u/rskimmel

Officially at 91.7% progress on my Neo Genesis Master Set with the addition of this grail! Long time coming and very pleased 🥰

I collect WOTC Era card sized inserts, whether they be marketing with promo cards, in magazines, or as standalone marketing. I've spent a long time searching for these inserts, a transforming flip card only available in Australia which came with a limited release of Ancient Mews from that region. I bought every one the seller had when I found the deal! I think, much like booster pack arts in binders, that these types of memorabilia and marketing from that era are just iconic!

Do you collect vintage inserts??

As my vintage collection grows, I decided to invert my colors on the second binder! Some small tweaks left to do, but it's giving Shadow Realm 😎

Decided on a whim that I wanted to collect all the Unowns from the Neo era! 26 unowns, including the Japanese "R" and Black Star "J" as well as the two Neo trainers with Unowns on them (Ruin Wall and Energy Ark). This led to a total of 28 cards, but I had 32 slots! What to do??

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It was here that I was introduced to the Alph Lithograph secret rares and happily learned there were exactly 4 to obtain. How fortuitous! They were quite a bit more difficult to source for reasonable prices and conditions (I also came across more than one that were fakes! Check for the telltale texturing on the card) but I am very happy to say they have been acquired. While I typically only collect vintage Pokémon cards from the WOTC Era, but I made an exception for these very cool pieces.

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That's the tale! Hope you enjoy. And no, I don't want to collect all the 1st edition versions of this set too 😅

As I'm sure many of you know, the Red Book of Westmarch is the memoir of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (plus appendices) that Tolkien "found" and served as the source material for The Hobbit and LOTR. While never actually penned by Tolkien, the prop was made for the movies and around 6 pages were shown in the films, but the prop makers actually created an entire book, 308 pages of nerd glory! A story and perspective never mass produced and sold in stores.

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Now the Magnoli Props makes replica copies... for $400 each (used to be $700) 💀 I couldn't afford it BUT I NEEDED ONE.

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After waiting almost ten years after initially discovering the Magnoli Props version, a pdf of all the pages was released on Etsy a couple years ago and I immediately embarked on making my own Red Book. I read a crap ton of articles and dove into bookbinding subs to learn how to DIY it! It came together really well and I added 10 extra pages for sketches/autographs of cast members I hoped to get when attending conventions. To date, I've managed to collect 8 of the casts signatures and also had the opportunity to have David Thorn Wenzel, Illustrator for the 1989 Hobbit Graphic Novel and other LOTR projects, sketch an original piece for me of Gandalf in the Shire! I was blown away and so happy to have it in the pages of my book.

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Anyways, if you got here, thanks for reading! Only recently joined the sub and figured if anyone would enjoy this as much as me, it would be all of you. Cheers!

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As I'm sure many of you know, the Red Book of Westmarch is the memoir of Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (plus appendices) that Tolkien "found" and served as the source material for The Hobbit and LOTR. While never actually penned by Tolkien, the prop was made for the movies and around 6 pages were shown in the films, but the prop makers actually created an entire book, 308 pages of nerd glory! A story and perspective never mass produced and sold in stores.

​

Now the Magnoli Props makes replica copies... for $400 each (used to be $700) 💀 I couldn't afford it BUT I NEEDED ONE.

​

After waiting almost ten years after initially discovering the Magnoli Props version, a pdf of all the pages was released on Etsy a couple years ago and I immediately embarked on making my own Red Book. I read a crap ton of articles and dove into bookbinding subs to learn how to DIY it! It came together really well and I added 10 extra pages for sketches/autographs of cast members I hoped to get when attending conventions. To date, I've managed to collect 8 of the casts signatures and also had the opportunity to have David Thorn Wenzel, Illustrator for the 1989 Hobbit Graphic Novel and other LOTR projects, sketch an original piece for me of Gandalf in the Shire! I was blown away and so happy to have it in the pages of my book.

​

Anyways, if you got here, thanks for reading! Only recently joined the sub and figured if anyone would enjoy this as much as me, it would be all of you. Cheers!

​

4 months ago, I shared my binder with you all, and thought I had caught them all. I thought I'd be satisfied. A FOOL, I WAS!

