i loved neopets when i was a kid. we're talking back when dial-up was the thing. i remember playing it at home, at the computer lab at school, you know the drill. i remember going to jamba juice to get the tigerfruit smoothie! i still have the sticker on my old gba sp somewhere.

and yet, somehow i didn't know there was a trading card game??

let's fast forward a bit. a lot, actually.

neopets recently collaborated with upper deck to release the new neopets battledome trading card game. i bought the starter decks, and it seems alright. there are no stores around here that sell boosters, however, so i haven't gone much further with it than that. that seems to be a very common problem; not many stores carry it.

it was while looking into battledome that i found out that this wasn't the first neopets tcg! the first, simply titled neopets trading card game, was made by wizards of the coast and debuted in 2003. it managed to have nine expansions before being discontinued in 2006.

i decided i wanted to collect this tcg, but it being out of print since 2006 proposes some challenges. the first, of course, is availability. you can't find these in stores. that itself wouldn't be so bad if not for another, stranger problem; each booster came with a virtual item code that can be redeemed on neopets.com. no, that's not a typo. can be redeemed. those codes STILL work! and some of the items you can get are very rare and valuable. and while that's unfathomably based, it means the cost of boosters is ludicrously high.

that means the best way to get cards is loose, and condition on those, unfortunately, can vary quite a bit. the vast majority of loose cards come from the base set, as well. which finally brings us to the official decks.

what is an official deck? in this context, it's any neopets tcg deck that was either released as a purchasable deck or as a decklist (a set of cards that are suggested to work well together) by an official source. that means either the neopets team (tnt) or wizards of the coast (wizards). there are seven of these: starter deck a, starter deck b, petpets and villains, tidal wave, need to read, the meridell theme deck, and the kass/darigan theme deck.

remember when i said that most loose cards you'll find are from the base set? the two theme decks are the only official decks that contain cards from any of the expansions, and those were both sold as complete decks. convenient! that makes finding the rest of the cards easier. the starter decks were released together as a package, as well. and that's good, because from here on out we've only got decklists. no more neat and tidy collected sets.

petpets and villains was the first deck featured on tnt's short-lived deck ideas section. it was made by Adam, and it was named such because it has a lot of petpets and villains in it. fair enough. apparently, it won 18 games in a row! where? against whom? who knows!

most of the cards in the deck are easy to find for cheap, except for one: the darkest faerie. the deck calls for three darkest faeries, and at $20-30 each, that's harder to swallow. nothing compared to what you'd pay for holo cards in more popular tcgs, but still.

tidal wave was the second and final deck featured on deck ideas. it was named due to its abundance of air and water cards, as well as its speed; it contains three poogle racers, which can move without tapping. this one won the staff tournament! good stuff.

the main sticking point with this one is its use of two malevolent sentient poogle plushies. those guys are $20-30 a pop, just like the darkest faerie. at least you only need two, right?

that brings us to our final official deck. need to read. this one came from wizards' very short-lived deck check series, which was hosted on their website. i say very short-lived because this was the only one. for whatever reason, they published this one in 2004 and then just... never published another before the tcg was cancelled in 2006. weird. anyway, it's called need to read because it contains a whopping 18 book cards and centers around using them creatively.

thankfully, none of the cards here really stand out as being particularly expensive or hard to find. that's a nice break from the previous two!

as a side note, i really love the flavor text on these. battledome did away with it, leaving only the utility text, and it's a shame! it adds so much character and life to the cards.

so where does my collection stand, currently? well, i have both of the starter decks, both of the theme decks... and that's it. i still have quite a ways to go. perhaps i'll post updates on the bit?

and just like that, we've covered every official neopets tcg deck. there weren't very many, and it's odd that none were made past the first expansion! why? i dunno! but it certainly makes my collection goal easier. and if any of this has piqued your interest, you don't need to track down 20 year-old cards to play. it's on tabletop simulator! please, it can't be just my partner and me who are interested in this game. let's play!

mae~♡