Enumerating the Unnumbered Energy Types

General
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I have a question about unnumbered energy cards, and which ones exist, and how they were shipped (in en_US primarily.)

I know that the Sun & Moon era unnumbered energy cards shipped *directly in the boosters* and now come in two flavors; the Sun & Moon launch flavor (C) 2017, and the Team Up (and beyond) flavor (C) 2019.

  1. Tracking back to XY; it’s my understanding that sets still shipped with numbered energy, but that the Kalos Starter Set and PCDs shipped with unnumbered energy. Can anyone confirm that this unnumbered energy was the *exact same* for the entire era? That would be the same design with “(C) 2013” in the lower-left corner.
    (Ah, with the exception of the Evolutions deck, which used its own design from that set which was numbered.)

  2. Tracking back to BW; my understanding is that all BW-era PCDs used a design that looks similar to the unnumbered XY energy, but features a (C) 2011 in the lower left hand corner. Can anyone confirm this?

  3. Tracking further back to HGSS; the designs here are quite distinctive and I actually still have a theme deck from this area; so it appears that the unnumbered PCD energy from this era had the distinctive HGSS borders and (C) 2010 in the dead center of the bottom edge of the card. Was this consistent throughout the era?

  4. DP/PT: I get way fuzzier from this point backwards. Platinum and Diamond/Pearl are categorized as different series, but I can’t tell if they used different energy. I am fairly confident that DP-era products shipped with unnumbered energy with (C) 2007, but I’m not sure if PT shipped its own energy or kept the DP design. (I assume there isn’t a PT-style card, because I would expect the copyright to be 2009 in this case.)

  5. EX era: My knowledge runs completely out. I’m not sure exactly when unnumbered energy started shipping, or what the copyright years or designs were. If you could help set me straight I’d be really grateful.

My real goal here: enumerate all of the different “numberless” and/or “setless” energy cards, and which sets/eras they are otherwise actually associated with. So to that end, so far, I know of:

  • (C) 2019 Team Up
  • (C) 2017 Sun & Moon
  • (C) 2013 XY
  • (C) 2011 Black & White
  • (C) 2010 Heart Gold & Soul Silver
  • (C) 2007 Diamond & Pearl
  • :thinking:??
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Appreciate this as I would like to add them to the back of the corresponding binders. :blush:

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I’ve been asking myself similar questions every time I’m organizing my collections… And in addition I have Energies from all languages. If only Energy cards had set symbols/numbers like the rest of the cards… :confused: I even have some Sun & Moon Energies without anything on them as indication… Not even a copyright date. That card pisses me off. :unamused:

Maybe @credits or @risingtrout can help answer some of your questions though, since they are two of the Energy collectors here on the forum. @credits also made this English Energy Card Checklist, which might already answers some of your questions?

Greetz,
Quuador

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Sorry I’m not much help here. I’m going off this spreadsheet too. I’ve only been into the hobby since Ultra Prism.

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Grazie for the link Quaador!

Looks like I was pretty close.

I was not counting any cards with an explicit league promo logo, because I track those elsewhere; but I wasn’t actually aware there were un-logo’d, un-numbered, and un-icon’d holographic energies. Whoops!

So, as far as I can tell, based on that spreadsheet; the icon-less, number-less, logo-less energy cards are as follows:

  • (C) 2019 Team Up
  • (C) 2017 Sun & Moon
  • (C) 2017 Sun & Moon (Sheen)
  • (C) 2013 XY
  • (C) 2013 XY (Sheen)
  • (C) 2011 Black & White (On the spreadsheet as “XY”, but 2011 is BW’s copyright year, so I think this is right.)
  • (C) 2011 Black & White (Sheen) [The spreadsheet doesn’t list a source here, so I’m less sure if these exist.]
  • (C) 2010 Heart Gold & Soul Silver
  • (C) 2007 Diamond & Pearl
  • (C) 2007 Diamond & Pearl (Sheen, as part of Organized Play, but no league logo?)

And then from the earlier eras:

  • (C) 2006 EX (Matrix Foil, No league logo)
  • (C) 2006 EX
  • (C) 2005 EX

It looks like there are quite a few variations of the EX energies, but those have numbers and so are best tracked as variants of the set they came from (EX Ruby & Sapphire), IMO.

And from an even older set:

  • (C) 1995-2000 Neo Genesis Cosmos Foil Energies – I didn’t know about these at all!

I think I intend to file these as the following “sets”, to mimic somewhat how PTCGO has separate “sets” for its free energy cards:

  • 2019 Sun & Moon Energy
  • 2017 Sun & Moon Energy (and foils)
  • 2013 XY Energy (and foils)
  • 2011 BW Energy (and foils)
  • 2010 HGSS Energy
  • 2007 DP-PT Energy (and foils)
  • 2006 EX Energy (and foils)
  • 2005 EX Energy
  • 2000 Neo Energy Foils

I’ll note that PTCGO actually includes both the 2017 and 2019 Sun & Moon energies as “one set” in the online game. You could probably make a similar case for condensing the 2005 and 2006 EX energies into “one set” as well. You could probably also make some case that the 2011 BW energy and the 2013 XY energy could be condensed because they use the same illustration otherwise, but I think collapsing across a series era is taxonomically unwise.

I’ll spend some time hunting for pictures and evidence of all the variants for a little while, but I think this is a good starting point for now. (The whole point is to have “sets” that all cards can be “checked into” while I do my datting work. For most cards it’s obvious where they go; but for unnumbered energy in particular it’s a little nightmarish. I clearly haven’t dug in too far just yet on enumerating all of the actual instances of the cards!)

Thanks again, everyone!

EDIT: Actually, one addendum – EX Ruby & Sapphire premiered in 2003, and the numberless copyright starts in 2005. I assume that this means until this point, PCDs shipped with numbered energy. Can anyone tell me the first theme deck that stopped this practice? Has it consistently been true (with exceptions for, say, Generations) since that point that all PCDs come with ‘generic’ energy?

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So do a lot of you collect energies to go with your complete set or not?

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@nago , I am glad the checklist has helped you :blush: I have not updated it in a while and do not intend to anytime in the future as my time has been displaced elsewhere…but a couple things for you to consider. The terminology in brackets () is just my personal take on the style of card. While BW is distinct from XY the overall layout of the card is the same in XY other than making the lower bar grey and the background pattern changed. This can be amended to anyones personal description and most probably exists for other cards. I just placed a personal determination to help separate them from other cards.

The 2011 sheen do exist, see www.ebay.com/itm/Holo-Grass-Energy-2011-Pokemon-Card-NM/254169172349 I would assume these were promos from Pokemon league, either given away in single type sets or multi type sets either free from league participation or purchased with points???

As they do not copyright every single year, some product is released with “old” energy, mostly Theme Decks. This makes applying some variations harder but you are welcome to alter my work for your benefit and release something more definitive to share with everyone.

Its always nice to see someone else with a passion for the alternative in our hobby, a rarity for sure :wink:

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@credits, thanks for your work :blush: It’s okay if you don’t have the time to dig into this.

When you say some theme decks are released with “old” energy, what do you mean? Do they ever release with a previous era’s energy, or just that, e.g. Sun & Moon decks in 2018 ship with “2017 Energy” ? The first would be a surprise to me, but the latter is fine.

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I have come across the later. Never seen old era in new era but then again, havent opened every theme deck released (although i would agree with your doubt).