The 151 Shop Challenge: 151 Pokémon, 151 UK TCG Shops

There are plenty of sensible ways to complete a Pokémon collection. This is not one of them.

I wanted my next collecting project to be about more than filling empty binder pockets or chasing the cheapest copy of a card online. So I’ve set myself a challenge that combines the original Pokémon I grew up with, the shops that keep the hobby moving, and a reason to document the whole thing properly.

The idea is simple enough to explain and just awkward enough to be fun: collect all of the original 151 Pokémon, in Pokédex order, with every Pokémon coming from a different TCG shop somewhere in the UK.

That means 151 Pokémon. 151 different shops. No using the same shop twice.

Why the original 151?

For me, the first 151 are still the easiest way to turn a pile of cards into a story.

Bulbasaur through to Mew is a list almost every long-time Pokémon fan instantly understands. There is a clear start, a clear finish and a lot of nostalgia in between. I could simply buy one card for each Pokémon and call it done, but that would miss the point of the project.

I want every slot to have a little bit of history attached to it: where the card came from, which shop supplied it, what I found there and what the experience was like.

The finished collection should end up being part Pokédex, part travel log and part snapshot of the UK TCG scene at the time I built it.

The challenge

The core rules are deliberately straightforward:

• Work through the original 151 Pokémon in Pokédex order.
• Each Pokémon must be represented by an official Pokémon TCG card.
• Every card must come from a different UK TCG shop.
• A shop only gets to count once across the entire challenge.
• Each addition will be recorded so the final 151 can be traced back to 151 separate shops.

There will probably be a few edge cases along the way. That is part of the fun. I’m not going to pretend I have every tiny rule solved before card number one. If I hit something questionable, I’ll explain the decision in the update instead of quietly changing the rules halfway through.