The story behind Vault 713 Archive

Wizards of the Coast, the company behind Magic: The Gathering, released the Harry Potter Trading Card Game in 2001, timed to the first film. Base Set and Quidditch Cup came out that same year, and Diagon Alley, Adventures at Hogwarts and Chamber of Secrets followed through 2002. Every card comes from the first two books, and Wizards never took the game past the Chamber of Secrets film, even though the series ran for another decade.

What always got me about the Harry Potter TCG is that none of the art is movie stills. Every card is an original painted illustration, and 53 different artists are credited across the game, most of them comic and fantasy illustrators by trade. So the Harry Potter you get here doesn't look like Daniel Radcliffe. It looks the way these illustrators pictured him, before the films decided for everyone.

It was also translated more widely than most short-lived card games: French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese printings all exist alongside the English ones. Promos went out through movie premieres, magazine inserts and retailer exclusives, and nobody kept a central list, which is largely why a clean, easy-to-use checklist never existed.

I read the Harry Potter books more times than I could count, saw the movies on opening day, and put most of my allowance and birthday money into this game as a kid. Like a lot of people's childhood collections, mine didn't fully survive moves, trades, and growing up. The obsession did, though. In my twenties I started buying pieces of it back, then kept going into promos, translations and pre-production material I never had the access or the money for as a kid.

I started posting parts of my collection on Instagram at @vault713archive, mostly to find out if anyone else still cared about a card game this old. A lot of people did, including collectors whose own collections had gone the same way and people who still play the game. Enough of them showed up that I decided to turn the resources I'd been using into something anyone could use with a click.

Both, really. The game has always had collectors and players, and most of us are a bit of each. If you're working out what you own, or what a card is worth before you buy it, the database and the eBay tools are there for that. If you still play, the card text and lesson breakdowns are all here too.

I also want this to be a decent front door for someone who just found out this game exists. Maybe you fell down a nostalgic Harry Potter rabbit hole, found an old shoebox in a parent's attic, or saw a random Instagram post. Welcome, either way. You don't need to already know what a Lesson card is or why Base Set #3/116 comes in two completely different pieces of art. The rest of the site explains it.