Ruley711's Collection

[Ruley711]

Hey everyone. I am updating my collection thread as I have been consolidating a lot this year.
It is entirely re-focused and I am only keeping my absolute favourite stuff.

Hope you follow along and see me update this as time goes on and I build my collection out more like I envision

My main collection focus is my species collection.

Here is the Togepi Line - English Master set + JP with noticeable differences (holo pattern, exclusive art etc.)

Togepi

Togetic

Togekiss

Here is the Jirachi Collection (English Master set + Japanese exclusive artwork). Potentially looking to add WC Deck cards, as you can see by the spaces.

Outside of my species collection is my favourite subsets/minisets. (Southern Islands, PokePark Forest File, and WIP DP/P secret rares.

The last part to my binder collection is a trip down memory lane.

My 2009 snowflake stamp cards that I actually used as an advent calendar in 2009.

These two pages are cards I have kept since I pulled in my younger years, or traded for to complete the ‘sets’ of them.
Diamond & Pearl is when I finally stuck with Pokémon and have a lot of that still remaining to this day (here), unlike ex era where this dustox ex is the last surviving card of my Pokémon purge in grade school.
Like many kids growing up in the early 2000s I traded all my best Pokémon cards (including some gold stars - Registeel & Rayquaza) for yu-gi-oh cards. One day I will get those cards again.

Outside of my binder collections I am slowly looking to add pieces to my slabbed (or soon to be slabbed) collection. My main focus here is getting cards of some of my favourite cards of my favourite Pokémon (snorlax, Empoleon, Celebi, Mew)
Or favourite artworks (gengar alt art, munch Psyduck)

There is no end goal here, but I am trying to be very purposeful and intentional with the slabs I add that don’t fit my binder mold, since I am a binder collector at heart after all.

I hope you guys love my updated collection as much as I do. I’ve sold a lot this year, and still have a massive backlog ready to sell/trade going into 2024.
2023 so far has been awesome for my collection due to refocusing and really consolidating it to the cards here that I all truly enjoy.
I plan to update this thread more than once a year like my initial update in November 2022 lol.

[pfm]

I’ve never seen this Togetic! The colors are so nice!

It’s your thread so you can display however you want but I recommend using the gallery view too, it looks really good with binder pages

[Ruley711]

It’s one of my favourite togetic for sure. Love the background. Pumped to get it in English with the cosmos holo (believe it’s supposed to be a 3 pack blister promo for silver tempest)

And woah I never knew that gallery existed I will try and do that because that would be much less messy haha, thanks!

[mrbubbles]

Wow, excellent first showcase. Very impressive collection. It was super awesome to go through your binder pics. Looing forward to seeing more of your updates. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Cheers!

[Dyl]

Such a nice collection, @Ruley711! I especially love your Southern Islands set and your Mew and Flareon Gold Star. They are two of my favorite Pokemon, and their gold star arts are 10/10.

[needszeebs]

I love the Jirachi collection!!! One of my fav Pokemon, also planning on getting every Jirachi card! Got some great cards

[joponnes]

Very nice selection of cards, you have great taste with your favourite card designs! Also never realised how great and wide artwork Saya Tsuruta has made, more temptations for me too

[Ruley711]

thank you very much! Hopefully can fill out the binders as time goes on.

[Ruley711]

Southern Islands may be my favourite set of all time. all 18 arts are just gorgeous. Might get the JP one day as well just because of how awesome they are

[Ruley711]

Thanks! I wish you the best of luck of luck in that endeavour, it certainly was a tough one to do. Togepi may be my favourite pokemon, but my Jirachi collection is what I am most excited to share and show because I find so many of the Jirachi cards beautiful and also rare.

[Ruley711]

I was surprised as well a few months back when I got into artists collections. I always knew I loved Sowsow but never realized how many Saya Tsuruta cards stood out to me in the same hand drawn cute kind of way that Sowsow’s does.

Saya Tsuruta in my opinion is the best promo artist. Her Pikachu/Mimikyu, shiny Magikarp, Mew, the Yokohama Pikachu’s and the Chespin/Litten/Inkay trio are all some of my favourite promos ever and they are all hers!

[camrok37]

Very cool collection! Really enjoy seeing the different Pokemon/artworks/sets that others on the forum like to collect. I really like the Togepi card line up in particular!

[Ruley711]

Thanks so much!
Yeah Togepi is my favourite and it’s nice to see the growth of their cards from WOTC until now. Now I just really hope one of them gets an art rare/character rare/some sort of full art in the future

[Ruley711]

Finally got around to updating my collection, it’s been over a year and lots has changed lol!

