How I complete a Pokédex binder

One card of each species

The rule is small and it saves me. One card. Any set. Any language. Any rarity. The long binder guide separates this job from the set binder, where every card in the list has a slot. Here the creature is the slot. A second Pikachu is a duplicate even when the art is new.

I started the habit with Bulbasaur. The species page lists the printings. The binder needs one of them. I put the first sleeved Bulbasaur I already owned into #001 and I stopped looking for a better #001. Better is a different hobby. This hobby is the range.

A species page lists every printing, and the Pokédex binder still needs only one of them. All Pikachu cards keeps every Pikachu printing as its own checklist. Themed binders sits beside the generation pages when I want the full run of one face.

The {species}, generation by generation

I do not open one giant binder and call it done. I build by generation, because the collections hub is already split that way and because a generation is a book I can finish. Generation 1 is 151. Generation 2 is the next 100. The later generations are on the same hub, each with its own checklist and its own count.

Generation 1 is the one I tell people to finish first, and the Gen 1 note stays beside it. The creatures are familiar, the bulk boxes are full of them, and 151 is a number you can hold in your head. After that, generation 5 is the long one and generation 6 is the short one. I let the checklist say so. I do not memorize the counts.

Fill it from bulk

Bulk is the supply. I am deliberate about that. A rare illustration is welcome when it is the card I already have. It is not a requirement. Waiting for a favourite printing is how a Pokédex binder stalls at the same twenty holes for a year.

The practical pass is dull and it works. I take one generation checklist. I walk the bulk box with the holes in mind. I sleeve the card that fills a hole. I pocket it. I mark the line. Then I stop, even if the box still looks interesting. How I organise the pages is the page-size choice. Nine pockets are what I use when the goal is to see the range completed.

When I call it done

A generation is done when every species line has a card in the binder and I have turned the pages to prove it. The screen can say the lines are filled. I still turn the pages. A card logged and then left in a shoebox is not in the binder.

I do not upgrade a finished generation for sport. If a later card makes me smile, it can replace the one in the pocket, and the old one returns to bulk. The line stays filled either way. The point was never the most impressive copy. The point was the creature, present, in order, where a person can flip to it.

A budget, for this binder, means I spend attention instead of hunting a particular copy. I already own most of the needed cards inside unsorted bulk. The cost that matters is the sleeve and the page, which I buy in ordinary packs and use on commons without saving them. I keep a pencil list of the holes only when I am away from the screen. At home the generation page is the list. If a hole has been empty for months, it is because that species is scarce in my boxes, not because I am waiting for a rarer picture of a species I already could have filed.