Pokemon

Three years after the release of the first Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) set in Japan in 1996, the iconic Base Set made its way to the USA in 1999.Thanks to the huge success of the Pokémon Game Boy video games and TV show, the cards were an immediate success upon their release, and shortly after were distributed and printed worldwide and released in multiple languages included German, French and Spanish.With Base Set being such a success, with cards like the iconic Charizard being extremely sought-after by many collectors, it was only a matter of time before new sets were translated and localised in English, the first was Jungle which came only six months after the launch of Base Set.Three sets later, Pokémon TCG fever hit new heights with the launch of the Team Rocket set which included for the first time “Dark” Pokémon and trainer cards featured around the notorious gang from the games and TV show.Skipping forward a few years, in 2003 a lot of these casual collectors had moved on and the monster 182-card set Skyridge would be the last to be released by Wizards of the Coast, the publishers of the Pokémon TCG since Base Set.Despite having many amazing sets and cards in the interim years, including the popular and collectable Gold Star cards, the Pokémon TCG remained relatively small in terms of the number of players and collectors still actively involved with hobby.Fast forward to July 2016, the augmented reality smartphone game Pokémon GO is released on mobiles and is an immediate smash hit, with the app being installed over 100 million times by the following month. Many previous collectors and new people are introduced back to the Pokémon TCG, and the Base Set inspired Evolutions set was one of the must-have items of Christmas that year.In 2018 the Pokémon TCG continues to receive a new set every three months with one of the most recent ones, Lost Thunder, being the biggest set of all time with a whopping 236 total cards to collect.Alongside the collectors who enjoy the Pokémon TCG, many have returned to the competitive game since the release of Pokémon GO in 2016, with the North America International Championships in 2018 featuring an incredible 1970 total players across the three age divisions.