I was casually sitting watching TV last night when my partner looked over and asked me something I hadn’t heard in a very, very long time:
“Did you want to open a pack of Pokémon cards?”
I thought this would be a quick little nostalgia hit, open the pack, enjoy the shiny cardboard, remember the 90s, move on with my evening. What happened next was unexpected…
I, like most others, am not new to collecting these cards, back in my youth it was *the* thing to do with what is considered now as the “base set”, but I never really got that deep into it.
That was when the original 151 Pokémon were around.
Fast-forward to 2020 where there’s hundreds more pocket monsters, COVID 19 hits, people are stuck at home with additional time and money to spend, and these cards hit a massive resurgence with some exploding in value.
Now we’re in 2026 and those effects are still around, where there are fights between adults breaking out over obtaining cards. There’s also a whole other world of sets, collecting, trading, grading, playing, streaming openings, all of which is only scratching the surface of this empire.
Back to my situation, I’ve largely closed my eyes to this world of cards with the understanding that it’s now “all about the money” and “adults ruined the hobby for children, and other adults”. That said, I’d seen family members trying to get packs, and some even opened a few at Christmas, so I was intrigued with this current request, “Want to open a pack?”.
My partner also said she saw a single middle-aged man buy an entire rack of the packs of cards she got, so where I’ve seen those fights in the US, snapping them up is clearly happening over here in the UK too. This was from the ‘Mega Evolution: Perfect Order’ set, which I’ve since learned some collectors have been calling ‘the worst set ever’…
Well.. that’s the pack I got, and that’s the pack I opened, and she opened a couple packs too. It was fun! I had no idea what generation, rarity, or even some of the names on the cards were, but with the little investment and no pressure, it was actually an enjoyable experience, especially around learning what the designs on the cards meant. It actually felt quite confusing and overwhelming at first (holo? reverse holo? cosmic holo? SIR?).
So, I thought to myself, “I wonder if there’s a way to get into this hobby without going crazy with money aligning with my personal preference of the first 151 Pokemon, but at the same time opening a pack of cards of any type would be fun”.
I am aware that the Scarlet & Violet set literally has a pack called “151” which is practically designed for people like me as it is updated cards of the original set, but even a single packet is not easy or cheap to come by, as they’re no longer printed.
I’ve landed on the idea of making a card “Pokédex”, mostly so the cards we’d opened don’t just end up sitting in a forgotten shoebox. The plan is a binder of the original 151 Pokémon, partly for nostalgia, but using cards from any set. Over time, I might swap them out for rarer versions, or just artwork I like more. I don’t plan on nosediving into collecting specific sets or spending car-money on single cards. Just a bit of collecting fun as from what I understand there isn’t really a “wrong” way with such a diverse amount of cards.
I grabbed the binder from a popular toy store, asked the cashier if they had any cards, and they went cold, looked me in the eyes and said..
“No.”
Me: “I guess I’m not the only person who has asked today”
Them: “at least 10 people so far”
Looking up various retailers online shows pretty much everything out of stock. I guess the Collectable Panic Loop strikes again. I almost felt shameful after as I’m sure retailers get the question all day every day.
Well, in the meantime, I’ll just have to live with this:
I’m pleased to announce and present that I now have a full set of 151… placeholders, printed, badly cut out with scissors, in a rush, while baking in the UK Hot weather.
But hey, I’m not too invested in this, both monetarily and emotionally… yet. Maybe I’ll find some cheap single cards, though that in itself would be a challenge with making sure I get the real versions in decent condition.
Hmmm…
Anyway, the placeholders above were printed through a neat generator found here:
If anyone has any tips, please let me know!
What do you think?