TopVault has a mission to become the most complete database for collectibles with a focus on "full complete" sets with large histories and diverse variations. The Pokemon Trading Card Game (TCG) is a great example of this type of collectible. There are thousands of promotional cards, tournament exclusive cards, test-prints, and error variations within the Pokemon TCG.

TopVault also has a distinction between a discrete collectible "item" and sealed products. Sealed products are typically how the collectibles are packaged and distributed. For example with trading cards, these are the booster packs, the decks, and other merchandise.

This article uses the concept of a sealed product, a Pokemon booster pack, as an example to discuss TopVault's focus on specificity. At the time of writing, TopVault had cataloged 568 booster pack variations.

Pokemon Booster Packs

The Pokemon Trading Card game has a strong history of packaging cards in "booster packs". This is similar to most trading card games, and sports trading cards. The "booster" is primary way for acquiring new cards and completing sets.

Just like the cards themselves, there are examples of promotional boosters. There are also examples of boosters with slight variations appealing to deep collectors as well as boosters with rare errors.

Base Set Variations

Let's look at Pokemon's initial Base Set Boosters as an example. Note that there is an extensive guide on the efour forum for identifying these.

There are 3 variations of artwork of the 1st edition booster packs.

For the next "shadowless" edition, there are the same artwork variations, but then the packaging changes to include boosters with "long crimp".

Then for the "unlimited" edition the booster packaging variations increase again to include "hanger" or "checkout line" crimping.

Two errors are introduced as well, one where the "1st edition" is incorrectly printed on the pack, and another where the incorrect "1st edition" is covered by a black triangle. This makes 6 variations for the unlimited series for each artwork style.

Tracking these variations across each edition, and each artwork style, is what TopVault is designed for. You can find all 27 variations of the Base Set Boosters with a simple filter on the Base Set series page.

Hundreds of Artwork Variations

As the Pokemon TCG evolved, the "1st edition" concept continued on booster packs until the end of the Neo generation. The concept of including artwork variations, typically 4 artworks, remained for almost every series. Having one of each is very important to sealed collectors.

Unfortunately, prices and market data is always aggregated to the “booster pack” for a given set and not for each of the pack artworks. In practice, finding auctions for some popular art is much more difficult.

Promo Booster Packs

The Pokemon TCG includes booster promos for Trick-or-Trade, multiple General Mills partnerships, the Pokemon League events, McDonalds promotions, and others. Many of these tend to be "mini booster packs" and include fewer cards such as 2-4 instead of the normal 10 or 11. In these cases there are artwork variations but it is less common.

And note that all of the images and references to collectible types are copyright their respective publishers and partners. TopVault has no affiliation with the publishers or manufacturers of collectibles, it is merely a database and tracking tool. The use of images here is for demonstration purposes for the point of variations.