What counts as a card
Ask four Pokémon sites how many Charizard cards exist. You’ll get four answers. Nobody’s lying. They’re counting different things, and almost none of them tell you which.
Here’s how I count. In full.
Three numbers, one rule
Every master set on Set Hunter shows three numbers:
- Cards: every physical card you’d put in a pocket. The big number.
- Prints: every card number in every set. One artwork, one number.
- Sets: how many expansions it’s spread across.
Base Set Charizard is one print. It’s six cards: 1st Edition, Shadowless, Unlimited, the 4th print, the jumbo and the metal card. Six pockets. Six hunts.
Cards is the number that matters. It’s how many things are still out there for you to find.
Why is Base Set Charizard six cards?
Wizards printed Base Set in waves, and each wave is a physically different card in your hand. There’s 1st Edition (the stamp), Shadowless (no drop-shadow on the art box), Unlimited, and the late 1999–2000 copyright run collectors call the 4th print. Then there’s the jumbo and the metal card. A collector chasing “the” Base Set Charizard is choosing between very different hunts at very different prices. A checklist that squashes them into one row hides the difference that matters most.
What’s a variant, then?
A variant is the label that tells two cards of the same print apart: Reverse Holo, 1st Edition, Shadowless, a stamp. Print + variant = card.
The rule
One rule, every era: if it was actually printed, it gets a pocket. Nothing else does.
Sounds obvious. It isn’t how most trackers work. The lazy way is to give every card a Standard, a Holo and a Reverse Holo and let you work out which ones are real. That’s how you end up hunting a card that was never printed.
Every card on Set Hunter traces back to a real printing. If there’s nothing to tell apart, there’s no variant label at all. A modern Scarlet & Violet card isn’t “Unlimited”. There was nothing for it to be unlimited against.
What kinds of variants does Set Hunter track?
- Foils: holo, reverse holo, non-holo, wherever each was genuinely printed.
- Print runs: 1st Edition, Shadowless, Unlimited, the 4th print (the 1999–2000 copyright run), missing set symbols.
- Stamps: Pre-Release, Staff, set logos, league, event and retailer stamps.
- Jumbos and metal cards: collectibles in their own right, not footnotes.
Base Set Charizard comes out as six cards. A 2024 common comes out as one. I didn’t decide either number. That’s what was printed.
Will my binder change when the data updates?
Not under you. Every card you’ve marked stays marked, in the same pocket, even when the card data behind it updates. The binder runs in the order you’d actually page through it: 1st Edition, Shadowless, Unlimited, then foils, then stamps, then the oddities. And two printings that would otherwise share a name get told apart. A pocket you can’t identify is a pocket you can’t fill.
Where a master set stops is your call
Here’s where most sites get it wrong: they tell you what your master set is.
I won’t. A master set is one Pokémon, as complete as you want it. Building the binder that’s yours is the hobby. Set Hunter’s job is to show you everything that exists, so the choice is actually a choice.
- The evolution line? Your call. Chase Charizard alone or take the whole line from Charmander up. Set Hunter maps the full line, regional forms included (Alolan, Galarian, Hisuian, Paldean), so you can see it all before you decide.
- Languages? Same answer. English-only is a complete master set. English plus Japanese is a bigger one. Neither is more “real”. One’s just a longer hunt.
- What’s never in: Pokémon TCG Pocket. Digital only. You can’t put it in a binder. If the rarity is counted in diamonds, stars or crowns, it’s out. That one’s not a choice.
When it’s unclear whether something belongs, what happens?
It goes in. You can ignore a pocket you don’t want. You can’t hunt one that isn’t there. Too many pockets is a preference. A missing one is a bug.
Collectors check the numbers
Set Hunter starts from a licensed card database. It’s a starting point, not the final word.
The people who know the cards best are the ones hunting them, and they keep finding printings the databases don’t have:
- A YouTube creator pointed out the Base Set 4th print was missing. It’s in now.
- An avid Lucario fansent photos of two Lucario the data had never heard of: a non-holo Lucario V that only came in a deck, and a Scarlet & Violet Lucario with the set-logo stamp. Both are in.
- A Gengar collector caught a Halloween Trick or Trade stamp showing a placeholder name instead of its real one. Fixed.
- One collector reported the reverse holos were wrong, then kept reporting, card after card, until the point was impossible to miss. They were right, and it changed where Set Hunter’s data comes from.
Every report gets checked before anything changes. Every card on the site has a report button, and it’s the fastest way to change what’s here.
Why our numbers run higher than everyone else’s
Same hobby, different questions:
Bulbapedia is an encyclopedia, and a magnificent one. It counts card appearances, and it holds decades of Pokémon knowledge Set Hunter doesn’t and won’t: games, anime, lore, the whole universe. If you want to understand Pokémon, go there.
PkmnCards is a search engine over cards. Its number is a result count. Brilliant for finding one specific card fast.
TCG Collector counts card records across regional databases, and covers more languages than Set Hunter does right now.
Set Hunter counts cards: every one you’d physically put in a pocket. It’s a bigger number, because one print can be six cards. It’s also the only number that tells you how far you are from finished.
None of them are wrong. Ours is narrower on purpose. Master sets are the only thing Set Hunter does, which is what buys the obsession over what counts. That’s the whole trade.
Scope
Right now the numbers cover English cards. It says so on every master set page.
Japanese lands this autumn as an upgrade. It won’t be a second master set. It’s more pockets in the binder you’ve already built, if you want them. Same Pokémon, bigger number, longer hunt.
When I get it wrong
I will. Somewhere in here is a promo that’s missing or a stamp with the wrong name.
Know a printing I don’t? Hit the report button on any card. You’ll be more right than the database.
Last reviewed: September 2026 · Covers: English Pokémon TCG cards · Corrections: the report button on any card.