Togetic spritepokemon TCG.

pokemon--like many other people my age--has been a staple for me. i have been playing since gen 3. i saved up for months for a gameboy advance SP and a copy of pokemon emerald...it cost me USD$80 and was the biggest purchase of my life (crazy that now a GAME costs you $80...) at the time. i was hooked! all my friends were hooked! not long after this i got into the trading card game, mostly to trade cards from packs with my friends. i did the bulk of my card collecting during the gen3&4 era and enjoyed going to events at my library to trade with people. i did try playing the actual TCG a few times but i couldn't quite figure it out, so i really just stuck to collecting and trading.

i kind of fell out of collecting at some point, mostly because i went to a new school, then entered middle school, and no one i knew collected anymore. library-events about the TCG started petering out and i got more into music and other things. i continued to play the games religously with my friends in middle and high school, but spending money on card packs wasn't fun for me without friends to trade with or events to go to.

times have changed. i'm an adult. i don't really play modern pokemon. after SWSH came out, even though i liked playing it and don't think it deserves all the hate it gets, i decided that the games weren't worth the asking price--especially since i get most of my enjoyment out of pokemon from nuzlocking and randomizing the older games these days. most of my time with pokemon is spent nuzlocking gen 3-5 and now that i have more or less retired playing modern pokemon since i'm not buying a switch 2 i've begun to get into romhacks. it was honestly an easy decision to make after seeing how nintendo treats their fans. anyway, i like pokemon, but i guess i'm getting old and nostalgiaridden because it's mostly gen 2-5 that i care about. X/Y gets a little appreciative nod due to being the pokemon game i've put the most time into because i spent a ton of time breeding and hunting for shinies, but the story is extraordinarily weak and i've never felt compelled to replay it.

a gif of a dratini evolving into dragonair

so getting back to how this relates to card collecting. in early 2026 my partner had a hangover and couldn't come with me and some friends to a spa day. stuck sick in bed at home he ended up watching a bunch of videos about vendors at pokemon card shows giving out cards for free to kids and absolutely making their days; when i came home we talked about the events i would go to as a kid and i watched some of the videos with him. "oh i have that card!" "oh i had that one." "oh, i traded that one away at a card event i went to." and so on and so forth. i realized how much i missed it and watching youtube videos of people at these card-dedicated spaces made me want to look for events in our local area again.

unfortunately the tin of rare pokemon cards i collected in my childhood has been missing for about seven years or so. i'm not starting from scratch entirely, i still have two other tins of bulk cards (and some rare ones that i didn't care so much about so i put them into those tins for some reason). i thought that my mom gave away my tin to some kids but she swears she did not; i have looked at my parents' house many times and have never been able to find the missing tin. anyway, while watching these videos and seeing the direction modern pokemon cards have gone with the full-art illustration cards with more story-telling to them, i thought it might be fun to collect again. i like how a nicely illustrated card that features a pokemon you might not care much about will still make you say 'oh that's a pretty card!' it's nice, especially since my engagement with modern pokemon will dwindle, and i've always been a fan of seeing pokemon in more slice-of-life scenarios, imagining what they do when they aren't fighting battles or hanging out with trainers. for example, i don't really care about swanna as a pokemon, but seeing all the card art of it doing normal swan-things has really made me more partial to it! (it also helps that now i'm in my swan-era lol)

as basically anyone currently into the pokemon TCG knows, scalpers have really messed with the hobby. a lot of the cards i had in my rare tin are unattainable now, or at least way more money than i am personally willing to spend on a card. so i sat and thought about the direction of my modern collection. my favorite gen is 5; my favorite games are black & white. my favorite character has always been N. even before i thought about wanting to get into card collecting again i had been looking at the N's Reshiram card from the Journey Together set on ebay, debating buying one just to have on display, since i'm an N-is-reshiram's-champion truther. so once i decided i wanted to check out the TCG collecting-scene again, it didn't take too long to decide the primary goal of my collection will be to collect all the N-related cards. price willing anyways. if you are reading this and you have an expensive N card you want to pass on... :'D...

i find myself generally preferring older cards over newer ones as far as ex design goes but i obviously love the modern illustration cards so i'm excited to see how my collection develops!

a pokemon card featuring N. He has his hand held out and is smiling at you.

click N to be taken to the collection page (except it's empty rn sorry)