Inside The Smutty World Of NSFW Pokemon Cards

Welcome to the smutty world of custom Pokémon cards.

You might be surprised such a world exists. Pokémon is, traditionally, a game for children, and thus painting over these cards with such unwholesome images seems a little beyond the norms of human decency. Never fear, for human depravity knows no limits, as you’ll likely soon discover.

In order to understand this world, one must first understand that Pokémon has been around for decades and the Pokémon TCG for about as long. Kids that grew up playing Pokémon are now horny adults, and printer technology has gotten to the point that anyone with enough money can just make their own NSFW versions of Pokémon cards from the comfort of their own homes.

That said, people are fundamentally lazy and are far more likely to merely purchase these cards online than actually make them themselves. This desire for both Pokémon cards and smut creates the most unlikely–and yet simultaneously extremely likely–of online markets.

TheGamer reached out to two different entrepreneurs to get the lowdown on NSFW Pokémon cards, both of whom declined to go on the record and also refused to be identified (for some reason). That said, we can at least relay what we’ve been able to find out in our conversations with these two nameless individuals.

Making A NSFW Pokémon Card

One seller noted that they’d been selling NSFW decals and stickers for years, but only stumbled upon the world of custom cards about a year ago. Deciding to give it a shot, they created what they believe to be the world’s first pornographic Pokémon card by taking a picture that was available on various hentai websites and then pasting it on the back of an authentic Pokémon card.

The process requires a high-grade printer that can print a decal with extremely high resolution (after all, cards are small, so you need to be able to pick out details on such a small image). The decal is then pasted to an actual Pokémon card in order to achieve that authentic look. With the decal applied, the card is then laminated and trimmed, ready for sale to an eager public.

There are other methods of producing Pokémon cards, however. Our other source preferred printing directly on card stock and then flipping that stock to print an image of the card’s backing. This makes the final product more like a card and not a laminated piece of plastic, but it is an exacting process to ensure that the card backs line up with the initial image.

Selling A NSFW Pokémon Card

In some ways, it’s easier to make an NSFW Pokémon card than it is to sell it. Both sellers TheGamer spoke to have stores on the Etsy marketplace, but one had been temporarily suspended due to breaching Etsy’s terms of service.

“As a creative community, we tend to be fairly liberal about what we allow on Etsy, but we draw the line at pornography,” reads Etsy’s official content rules. Etsy reserves the right to “restrict” mature content so that it doesn’t appear in a casual search, with Etsy defining “mature” as “depictions of human genitalia, sexual activity or content, profane language, sexual wellness items, violent images (within reason; see also Violent Items), and explicit types or representations of taxidermy.”

One of the sellers evidently got noticed by one of Etsy’s watchdogs and had their store taken down for breaking this rule. The other has so far evaded notice and has taken steps to ensure that the most explicit Pokémon cards don’t appear in their store. Even still, Etsy has removed 40 products from that seller’s page in the past year.

Unsurprisingly, the typical market for these cards are men between the age of 20-40, according to one seller. Some women do purchase NSFW Pokémon cards as well, either as gifts or for their own personal collections.

But Can You Even Use These Cards?

As for an NSFW Pokémon card’s usability, that depends on the construction. A laminated card wouldn’t be usable as it’s significantly thicker and more cumbersome than a regular playing card, but an NSFW card that’s made by printing a hentai image directly onto cardstock is significantly more usable.

However, any Pokémon card featuring custom art–NSFW or no–is illegal in tournament play. According to the official Pokémon TCG Tournament Rules, all cards in a deck must not be “marked or altered in any way.”

This includes marked cards, which are obviously illegal because of cheating, but also “cards that have undergone post-production alteration; examples of alterations include autographs, artwork, or other such amendments to the surface of the card, not including any official stamps applied by TPCi.”

NSFW Pokémon cards are less for playing and more for collecting. They’re equal parts conversation starters and something to keep in a very special binder that has inexplicably sticky plastic sheets.

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