Since then, my vintage collection has evolved enormously and I'm excited to share where that journey has taken me. This Kuooking 16 pocket binder has 1024 card slots that I painstakingly organized to fit all my completed sets, down to the last available slot. The collection includes pack arts, variants, and classic memorabilia from the WOTC Era of Pokemon.

- Base Sets - Shadowless and Unlimited - I start my binder out with the classics, with full sets of pack arts for both the shadowless printing as well as the unlimited. From there, I laid out both sets card by card, side by side. It's awesome seeing the variance between printings! I also have 8 variations of pikachu: shadowless red cheeks, Unlimited yellow cheeks, shadowless yellow cheeks, 4th print, red cheeks e3, yellow cheeks E3, Japanese CD promo (English), and the Poketour promo from Australia.

- Jungle - 1st Edition and Unlimited - In my last update, I had only collected the 1st edition sets of jungle, fossil and rocket. Ive now supplemented them all with completed unlimited sets side by side with the 1st ed ones! This set, like the Base ones before it, also starts with the pack arts and moves right into the 1st editions and Unlimited copies of my second childhood set. I also display two gold border Meowths that was part of the Fruit Rollup campaign to keep the pattern consistent.

- Fossil - 1st Edition and Unlimited - Same deal here! Starting with pack arts and displaying the complete sets of Fossil from my childhood.

- Base Set 2 - I have always had an irrational dislike for Base Set 2, but after 25ish years, I've decided it was time to collect this set. And even with the crazy Pokemon market, these cards have maintained lower prices while still having unique quirks to them! For example, all the foils are different from the originals they copy, lending different texture to each one. Also the pack arts are quite clean!

- Team Rocket - 1st Edition and Unlimited - Pack arts plus the full sets here. One of my favorite sets from childhood, I thought the arts were absolute fire! So this set added up to 174 sleeves taken between packs and cards, leaving me with 10 card spaces on the page...

- Wizard "W" Stamp Promos - This mini set has 7 specially stamped cards by Wizards of the Coast plus 2 additional variants and 1 error, nestled nicely after the Jungle set in my binder. The two variants are an Italian Pikachu with the W stamp and the elusive Silver W stamp Dark Charmeleon! Very happy to have added these to the collection! The 10th W Stamp card is my second Wartortle, a red ink error that looks like a blood rain is falling behind it! Very unique and pleased to have it round out the page.

- Trainer Deck A & B - While there is no way I'll be owning all the cards in these decks due to rarity and prohibitive cost, I thought their place in Pokemon history was just too cool. So I obtained a single energy from each one of the Trainer decks to pay homage to such a cool piece of TCG history.

- Prerelease Cards - Next, I added the 6* prerelease cards! 4 prerelease cards were intentionally printed, but aerodactyl had a cosmo foil variation with a gold prerelease stamp AND the mythical prerelease raichu has been authenticated by both PSA and CGC!... But my version is fake because I can't spend the equivalent of a house on a piece of cardboard 😆 Next up:

- Black Star Promos - This set has 53 cards but I also collected many of the variants (and a few errors) that exist as well which are displayed alongside their counterpart. Starting out, Ivy Pikachu has two notable variants here, the 1st edition "Error" found in Jungle packs (considered to be the first secret rare) and the gray star variant found in hyper corocoro comics in Japan. Jigglypuff also has a gray star variant here as well! Other notable variants are the Kanzenban Mewtwo #3, #8 Glossy Gotta Mag Mew, JP Rally #10 Meowth, #11 Eevee, & #12 Mewtwo, No HP Dark Persian, Corrected Illustrator Legendary Birds, World Collection Birthday Pikachu, and NYC Pokemon Center Rapidash and Ho-oh. Next up to fill the remainder of the page:

- E-reader Demo Promos - When the e-reader first came out, employees at various stores with e-reader kiosks had specially laminated pokemon cards with a hole punched through them locked to each station with a cable or hanging from an employee lanyard. These were used to demonstrate how e-readers worked to customers and a limited number were made and distributed to stores! I have the introductory e-reader pack and the 3 hole punch cards: pichu, hoppip, and the manhole card. Very happy to add these to the collection and it's so amusing to know that these cards with a huge hole in them were an intentional part of a campaign.

