Question 1

Which languages does the Pokémon dataset include?

Accepted Answer

English, and the French, German, Spanish and Italian printings of each English card. A localized printing is its own row with its own image and printed name, linked to the English card through englishId and priced from it, because those four share the English set and collector number. Japanese is different: its sets are numbered on their own, so the Japanese print run is its own catalogue of 453 sets and 30,332 cards under language ja, with ids of the form pkm_ja_sv2a_1, the set's own code (sv2a, m6a, svp) and release date, an englishId naming the English printing of the same illustration where one exists (found by artwork, on 93% of the cards, and a cross-reference rather than a price twin), sameArtwork listing every English printing of that illustration (the expansion's, then its World Championship deck, Prize Pack, Trainer Kit and Jumbo reprints; 25,320 of 26,466 English printings name a Japanese one back), and its own prices: TCGplayer's USD quote from the Pokemon Japan category on 85% of cards, and Cardmarket's EUR guide for the Japanese product Cardmarket sells the card as, on 18,748 cards in 396 of the 453 sets (the rest are printings Cardmarket names alike, which their product pages settle as the crawl reads them, or cards it does not list). ?language=ja on /v1/cards and /v1/sets lists them; a Japanese set code can repeat an English one (sv3), so /v1/sets/sv3?game=pokemon&language=ja names the Japanese set. Korean, Chinese, Thai and Indonesian sets are not in the catalog yet.

Question 2

Are attack costs machine-readable?

Accepted Answer

Every attack exposes both the raw cost array of energy symbols and a convertedEnergyCost integer, so you can filter on total cost without parsing text.

Question 3

How current is Standard legality?

Accepted Answer

Regulation marks and format legality are re-read from the upstream catalogue on every ingest, and each format that moves emits a card.legality.changed webhook carrying both sides of the change. So a rotation reaches you on the first ingest after it is published upstream, and you do not have to diff a poll to find it.

Question 4

Do you cover Japanese-only Pokémon sets?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Japanese sets are carried as their own sets rather than folded into their nearest English equivalent, because they rarely map one to one — Scarlet & Violet—151 is an English recombination of two Japanese products, not a translation of one. 453 Japanese sets and 30,332 cards are held, from the 1996 Base Expansion Pack onwards, each set under language ja with its own code and release date and each card with its type, HP, stage, attacks, weakness, resistance, retreat cost and product photo. Filter with language=ja on /v1/cards or /v1/sets to get the Japanese print runs. The card's Japanese printed name, artist and regulation mark are not in the source and are null. englishId names the English printing of the same illustration, found by comparing the two catalogue images rather than by number, on 28,179 of the 30,332 cards; it is a cross-reference, not a price twin, so the Japanese card keeps its own prices and a client wanting the English figure follows the id. It is null where no English printing of the illustration exists, and on the 1,640 cards without a photo. The Japanese card's own prices are TCGplayer's Pokemon Japan quote in USD and, on 18,748 cards in 396 of the 453 sets, Cardmarket's EUR guide for the Japanese product Cardmarket sells it as; Japanese copies there trade at a median 1.5 times the English printing, and within 20% of it for only one card in six.

Question 5

Do you have World Championship decks, Prize Packs, Trick or Trade and the other non-expansion cards?

Accepted Answer

Yes, as sets of their own, built from TCGplayer's product lists: the World Championship decks one set per year (wcd2004 to wcd2024), the Play! Pokémon Prize Packs (pps), Trick or Trade 2022 to 2024 (tot22, tot23, tot24), Battle Academy 2020, 2022 and 2024, Trading Card Game Classic (tcgc), the trainer kits from Diamond & Pearl to Sun & Moon, and the League & Championship cards, Jumbo cards, deck, blister and store exclusives, Burger King, Kids WB, Countdown Calendar, First Partner Pack, Pikachu World Collection, Professor Program and Southeast Asia promos. Each product is its own card, because these are one-offs: two Battle Academy Charmanders stamped for different decks are two products at two prices. A card keeps the number of the card it reprints; what tells it from another card of that name and number is gameData.variant, in TCGplayer's words ("Cosmos Holo", "#16 Charizard Stamped"), and a Worlds card names its player's deck in gameData.deck. Their gameData.catalogSource reads "tcgplayer", and artist, flavour text and legalities are null. Every card is priced from TCGplayer. Cardmarket prices them where it has the product line: Trick or Trade, Battle Academy, the trainer kits, McDonald's 2023 and 2024, Southeast Asia, Pikachu World Collection and Professor Program. The World Championship decks too, card by card: Cardmarket files each year as a "WCD <year>" expansion whose products name the card but not the deck, and a card is paired with the one whose picture is captioned with its player (1,685 of the 1,715; 28 read ambiguous or unlisted). It files the Prize Packs and the other gatherings either not at all or split in ways that do not map to a set, and those cards read set_unlisted there rather than borrow another printing's price. Stamped reprints bound as printings of an expansion card before these sets existed (a Blister Exclusive Cosmos Holo, a League stamp) stay where they are.

Question 6

How do I tell a Pokémon ex from a Pokémon EX?

