Here is my favorite card based on the art, from each set. I thought it would be fun, and help me learn about sets I’m less familiar with, and appreciate the changes in the card game over time. Cards in order of the set release. There are 111 in my list. feel free to share your own if you choose using your own rules.
I employed a couple restrictions to keep it more simple
Pokemon only
no rarity higher than regular rare/holo regular rare. In other words no secret rarity or things like ex/gx/radiant/gold star etc.
exclude a few small sub-sets where it made sense to me. This was harder to decide, so it just depends.
Notes how this experience was for me at the bottom
Anyhow, I learned a lot about what I like in art. Themes were often anything funny, moody lighting, lots of color, action poses and highly detailed backgrounds. Another thing I liked was anything with people or other pokemon interacting in the scene. Certain artists organically kept popping up in what appealed to me. And I definately realized ghost pokemon had some of my favorite scenes. Some sets were hard to decide on, and others were hard to find one I actually liked.
@SolemnStar I like a lot of these, while many wouldn’t be my personal #1, there are plenty that I would include in my top 3 for each set! You have good taste
Curious about the inclusion of the Shining Raichu, seems to fall outside your criteria #2?
good catch thank you! Yes when I hit Neo Destiny I realized it could be an issue to include weird rarity cards due to things that add to it like full art, special holo styles and texturing. So I forgot to remove it, but the light jolteon is in there too.
And yes, some sets I had like 5 cards I couldn’t decide over. So it really was a bit of a roll of the dice.
This is a pretty cool journey through cards… will have to do mine… tomorrow.
I had to hunt for Emerging Powers tho. “What did he choose?!” Good choice.
Only based on artworks, nothing else. Otherwise I would have chosen Pikachu and Seviper much more often.
With some sets there was a clear winner; with others sets I had to choose between 2-5 amazing artworks.
understandable. It took me a week to pick all the cards, save them, and edit the single image.
The way I did it was a bit cheeky, but worked. I saved all the photos from https://pkmncards.com/
Before every image, I put numbers, so that in the folder on the computer, it would stay in order. So base set is 1basecharizard_859twhatever, jungle is 2scyther_48tgrhuwhatever etc. Then I just set the thumbnails to the max size, screenshotted it, stiched the images together, then filled the spaces with the background color for the forum to look seamless.
But again…still took a long time. I considered doing it by era as well. It think its probably better and less daunting.
edit: also I did it this way so as not to overburden the forum storage and need to load over 100 images. jpeg at 94% quality.
Ponyta is most sentimental, I could easily put in porygon or any one of kinebuchi’s like voltorb for favorite from base, which incidentally is the hardest to pick a favorite. The gym sets are obscenely hard, as most holos are 10/10, but they have the best trainers of all time including keiji’s stadiums. But sometimes picking a favorite is easy cause it’s the one most special. Like rocket I have a million I want to pick but its just so easy considering it will always be dark slowbro. But I mean transparent walls I like just as much as mistys golduck so that is soo hard. Neo sets are also absurd and a testament to their greatness, and obviously E series the greatest of them all. Aquapolis is basically my favorite set all of time so that set is the most obscene to pick a single one. So many honorable mentions but I’ll resist. Also, emerald is trash.
Similar to decoy I just wanted to do wotc but add ex and hgss era. Nothing worth noting after that as set general quality fell 6 feet under. Which btw, decoy, your choices are soo good!
Trying to do gen 4 reminded me of how strong the Majestic Dawn holo section is, this is almost unheard of for a post-Hoenn set. I think my vote would go to Cresselia but really it is a coin toss between that and Articuno and Darkrai. Zapdos is no slouch either and Palkia would have made a top 5 gold star.
Here are mine up until the Sun and Moon era. I have too many favorites to spend more time trying to decided . As I’ve gone through, I’ve found some of my tastes have changed from what my old favorites were. The down point realy was BnW, I honestly didn’t like anything there. Emerging victories had more for me. And I had to include a few FA trainers because combined with the texture, they really are great art.
In order from Top > Bot , Left > Right. If there are 2 illus. on one, the top is my old favorite, but the bottom is my current. As expected a LOT of Arita, and others from my artist collections.
First, 2 non-standard set inclusions.
And the whole enchilada. Again, Top is old, bottom card is new favorite, except lotad. I love him, but there are so many amazing arts in sandstorm, I couldn’t pick. And LOTAD expresses my feelings over it. :
I noticed, I tended to like cards with a lot of color, pop, dynamic contrast, and action when I was younger. Now, I prefer shading, action, and character. (Card creatures have gotten more character over time, I think.)
Oh not sure what happened to my grid but sets up to Skyridge.
Obviously the e-Series sets take it up a notch and there are numerous candidates that could be on top. I think Gym sets were the worst with almost exclusively Sugimori stock art.
“What did he choose?!” 
Good choice.
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