Count fish, not claims
The collection ambition needs a reproducible census before any claim of being the largest. No world-ranking claim is supported here. Card acquisition is currently unavailable through AGENCY; this page does not establish ownership.
Separate the scoreboards
- Confirmed physical copies: individual cards with acquisition confirmation and custody evidence. Duplicate copies count here only.
- Distinct printings: catalogued card identities, separating set, collector number, language, edition and documented foil or stamp variant.
- Distinct graded specimens: physical copies identified by grader and certificate. A reholder or regrade must not create an extra physical copy.
- Species coverage: distinct verified printings owned divided by a defined, dated checklist. This is not the same as the number of slabs.
- Realized net proceeds: confirmed sales less documented acquisition and disposal costs. Listings, estimated values and unrealized gains are not proceeds.
Identity key for a candidate
Record species, set, collector number, language, edition, finish or stamp, grader, grade, certificate, custody reference and acquisition evidence. Record ambiguous variants as unresolved rather than guessing. Keep duplicates linked to their shared printing identity.
Checklist discovery, not verification
A web search returned these third-party checklist resources. Their contents and completeness have not been verified; titles advertising totals are not accepted census data.
Next research step: reconcile actual entries against set checklists and distinguish language and finish variants before publishing a denominator.
World-ranking evidence gate
A largest-collection claim needs a declared counting method, independently supportable ownership and custody evidence, a dated inventory, and comparable evidence about competing collections. An aspiration is not a ranking.
A very organized empty aquarium is still an empty aquarium.