Pokémon was the first game I actually really got into as a kid, but I was only ever a fan of the Game Boy games and not the Trading Card Game (TCG). I never really found much pleasure in collecting or possessing material goods in general, and that tendency continues on to this day as an adult – I’d much rather have money, knowledge, and electronic possessions rather than large collections of physical souvenirs.

The only Pokémon TCG card I ever owned was a random Psyduck that I think a friend gave me for free. I didn’t really see the purpose of owning them, because at that time, I didn’t even know how to properly play the card game. I also thought it was a complete waste of money to own Pokémon trading cards (the magnitude of wastefulness probably also amplified by the fact that I didn’t actually make any money back then).

 
As a small child, my favorite Pokémon was Eevee. I felt like flexibility, adaptability, and diversity was a very important characteristic, and Eevee was able to do that – it could evolve into a fire, water, or electric type. I started liking Eevee even more when Pokémon Gold and Silver came out and I discovered that Eevee could now also evolve into a dark or psychic type as well.

I still like Eevee to this day, and Eevee remained my favorite Pokémon for a while – not only because I still liked the concept of Eevee, but also because I didn’t really pay that much attention to Pokémon to really know much about the hundreds of new Pokémon that were being released since the Johto expansion. However, I’ve recently been paying closer attention to the new Pokémon games and the mega evolutions, and I discovered a Pokémon that I think is my new favorite – Absol.

One clear advantage that I think Absol has over Eevee is its appearance. If you know me in person, you know that I really like white clothing (most of the casual t-shirts I wear are white, and I have a thing for white jackets). A secondary favorite color of mine is anything on the grayscale spectrum. Our good buddy Absol happens to naturally be both of those colors, all while having a stylish and fashionable fur arrangement and horn accent. Ask me to pick a favorite “real” color that isn’t white, gray, or black, and I will say I like the ferocity and power of the color red … and Absol’s shiny form just happens to be red.

Absol also has some empathy-inducing lore behind it. Absol is considered to be the disaster Pokémon because every time people see it come down from the mountains, disasters occur. Surely, Absol is the one causing them, right? Of course, Absol is actually misunderstood – it comes down from its natural mountainous habitat to warn civilization about natural disasters coming because it’s able to sense it, not because it’s causing the destruction itself.

 
Even though I’ve never been a fan of collecting cards, and I still don’t really have much of an interest in doing so, I never said that I was actually against it. In an attempt to explore different opportunities and try out things I never got to do as a child (even though I didn’t actually particularly even want to do this as a child), I decided to start a very small Pokémon card collection of only Absol.

Why Absol? I would obviously pick one of my favorite Pokémon, but I decided to go with Absol instead of Eevee because I didn’t want to create a snowball effect of wanting more and more Pokémon cards. My mission is to try and collect all the Absol cards, and once that is complete, I can put the project on hold, admire my collection, and wait until more new Absol cards come out in future expansions. If I were to do that with Eevee, I would have a very easy progression to wanting to collect all the Eevee evolution Pokémon cards as well, and I’m trying to do this as a side hobby purely for fun, not to drain my entire entertainment budget into it. And even then, Absol still has quite a few cards available; not only are there multiple versions of Absol printed, but all of them come in different languages as well.

I’m looking to spend no more than about US$100.00 on my initial purchase (which would include a binder, sleeves, and as many cards as possible), then spend no more than about an hour a week searching for good deals on card vendor and auction websites to try and round out my collection. I would imagine that the time investment would start waning down to just a few hours a month once I get a hold of all the cards in common circulation, and have narrowed down the empty slots in my collection to just rare foreign cards.

 
When I want to do something, I tend to go all-in, so I spent a bit of time doing some research on all the Absol cards in print right now. I’ll be using this as a reference for how much more progress I need to make to complete my English and Japanese collection, before moving on to foreign languages (which I’m finding may include, but is not limited to, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Dutch, and Russian). I also have the cards listed in order of release date, which is how I will be organizing my physical collection.

I’ll be coming back to this blog post once in a while and making some edits to the table – checking off cards I purchase, and adding more cards that I discover exist.