Being a German myself I’m not interested at all in German cards besides my childhood collection. I turned to almost exclusively collecting Japanese when I reentered the hobby in late 2017.
I don’t even know why I’m so ignorant towards my own language. Maybe a combination of conditioning through e4 and PSA not grading foreign cards outside of Base set. It kinda feels like there’s a lack of legitimacy when the biggest grading company doesn’t want your cards.
Do you collect any other language cards besides English - or maybe no English ones at all?
What are your reasons to do so (or not to)?
I’m particularily curious about all the non-British/American collectors
I´m also german, but I´m collecting english cards exclusively. I do have an extremely small german collection that only includes misprints/errors and a few of my favorite cards. Since I´m speaking more english than german nowadays, it was an easy decision to go for the english variants. My love for graded cards only made that decision easier. For some reason I have the exact same feeling as you, I´m only nostalgic towards the artwork itself but not particularly to the language. Understanding and reading things is important though, so I don´t have too many japanese cards
I collect English, but I have a Korean base collection. Right when I got back in the hobby I saw a Korean Raichu and thought it looked amazing with the Korean font and wizards template.
English/Japanese but recently decided to do Italian, French and German too
I’m from Belgium, Flanders so in my local stores they sell English ones, but a few KM south, east or west and I get French/German cards. Used to hate the french ones for some reason…
I do, however, have Japanese WOTC sets in my collection because I think the holo patterns on the old Japanese cards are significantly nicer than their English counterparts.
@muk, @shadowless, @kh36 German here, glad to hear that so many of my fellow countrymen are into the hobby as well! Ironically I don’t have a nostalgic affinity towards German cards nor towards 1st Ed or WotC cards because the card game wasn’t popular in my area when I was little. That’s why I collect mostly Japanese cards. Due to the lack of nostalgia towards WotC and native Pokemon cards there’s no incentive for me not to go for the originals as they are cheaper and of higher quality (e.g. someone on this board uploaded hi-res scans of English and Japanese Rayquaza Star side-by-side, and you could even see at a certain magnification level that the print of the English card became blurred while the Japanese card was still crisp and clean).
I’m also going for some Japanese exclusive cards and since I collect mostly Japanese anyway, the collection will have a homogenous feel.
I’m Dutch, and I collect all 14 languages: English, Japanese, Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, Polish, Russian, Thai, and Indonesian.
Mostly for Pikachu, Seviper, and my Moltres WotC #21 artwork collections, since I go for every variant and language ever printed for those. But also for my general collection and National Index (including all forms and Shiny Pokémon) collection (you can find all languages in that thread, except for Indonesian).
Only for my FA Supporter collection I focus on English and Japanese exclusives only.
I’m pretty much in the English and Japanese only camp. I don’t deny that there’s a market for them but you will never catch me with any type of Glurak or 리자몽 or whatever. I just have no connection to the cards and I never feel any reason to get something if it’s not the original (Japanese) or my language (English). English and Japanese are the two largest markets as well with the most nuances and exclusive releases. Especially the foreign 1st Base sets. You can’t call it 1st Edition Base and not have the shadowless template. That’s half the fun.
Mostly English since I grew up with English cards but I’ll collect my favourite cards in Japanese if I can find them for a good price and in good condition/psa graded. Would like to collect Chinese or Korean for various reasons, probably going to go with Korean first since I can read basic Korean and it’s more readily accessible from my ebay searches.
English and Japanese cards are the only ones I generally seek out.
I kept finding sealed WOTC 1st ed and unlimited packs, theme decks, 1st ed base Holos, HGSS booster boxes, and EX ruby and sapphire booster packs in Spanish being sold for essentially pocket change so I would just keep buying it. So i guess Spanish is my 3rd language in terms of Pokémon.
