Pokemon Cards: The Unofficial Ultimate Collector's Guide Hardcover – Download: Adobe Reader, November 13, 2017

Recently reviewed this book; very informative and I believe it was money well spent.

I came to this book after discovering author Ryan Majeske via his YouTube channel, PrimetimePokemon. Majeske is one of the most respected and knowledgeable authorities on Pokemon Trading Cards in the world. He is sincere and passionate about collecting and the Pokemon community. As another reviewer notes, the book delivers on its promise to be the best Pokemon Trading Card Game reference available. It features all current TCG expansion sets, every ultra rare and secret rare cards, experts collecting tips, most valuable cards on the secondary market, and checklists for every expansion set. The book has a hardcover, glossy color pages, quality pictures of cards throughout and is almost 400 pages. Very impressive. Highly recommend for Pokemon fans of all ages.

This book is HUGE and well worth the price for all the useful information and checklist it includes. Goes from the beginning through Sun and Moon, so if you started collecting recently be aware that the newer sets are not included, but a new edition including everything to current would be nice. This is worth buying even if just as a resource for checklist all being in one place.

Excellent book! In terms of quality, the book and pages feel very study and high quality. In terms of content, this book is delivers all its promises and more. As a Pokémon collector myself, this book is perfect since it provides all the necessary information and more. Even if your not a collector and just enjoy Pokémon, you will still love this book. Would recommend!

As a supporter of PrimetimePokemon on YouTube, I felt compelled to support the author by purchasing this book. It is very well put together and high quality, and for the price I think it is definitely a worthwhile purchase if for nothing else than being a neat reference/coffee table type book. However, there are some blatant issues I noticed in the book that I think buyers should be aware of:-Prices were printed for hundreds of cards in the book. The obvious issue here is that the prices are as of the printing of the book. While it doesn't necessarily need to be said, there is no disclaimer about this for readers who wouldn't realize otherwise that prices for collectibles like this fluctuate greatly all the time. As such, while the prices may be relevant for RIGHT NOW (and are admittedly accurate), 6 months to a year down the line the entire book could be off. Due to this, this book may become less relevant as time goes on; hopefully, if anything, the awareness of which cards are the rarest will be helpful for collectors, even if the prices change.-Going off of the above, a point I noticed in some video reviews of this product that I definitely agree with is that if enough people purchase this book and interpret the values of the hundreds of cards as absolute, it could have a negative impact on the market. When card values naturally rise, readers of this book may think sellers are just trying to rip people off. Similarly, they could severely undervalue cards and cause prices to stay stagnant unintentionally. Ultimately, the price portion of this book (which is a major one) is better suited in an online model that's adaptable and updates in line with the market.-The book goes up to Guardians Rising, which is pretty recent. However, going along with the above points, prices for the newest sets like this are highly skewed because they're relevant for what's legal in sanctioned TCG events/tournaments currently. After inevitable rotation in the future, Standard and newest sets' top cards will be worth less.-There is no index at the end of the book.-There are some blatant errors in some basic information presented in the book (i.e. There will be a statistic that Base Set has 17 holo cards, when right next to it is a checklist that displays only 16 holos.-The book makes references to things like promo cards and POP packs in passing, but never covers them formally. For example, there is a section on Shining Pokemon and a listing of the most valuable Shining Pokemon cards. The most expensive one is for $350. Within the block of text giving a high level overview of Shining Pokemon, however, the author casually mentions how there are two other Shining Pokemon cards from POP packs that are worth even more, but they're not formally listed anywhere in the book. Similarly, under the 'How to Read Pokemon Cards' section of all places, the author identifies how to identify promo cards. But values are not given for a single promo card in the book. People who wouldn't know what POP packs are who read things like this might get very confused, and the serious collectors (such as myself) will get annoyed that series that that (and promos) aren't formally covered.-While I understand the line had to be drawn somewhere in terms of what to cover, it would have been nice to have an expanded section on things like sealed TCG product values, promotional products, foreign language cards (especially Japanese), etc. Japanese cards, for example, have their own values and a lot are exclusive (i.e. never printed in English), making the values even higher.Despite all of the above, this is probably the best 'Unofficial' book there is in physical format in today's day and age. For that, I commend PrimetimePokemon. This must have been quite an effort to put together. For there here and now, I definitely recommend even with its shortcomings. However, be warned that as time goes on this book will become less and less accurate/relevant. And please understand that the market fluctuates when it comes to the value of these cards!!

While this book must have been a great comprehensive collection of every English Pokémon set ever released when it was published, it's now out of date, as it only includes sets up to Sun & Moon Guardians Rising. At least 20 new sets have been released as of this review! However, if you want to learn about the basics, different types of cards, and have a full list of every set up to Guardians Rising, this book is perfect.But perhaps even more notable is that with card prices surging since the COVID-19 pandemic, the quoted prices in the book are laughably obsolete. In fact, it might even be entertaining to get this book just to see how much cheaper cards were 4-5 years ago, and to dream about buying cards back then that are now many times more expensive than what's listed in the book. To give an example—a Charizard Gold Star from EX Dragon Frontiers is listed as $250 in the book, while a quick search on eBay shows that the same card is sold for $800-1000 (ungraded) at a minimum today.Lastly, the book has no information or listings on Promo cards—a surprising omission since I would imagine almost every Pokémon card collector owns Promo cards, and some of the most interesting and well known cards over the years are Promos.

My nephew (of grade school age) and I are having a blast going through this book and seeing which cards he has! It’s also great because the book intro explains Pokémon basics, which I appreciate because I only had a vague idea of what Pokémon cards are until my nephew got into them. I no longer feel drenched in Pokémon ignorance as only an adult unaware of “what kids are into these days” can! Thanks to this book, my nephew knows what to look for when people are selling random cards at flea markets and yard sales, and he has the nose of a bloodhound for these cards!

Great book here! Very informational and spot on with the facts this books gives, definately worth the purchase! I would recommend this book for anyone that is into collecting pokemon cards! This book was very well written, and also contains everything about pokemon cards there is to know!