Accepted Answer

By the case of the entry in gameData.subtypes: lowercase ex is the Scarlet & Violet mechanic, uppercase EX the older Black & White and XY one, with different rules and prize counts. The data keeps them apart, but filters are case-insensitive, so subtypes=ex returns both. Narrow with the set or a release window, or compare the returned subtypes exactly.

Question 7

Are prices split by grading or condition?

Accepted Answer

Marketplace quotes are not: a quote is keyed by marketplace, finish and whether it is retail or buylist, and nothing more — so Cardmarket's figure for a card is its trend across the conditions people are actually selling in, not a near-mint price. Graded copies are a different market, so they are a separate series. Every card carries gradedPrices — what a slab of that printing sells for, in USD, by grading company and grade: raw, 7, 8, 9, 9.5 across companies, and PSA, BGS, CGC and SGC told apart at 10 — refreshed daily, with history on the price endpoint under grader and grade. A PSA 10 is never folded into the raw average, and a card the graded index cannot identify with certainty says so in priceStatus.graded rather than carrying a guess.

Question 8

How quickly do new sets appear?

Accepted Answer

On release day. The card catalogue we read is volunteer-edited and has trailed a release by weeks, so a set it does not have yet is built from TCGplayer's product list instead: name, number, rarity, type, HP, stage, attacks, weakness, resistance, retreat cost and the product photo, with the marketplace ids attached so prices flow from the first trades. Such a card carries gameData.catalogSource = "tcgplayer" and has no artist, flavour text, regulation mark, Pokédex numbers or legalities until the catalogue publishes the set, at which point its rows replace ours on the same ids. The set code, and so the card ids, follow the catalogue's convention (me2pt5 for ME: Ascended Heroes); should the catalogue file a set under a different code, the ids move with it and the change is listed in the changelog. Subscribe to set.published and card.created rather than poll for it. A set's cards are complete when its card count stops moving.

Field	Type	Description
supertype	Enum	Pokémon, Trainer or Energy.
subtypes	[String]	Basic, Stage 1, Stage 2, ex, V, VMAX, Tera, Supporter, Item…
hp	Int	Hit points for Pokémon cards.
types	[String]	Energy types the Pokémon belongs to.
evolvesFrom	String	The Pokémon this card evolves from.
attacks	[Object]	name, cost, convertedEnergyCost, damage and text.
abilities	[Object]	name, type (Ability, Poké-Power, Poké-Body…) and text.
weaknesses	[Object]	Type and multiplier or modifier.
resistances	[Object]	Type and damage reduction.
retreatCost	[String]	Energy required to retreat.
convertedRetreatCost	Int	Number of energy cards needed to retreat.
regulationMark	String	Rotation letter used by Standard legality.
nationalPokedexNumbers	[Int]	Pokédex entries referenced by the card.

Card	Set	Number	Rarity	TCGplayer	Cardmarket
Lugia	Aquapolis	149	Rare Secret	$4,500	€5,004
Latias & Latios-GX	Team Up	170	Rare Ultra	$4,272	€2,020
Charizard	Skyridge	146	Rare Secret	$3,000	€3,687
Rocket's Mewtwo ex	Team Rocket Returns	99	Rare Holo EX	$550.00	€5,201
Gengar	Skyridge	10	Rare	$509.99	€3,905
Umbreon	Skyridge	32	Rare	$354.93	€2,077
Nidoking	Aquapolis	H18	Rare Holo	$230.98	€2,083
Arcanine	Wizards Black Star Promos	6	Promo	$34.97	€18.51

Term	Field	Notes
HP	gameData.hp	Integer. Absent on Trainer and Energy cards, so check for null.
Retreat cost	gameData.retreatCost[]	The energy symbols needed to switch this Pokémon out. convertedRetreatCost is the count.
Regulation mark	gameData.regulationMark	Single letter that determines Standard legality and rotates annually.
Weakness / Resistance	gameData.weaknesses[]	Array of { type, value } — value is a multiplier or a flat modifier.
Subtype	gameData.subtypes[]	ex, V, VMAX, VSTAR, Tag Team, Radiant and so on. Use this, not the name.
Attack cost	gameData.attacks[].cost	Array of energy symbols, not an integer. Length is the total energy needed.
Illustration rare	rarity	Alternate-art rarity tier introduced in Scarlet & Violet. Distinct from Special Illustration Rare.
Printing	printings[].key	One physical way the card was produced, priced as its own product on both marketplaces: normal, foil, reverse-holo, cosmos-holo, cracked-ice, the pokeball, masterball, friendball, quickball, loveball, duskball and team-rocket patterns, staff, prerelease, league and pokemon-center stamps, 1st-edition and shadowless. Each has its own picture where TCGplayer shows one.

Pokémon Trading Card Game API

What the Pokémon dataset covers

Formats

Price sources

Pokémon-specific fields

Pokémon cards in the public dataset

The European market for Pokémon

Notable Pokémon sets

Working with Pokémon data

A card name is not an identifier

Collector numbers run past the set size

Standard legality is a moving target

Mechanic suffixes look alike and are not

Common Pokémon queries

Every English printing of one Pokémon, oldest first

Fire ex above 300 HP

Ninety days of prices for one card

Pokémon terms, and the fields that hold them

Pokémon API questions

Add another game without another integration