latter illustrating 43 since just 2023.
Once again, the trick here is to find the artist whose work you especially enjoy (every artist is credited on the card), and stick their name into Serebii. That’ll pull up every card they’ve worked on, and you can once again begin writing out the names, numbers and set of each card on your spare Energies, and then file them in a binder.
I’ve done this with two artists, one a cinch to complete, the other likely going to last my lifetime. The first is Asako Ito, almost certainly not the artist’s real name, but the person responsible for the gorgeous crocheted illustrations that have been appearing since 2017. She’s made 35 cards, and only two of them (more’s the pity) full-arts, the vast majority easily available bulk and readily available if you’re willing to look.
The second is Yuka Morii, the creator of the clay model Pokémon images that have appeared on 217 cards since 2001, some of which are about the rarest Pokémon cards you could look for. Oops. Yuka Morii is prolific, and few new sets come out without at least one of her designs, and again the vast majority are bulk. A couple are quite expensive (thank goodness I picked them up before the current bubble), but the real issue is that Morii designed some cards that were only ever available in Japanese vending machines in the early 2000s, and the chances of ever picking these up is pretty remote. But it’s so fun to keep trying, to have a whole binder dedicated to the collection (I’m about 180 cards in), and to always have an eye out at card shows and in stores.
Idea #3: Collect all the Pokémon in a specific generation
Your collections don’t have to be precise! Why not pick your favorite generation of Pokémon, perhaps that of the first Pokémon game you ever played, and see if you can find a card featuring every monster introduced in that new gathering.
Generations tend to feature around 100 Pokémon, making this a sizable task, without being expensive or especially difficult. And it’s not about collecting all the cards from that generation, but any card from any era on which each Pokémon from that generation appears. So you could absolutely collect Gen I, without trying to collect the unimaginably expensive Base Set in which those 151 first featured. All of them have appeared many times across the 30 years since, some a lot more than others, and if you don’t allow yourself to use websites to achieve the task, this can prove a long-term pursuit.
You can make it harder if you prefer, perhaps looking for a full-art version of every Pokémon (although it’s worth checking they’ve all received one first—sniff, poor Mantine), or go far easier and choose Gen VI which only has 72 monsters to find.
Good Binder Behavior
To steal a phrase from DeepPocketMonster, however you do it, make sure to practice good binder behavior. If you’re making a collection, it’s so much nicer to take care of the cards properly. That means get yourself a few wads of penny sleeves, the atom-thin translucent plastic sheaths which stop the cards from getting scratches and scrapes, and put cards in these before you slot them into a binder. (They’re super-cheap, hence the name.) You wouldn’t believe the damage that gets done otherwise. It’s also worth getting a nicer binder, too, and as I said before, a side-loading one. And while it’s really nice to pick up one from the likes of VaultX, Dragon Shield or Ultra PRO, I’ve found the ones sold on Temu are incredibly good quality, and a third of the price! I had assumed they’d be dreadful, but while certainly not as professional, they’re very surprisingly close.
And that’s it! Get collecting! It’s a low-key, long-term pursuit, and it absolutely doesn’t need to be expensive. Pick an artist or a Pokémon that’s slightly trickier and it can live with you for years. And right now, you can do it all without needing to find a single pack to open.