Looking for Info - Shin Megami Tensei Cards

[NoctemDead]

Hello all,
I've gotten into collecting again via my old Pokemon cards and I had a thought - maybe Shin Megami Tensei has some trading cards!

One rabbit hole later, I've now got a bunch coming my way. Sealed cases of boosters, starter decks, etc. This is spread across a couple different "installments" of cards - the Chronicle Visual cards set, Encyclopedia cards, and Devil Children.

I'm having a hard time finding basically any English information on these cards and I'd like to know where I can read up more about them. Any obscure sources would be great (or translated sources that an English speaker wouldn't know how to reach)

I plan to open one of each type and record an unboxing, and I have a CCD scanner on the way. So for the starter decks, I plan to try scanning each of the cards, playmat, tokens, counters, box, etc. and if the results are good, uploading to Internet Archive and the like. For Devil Children I am waiting Red Legend, Black Legend, Angel Side and Devil Side starter sets as well as some boosters. I know that the Chronicle and Encyclopedia cards are not part of a TCG but more of an art card collection/encyclopedia for the series.

I know there was a project to revive the Digital Devil Story TCG on Tabletop Simulator, maybe if scans are made available somebody down the line will be able to use them to do a similar translation for Devil Children.

Thanks in advance, will update with progress if there is interest (shipping from Japan takes some time)

 

[PacGuy]

Nice. Gonna have to look into getting some. I found out about .hack trading cards last year and bought a bunch

 

[NoctemDead]

Nice. Gonna have to look into getting some. I found out about .hack trading cards last year and bought a bunch

Aw man, don't give me another rabbit hole

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

I have this one I got from a thrift store ages ago. I don't know if it's specifically SMT, or Persona or what, but it's got "copyright Atlus 1997" on the back.

 

[NoctemDead]

I have this one I got from a thrift store ages ago. I don't know if it's specifically SMT, or Persona or what, but it's got "copyright Atlus 1997" on the back.
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Sweet! From my understanding, this is from the SMT/Digital Devil Story TCG. A lot of the cards from this era focused on early Persona, Devil Summoner, Soul Hackers, etc.

I would love to be able to find out what series this one came from (or find a master card list in general). They had several series and boosters of these and even later re-booted the TCG with the Nocturne variant (again, from what I can find of available info)

EDIT: Also plan to see what grading possibilities there are with these cards. There are a couple CGC graded holos and PSA graded Encyclopedia cards. Would be curious to see if TAG would do it, those super high res scans would be nice too.

 

[Jayonnaise6105 Jayonnaise6105]

Sweet! From my understanding, this is from the SMT/Digital Devil Story TCG. A lot of the cards from this era focused on early Persona, Devil Summoner, Soul Hackers, etc.

I would love to be able to find out what series this one came from (or find a master card list in general). They had several series and boosters of these and even later re-booted the TCG with the Nocturne variant (again, from what I can find of available info)

EDIT: Also plan to see what grading possibilities there are with these cards. There are a couple CGC graded holos and PSA graded Encyclopedia cards. Would be curious to see if TAG would do it, those super high res scans would be nice too.

Good luck! I am pretty interested myself to learn more about these cards, but I guess I'm not quite willing to do the legwork hehe

 

[NoctemDead]

Good luck! I am pretty interested myself to learn more about these cards, but I guess I'm not quite willing to do the legwork hehe

Thanks! My plan right now is to record the unboxings and put them on YouTube as well as uploading scans. Might even be worth it to start a site.

I plan on selling extra boosters and starter packs to other physical collectors, but making as much information and digital data available for free as I can manage.

 

[NoctemDead]

One thing I have unfortunately learned already: be careful buying these off of eBay right now.

After learning how to go to the source (Mercari etc.) I have found that many of the ebay sellers in the space are dropshipping. I don't have a problem with proper importing, but they will find a Mercari listing, photos and all, list that for 2-3x the price, and then buy it from the original listing to sell to you while profiting. They often have a long lead time of 10-20 days and this is clearly to procure the item, as several have admitted to me now that they are doing. As practiced, this is against the Terms & Conditions - and I believe it's almost solely responsible for the perception of these cards as being ridiculously expensive to collect.

More to come.