- Southern Islands Set & Pokemon Snap Blockbuster Cards - This 18 card set is one of the most iconic and with some of the most whimsical art! I ordered it on the page the way it was designed, 3x3, and framed it with the 5 Pokemon Snap Blockbuster cards and one Japanese Pikachus Vacation Phone Card. This set always reminded me of the N64 game and it all just felt so appropriate. After framing them, below we have enough space for:

- 8 Ancient Mews - let's be real. Ancient Mew is one of the greatest cards ever made. It is beautiful and iconic. So I dedicated the bottom row across two pages to them. There are 6 Ancient mew variants and to date, I've collected 4 of them. That said, the rest of the Ancient Mews present were just good deals to fill out the entire page.

- Best of Game Promos - This set was 9 cards with 6 additional variants that had "Winner" stamped on them. This set is one of the forgotten ones from this era, a gift from WOTC as their licensing of Pokemon ended. To round out the 15 cards, I added the Ace Trainer insert card from the 2025 League winner promos. Just thought it looked cool 😆

- Energize Your Game Promos - In 2002, the Pokemon League gave away full foil energy cards and trainers, 8 for 8 seasons. They are so pretty and glitter so nicely with the reverse foils from the Best of Game set. Those 8 start the page, allowing the next set to start on the bottom half.

- Celebrations Classic Reprints - When the Celebrations set came out in 2021, it reprinted some of the iconic cards from the early period of Pokemon. I collected the pack art as well as all the chase card reprints that are represented in this binder (base->TR+Promos) which cleanly rounds out the page.

- Japanese Promos - I don't typically collect Japanese, but some arts were exclusive to Japan and speak to me. The first page highlights the OGs: Bulbasaur, Charmander, Squirtle - all sporting exclusive Japanese arts from the Vending Series/Japanese Starter Decks. In addition, a card I've had since childhood is the Trainer Magazine #1 Snap Pikachu. From there we have the OG Expansion pack Big 3 followed by some of my favorite cards in tcg history: the Big 3 from the Trade Please Campaign in Japan. We continue with more iconic Japanese cards, Hungry Snorlax and Cool Porygon CD Promos, Vending Series Mewtwo and Zapdos, the 2000 Champion Road promos ("original" gold star promos), the Gameboy Dragonite and Venusaur promos, and the 4th forgotten card "Trade Please" which is one of two in Pokemon tcg history with a holographic back! Additional notable Trainer cards are the Pass Card from the Vending series event to get Masaki promos and Misty's Treatment. Last but not least, I collected all the original Gym Leader Trainers because of how iconic they are to the story we all played and came to love. The arts and set symbols on these are some of my all time favorites and I am such a nerd for the history behind them.

- Pikachu World Collection (2000) - While the Birthday Worlds Pikachu is an English variant in my Black Star Promo set, I decided to collect the other 8 cards to round it out, with Pikachus in Chinese, Korean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portugese, and Dutch

- 2002 Japanese McDonalds E-Minimum Energy Set - I saw a picture of these full art e-reader energies from an obscure set and just had to have them! Started them off with a pack art of course! This left a single space on the page for:

- ANA Promos - Here I have two cards, a pair of promos from the All Nippon Airways Pokemon promotion featuring a Larvitar and Pikachu playing hide and seek. I love these cards and they share the last slot on that page.

- English Promotional Insert Cards - I have kept all of the insert cards that came with my Promos and have wanted to feature these "extra" cards for a long time. These included things like the Pokemon TCG Gameboy flip/folding card, Team Rocket inserts from obscure merchandise, UK Zap! Deck Pokemon Company Question inserts, and the Hong Kong envelope and insert that came with the W stamp Dark Arbok. This was a side quest that came to life and it was very fun incorporating this into my binder. In many instances, I ran 2 of each when I could to show the front and back of many double sided ad inserts.

And that is my journey through the binder. If you got this far, I hope you enjoyed it!

