Search the Pokémon TCG card catalogue by name, set, print region, rarity, artist or release window. Returns one row per printing with its set, rarity, illustrator and euro price index. Print regions are WEST (176 sets), JP (379 sets) and CN (60 sets, Simplified Chinese), measured 2026-08-27. Japanese sets are not translations of Western ones: they have their own boundaries, their own numbering and their own release dates, so a Japanese set and its international counterpart are two different rows. Card names exist in six locales: en, ja, fr, de, es, it. Passing lang= replaces the name field itself and falls back to English when a translation is missing. Set names are not translated. Card game text is present since 2026-09-03, in English, and unevenly: attacks on 33% of the catalogue, subtypes on 38%, weaknesses on 31%, flavor_text on 20%, abilities on 8%, rules on 6%. It sits on the 20,725 Western printings, so read against those alone attacks is on 83% of them, while Japanese and Chinese printings carry none. Check the field on the card in hand rather than assuming: a null attacks means we do not hold it, never that the card has no attack. Still empty for every card: level, and legalities — deck legality is a question this API cannot answer, so say so rather than inferring it.

Fetch one or many cards by id, in a single call. Ids are the printed coordinate — set code, dash, collector number, e.g. "bs-4" — and the alternate legacy id ("base1-4") resolves on the same route. Ids that do not exist are omitted from the result; compare requested against found. Card game text is present since 2026-09-03, in English, and unevenly: attacks on 33% of the catalogue, subtypes on 38%, weaknesses on 31%, flavor_text on 20%, abilities on 8%, rules on 6%. It sits on the 20,725 Western printings, so read against those alone attacks is on 83% of them, while Japanese and Chinese printings carry none. Check the field on the card in hand rather than assuming: a null attacks means we do not hold it, never that the card has no attack. Still empty for every card: level, and legalities — deck legality is a question this API cannot answer, so say so rather than inferring it.

Every current price observation for one card, each with its source, basis, printing, grade, sample size and the day it is for. There is no printing filter: 1st Edition, Unlimited, holofoil, reverse holofoil and graded rows all come back together, so you must read printing, condition and grading on each row rather than taking the first price. basis distinguishes GUIDE (a figure published upstream) from DERIVED (computed by us). PTCG_INDEX is our own composite in EUR and carries sample_n. Every observation carries as_of and is delayed by at least a day — never quote a price without its as_of date and its source.

Every set with its code, series, print region, release date and printed total. One call answers questions like "every Japanese set released in 2024". Print regions are WEST (176 sets), JP (379 sets) and CN (60 sets, Simplified Chinese), measured 2026-08-27. Japanese sets are not translations of Western ones: they have their own boundaries, their own numbering and their own release dates, so a Japanese set and its international counterpart are two different rows.

The exact strings the catalogue uses for types, supertypes, subtypes and rarities. Call this before filtering on a rarity or a type rather than guessing the wording — "Rare Rainbow" and "Rainbow Rare" are not the same string, and only one of them matches.

Illustrators with the number of cards each has drawn, deduplicated across 30 years of printings. Use the returned name with the artist argument of ptcg_search_cards to get their cards.

Live counts and coverage for the catalogue: sets per print region, card total, which locales carry card names, and which data is explicitly NOT present. Call this before telling a user what the API can and cannot answer.

Recognise a Pokemon card from a photograph and return ranked candidates. Use this instead of guessing from what you see in an image: reprints share their artwork, so visual identification alone cannot name a printing, and this tool says so when it cannot. Costs 25 credits per call against 1 for a lookup — do not call it in a loop. Pass set or region when the user has told you either.