[tcgmaine]

Every time I see your post or look at your collection thread I’m like “man , I should do a Togetic binder!” Haha, it brings me joy to look at, so thank you for sharing! Maybe I’ll eventually get my act together and try to put one together myself!

[Ruley711]

I appreciate the love!
Togetic’s art in TRR & Aquapolis are some of my favourite in the entire hobby. Togekiss definitely took away some of its magic with the holos unfortunately lol

[Ruley711]

My (apparently) annual update!

This year my collecting journey took a backseat in my life. I bought a house, and am currently saving for a wedding, so I sold off/traded a lot of stuff.
When I did have card funds I was using a lot more of it towards building my hockey collection out as opposed to Pokémon.
That being said, I probably accomplished a goal I did not think I would and that’s acquiring a rayquaza gold star, my ultimate chase card for years.

I don’t think I ordered singles once this year. I’ve bought packs here or there for fun, but I pretty much just picked up stuff at the Semi-annual Toronto Sports Card Expo (including Rayquaza GS in April).

I picked up almost next to nothing since my last update last November for the species collection. I am working on a spreadsheet to track and log my progress for next year. I think a medium term goal will be to expand my Togepi and Jirachi collections to English and Japanese. Togetic and Togekiss I probably won’t.

My other binder collections (D-P&P secret rares and the like) I have made 0 progress this year. Hopefully next year I can complete the SH cards at a minimum.

Since I moved this year, I have a dedicated office and with that dedicated office came a lot of built in bookshelves. Now I do have a fair amount of books but what’s the fun in displaying those here? My new priority going forward (honestly equal to the Species collection) is filling out these bookshelves with all my Pokémon (and other pop culture & hockey stuff).

These are a major work in progress and I honestly might make a second/re-do my collection thread in some way to incorporate this a bit better.

First shelf is an awkward corner shelf. I can’t really display cards here like I would like, so it is mostly non TCG and mostly Togepi/Jirachi Non-TCG lol.
Bottom two shelves will likely not be Pokémon, still TBD on my game plan there.

Second bookshelf is my Pokémon VG shelf. I am in the progress of getting every single Pokémon main series game CIB. The gameboy era I couldn’t justify the price of CIB, so for those I got custom cases on Etsy to match the style of DS cases and I think they look pretty solid alongside the rest. Some sneaky Yu-Gi-Oh in the bottom too that I’m still deciding how I want to display.

Next bookshelf is my hockey bookshelf. I am sure most here won’t care about this one as much, but I’m sharing it anyways for the few hockey card collectors on the forum. I am a Leafs fan (unfortunately), so the top 4 shelves are dedicated to all things leafs rookies/noteable cards. My goal here is to obtain all the Young Guns, Young Guns Canvas, and Future Watch Auto of all the leafs star players. Bottom shelf here will be all my favourite non-leaf players eventually. End goal is all PSA slabs on this shelf

I saved the best for last though and the shelf that most people will likely enjoy the most, the Pokémon TCG shelf. Now this is a major work in progress.
At the moment I have a Pikachu shelf of noteworthy plush, and will likely throw some Pikachu half-art promos like the Tea Party one up there.
I have a Togepi shelf and a Jirachi shelf, of course. But still deciding what I want there and how to display.
My favourite shelf in this entire room is likely the gold stars + Wand Company shelf. I would love to expand each shelf to have different wand company pokeballs eventually and follow the same format as this layout because I think it looks so clean.
Bottom shelf will be similar to my hockey shelf and just a collection of all my favourite cards/sentimental cards in slabs
Like hockey, the end goal here is every card on these shelves to be in PSA slabs.

So a pretty big update despite not having a ton of new cards picked up this year. Hope you all enjoyed it and please share your ideas on potential layout/cool things that might fit for displaying on these bookshelves. I am having a blast theorizing how I want them to look, and am always happy to hear what other people think would look good too!

[bbobrob]

Congrats on some achieved (and upcoming) life milestones, and also for the big Gold Star Rayquaza acquisition!

Figuring out the display seems like a fun part of collecting, and it’s nice to see you have a number of shelves for display now! We don’t currently have a bookshelf, and our place is kind of small, so the non-TCG mostly just sit in boxes for now So I hope to one day be in your position figuring out how to show everything in a pleasing manner. Your display seems to be getting off to a good start though! (I have no real suggestions, but I do like looking at people’s displays)

[Ruley711]

Thank you so much!

Yeah this is definitely the fun part. The past few years I was the same where it was mostly all stored in boxes in closets.
So now executing the vision will be a fun 2025!