I've been debating awhile what I wanted to grace the front of my vintage master binder with and yesterday I decided to go for it. Took one of my favorite arts from Ken Sugimori featured on the original Carddass Pokemon cards, File 000, and transferred it onto my binder cover! Leaving it black and white cause it reminds me of old mangas/comics as well as the load screen from the original Game Boy games. I think it looks real sharp on the white binder which took very well to the graphite and sharpie, very easy to work with!

Photos go from finished product -> the original idea

I love it and thought I'd share. Would also love to see how you house your vintage collections/pride & joys as well!

I had been on the hunt for a 10th W Stamp card to complete my W Stamp binder page. The W Stamp filler card is $5k though and I'm not independently wealthy 😅 and I also could not find any leads on the double W Stamp Wartortle error either 😔

But then destiny intervenes! I'm not a big error collector in general but when I came across this one, I knew it was meant for the collection! This W stamped Wartortle has extra red ink that can be seen in the blue layer, looking almost like a red rain in the background of the image. The red spots continue into Wartortle's body and a red/pink blush can be seen in the card text areas as well. It is very easy to see the differences when it is side by side with a regular one!

I'm sharing this and hoping to raise awareness. Check your Wartortle W Stamps! Let me know of yours has anything similar, maybe our cards are brethren!

When I posted my WOTC binder a few months ago, I thought I was done. A fool, I was 😅

So many folks here showed me SO many more variants and errors I could obtain to really "master" the set. While errors aren't my thing, I did end up collecting some of them, but one particular variant that was very hard to find was the Kanzenban Mewtwo, a variant of the #3 Black Star Mewtwo from the Pokemon movies. Here's a bit more about them if interested:

https://www.elitefourum.com/t/mewtwo-strikes-back-us-version-kanzenban-associated-mewtwo-3-promo-variant/38635

So besides the WB Movie upside down and missing stamp errors that are a billion dollars, I'm pretty sure I caught them all? Tell me if I'm wrong 😆

Huge shoutout to the connections made in this sub to finally obtain the Mewtwo as well as the corrected illustrator birds, no hp Dark Persian, and many others! Black Star Promos are finally completed (for real this time). And no, before the Black Stars is not a real Prerelease Raichu, its a proxy for a card ill never own 🤷 (I wish)

So I've never liked Base Set 2.

I didn't when I was 13 and, until very recently, I continued to carry that same opinion. But after joining this and other subs, connecting with some excellent collectors and people, discussions with them helped me realize that Base Set 2 is the last remaining TRUE vintage set that is still accessible in this crazy pokemon bubble we are in.

It seems to be insulated from the market in a very unique way, probably because it was the first true "reprint" set and carried that same disdain that I held for it for so long. I'm sure there are other reasons, but the fact of the matter is that this set is 26 years old *and can still be put together without selling an organ in 2026*.

But calling it a reprint set doesn't point out its strong points. All the holo cards are cosmos foils, unlike the originals that had starlight foil patterns, and create more depth with the original arts. This was the first time that these card arts were given those treatments! BS2 gave kids the opportunity to rip into their packs to pull their own charizard well after base set closed up shop. It made joining the collecting party more accessible *and it still is doing that today!* It covers a wide swath of two different sets and at the time rotated in very playable cards for Pokemon League players. It has its own part in the WOTC vintage story.

I pulled base set 2 together for my master binder in less than 3 weeks and I did it the old school way for 95% of the cards. I went to shops, got all the commons, uncommons and some rares from bulk bins. Found holos in store binders for $5 here and there or traded for them from people who just had extras and didn't care much about bs2. Blastoise was $45. Venusaur was $30. Clefable was $5. Zapdos was $3. It felt fantastic. It felt like the early 2000s all over again. I was chasing cards without scrolling and clicking and watching Google pay receipts pop up in my inbox. This was real hunting. Real collecting. Loved the adventure of it.

With the pokemon market going nuts and prices soaring to points that make collecting feel like you're hemorrhaging your life savings, I kindly direct your attention to Base Set 2. Someday, the rest of the masses will catch on but, as of now, I would counsel anyone that wants to start collecting vintage to get their feet wet with BS2. My BS2 set is now locked in and I have no regrets!