Good Buy?

[Sydiscool]

Recently I bought a binder of 270 cards for $40. I admit that I am an amateur collector, so I am seeking advice and comments on what I just bought. What I am wondering about are the Japanese prints (45 cards especially legendary dogs,and suicune), a Marill foil card that says that it is #11 out of 18 (does this mean there are 18 of these cards?), dark cards, promo cards, trainer's cards (ex. Brock's Sandslash), and also a card called Shining Charizard. At the top of this card it says ,"You can't have more than 1 Shining Charizard in your deck." So basically what am I asking is what do these cards mean, what are they worth...stuff like that.

 

[Rocket_Executive]

As long as the card is real, the Shining Charizard makes up for the cost already. Look at some articles online about testing cards for fakes, and if they're real, then yes you definitely did get a very good deal.

 

[Bingo3000]

if all the cards you said are the real deal, then you got yourself a really nice bargain

 

[piecemeal]

Agreed. Yes, 11/18 means that whatever set that is has 18 cards and this one is #11 in the set. Sometimes there are secret cards too, e.g. 19/18, or cards with numbers like AR3.

You have to research online to find out what set it is if you don't know. You could try pokebeach.com and pokepedia.com. I'm new to collecting as well and those sites are really helpful. You can google things like "pokemon card set symbols" to find documents matching the symbols in the lower right of the cards to sets and then research them more on pokepedia/beach. AFAIK the sets all have symbols except the 1st Base Set. In English anyway. For Japanese I don't know.

So far you are making me jealous with your purchases.

 

[Rocket_Executive]

https://pokegym.net/gallery/displayimage.php?imageid=48623
https://serebii.net/card/english.shtml
These may help both of you keep track of which cards belong to which sets. The second link includes more information, but you can print the first one to keep on-hand which is useful.

 

[Sydiscool]

I will put some scans up soon, will that help?

 

[donavannj]

I can tell you that the Marill you have is from the Southern Islands collection just based on its number.

And, yes, scans will help. As will running a card through various tests to see if it's a fake (there's a good page on someone's eBay profile somewhere on how to check).