I got back into collecting in August and have been hooked ever since. I then started thinking about collection goals, joined the forum, watched YouTube videos and studied the market a bit trying to learn and soak up as much as I could about this new pokemon collecting journey. I’ve collected coins in the past so I’m familiar with a lot of collecting terms and grading and such. It has been a fun journey to say the least and more rewarding than coins so far but it is funny to see pokemon people starting to have such issues with grading companies as the parallels with the coin world are quite similar.
Anyways, one of my early goal decisions was to collect my favorite pokemon, Ampharos, in PSA 10. This was quickly derailed a bit after seeing some prices for a few notorious Ampharos cards. So, I’ll happily take PSA 9s for a few cards. I remember playing red and blue but really remember playing gold and silver and Ampharos was always a staple on all my teams. Getting an awesome electric type early in the game was amazing for me. These days birds have become a huge part of my life so I am partially to most of the birds but Ampharos has always remained number one.
I thought it would be cool to collect all of the English versions of the Ampharos cards. A fun journey to see all of the artworks of my favorite pokemon I’ve missed throughout the years. Of course I am also realizing this will be a long and difficult journey as pops are low for a lot of cards and I’ll likely have to figure out how to acquire mint cards and grade 10s myself without breaking the bank. Should be a fun challenge. Here is the start to my collection with the list of cards I’m after. I also am pleased to find new Ampharos stuff every now and then like the HGSS pack art which I had to pick up and add to the collection.
Looking forward to seeing this collection grow and hopefully document it on here to share with everyone. Let me know if you have some sweet Ampharos stuff.
EDIT: I got a sweet new scanner for Christmas and have finally scanned all of my Ampharos Collection and used photoshope to hopefully organize it a bit and show what I’m still missing! Blue Text means I’ve either sent them to PSA myself or plan to. Always looking to upgrade PSA 9s to 10s as well and if you have any missing slots, shoot me a message.
UPDATE: I’ve finally gone back through and updated this master English slots. Added a decent number of great cards. So far it seems there are 60 English cards and variants out there. I’ve finally created and uploaded templates for the Japanese cards as well and Bonus Cards. I believe there are 53 Japanese cards and variants.
Added this beauty a few days ago thanks to @pokemonmaster556 Always love to see new artworks from sets I’ve missed and this one was truly awesome to see for the first time in person! Such a cool card from a sweet set.
@lamplamp, good question. Not really sure. I guess whatever pops up and is available next that looks like a decent deal. I tried bidding on an Expedition Holo PSA 10 on ebay that was at auction but it ended at 540, 450 was my bid so a little bummed there. That would’ve been a really nice one to add.
I’m always on the lookout though so I’ll see what comes next.
Well this is going to be much harder than I thought to complete and I already thought it was going to be difficult! haha
I bought about 70+ Ampharos NM from Troll and Toad, mostly multiples from more modern sets, in hopes of getting some candidates to send to PSA but alas. Maybe 1 is a long shot 10 and the rest won’t even be close honestly. Most of these cards and sets have super low pops cause nobody is grading them so I knew I’d have to grade myself (which will be fun) but acquiring mint copies with a shot at a 10 is going to be hard!
If you have minty Ampharos from any set that you think has a chance for 10, let me know! I’m willing to pay 3-4x price on the major websites for them.
Anyways, I did pick up 2 from Secret Wonders and happened to get one holo bleed and one without which I think is more uncommon. If nothing else, I’ll end up with a cool Ampharos binder in addition to the PSA cards, not mad about that.
@darky97, gotta say Neo Genesis holds a special place in my heart but so far I really love the TRR Dark Ampharos and actually the full art really yellow Team Up one.
Right now I’m trying to focus only on the English cards but I have looked at a few Japanese cards that have unique artwork like the VS series cards but I don’t know enough about all of them yet. Japanese versions though with the same English artworks aren’t too appealing to me though.
Let me know if there are some awesome unique Japanese arts I don’t know about!
Super excited to add a few more to the collection! Had to go for a PSA 9 Neo Rev as no way I’ll ever afford a 10. Also the joy of opening up a new Ampharos PSA 10 for the set is second to none, even silly ones like this Dragons Exalted.
@firebirder31 love the collection. I like seeing all the different versions of the same Pokemon over all the different generations. Ampharos prime is one of my favorites or Dark Ampharos 1st edition. My neo rev one has a beautiful swirl :-). What’s next on your collection agenda?
