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You know what Bakugan you need for the game you want to play and you're ready to go buy them. But like everything in Bakugan, the generation makes a big difference in how things are going to go. So, I am going to break this section down by generation, and then discuss a few broader aspects of buying Bakugan. The last section of this guide, after this page, is a guide on Bakugan generation identification, which you may want to reference when purchasing Bakugan to know you are getting the correct toys.
I have two major disclaimers I'd like to add to this section of the guide. First, this guide was written in January of 2024. So some aspects of this, especially regarding availability, may change with time. Second, I am based in Kentucky, so I cannot vouch for how these details will transfer to anywhere else. Availability is not even consistent within the US for new products, much less old, and it gets even more specific in other countries. Weirdly, there are some products that are easier to buy in Australia or parts of Europe than in North America, despite being foreign markets for Spin Master. However, a lot of this information will remain accurate regardless of time or place.
I also want to add a quick pro tip about buying used, open Bakugan from places like thrift stores or flea markets: if you need to open a Bakugan to identify it, but do not have a card to do so in the store, pretty much any metal object will trigger it to open. Be sure as well to check opened Bakugan whenever you have the chance, because some Bakugan have either loosened over time or have been damaged, and do not latch closed properly. A Bakugan that doesn't close is not useful to play with.
Generation 1 Bakugan are long out of print. As a result, you are unlikely to find these in stores. Your best bet here is your typical places for old toys: flea markets, yard sales, craiglist, eBay, etc. Most of them will be unpackaged. If you find Bakugan at a store in person, you may want to check them to see if they open and close, as some of them are very loose now. As Gen 1 Bakugan did not have associated character cards, you luckily do not have to worry about tracking down specific cards for unpackaged Bakugan. Cards, both paper and metal, can often be purchased in bulk lots on eBay. However, if you intend to use them for play, keep in mind that a lot of Gate Cards are going to be in rough shape these days, and the more bent or frayed the edges of a Gate Card are, the harder it is to roll a Bakugan onto it. So it's best to prioritize Gate Cards that have as little wear as possible.
Generation 2 Bakugan are the weirdest to purchase in 2024, but that is not necessarily meant in a bad way. Gen 2 is in that weird grey zone of being discontinued, where they are not in production anymore, but are still fairly readily available brand new if you know the right places to look.
Because Gen 2 is out of print, your first places to check should be discount stores. Discount stores like Big Lots, Ollie's or Bargain Hunt often have Gen 2 Bakugan. Stores like TJ Maxx, Marshalls or Ross sometimes have them as well. Even though it is not explicitly a discount store, Kohl's sometimes has them in their toy section since toys aren't really their focus enough to have the hottest and latest toys, so it may be worth it to check some shops that you don't normally think of for toy shopping. Occasionally you may even find them at a dollar store like Dollar General, but less often. You can occasionally even find them at the regular retailers like Walmart or Target, especially if they have a clearance aisle, as some of them still have a couple of later era unsold Gen 2 Bakugan floating around the store.
Given that Gen 2 started in 2018, it is the perfect age for you to find parents selling Bakugan that their kids have aged out of (sure, we're adults here, but kids tend to age out of toys, some of us just age back into them decades later). So Craigslist, yard sales, flea markets, etc. are a great place to look right now.
Gen 2 Bakugan are fairly easy to purchase online, both new and used. Because of the shipping costs, and the fact that some sellers are creeping the prices back up instead of down at this point, it is typically more cost effective to buy them in person. But, if you are looking for a specific Bakugan, you can probably find it online. Remember, in Gen 2, you will want the associated character card that goes with a Bakugan. If you are buying Bakugan without cards, you will want to either find those cards later, or proxy them. Also remember, you need BakuCores to match up to the symbols on the cards. New Bakugan will come with the appropriate BakuCores, but if you are buying used you will need to obtain these yourself. If you buy a handful of Bakugan you'll eventually end up with enough of each type of Bakugan to where you don't need to worry about this anymore, but if you are just starting to buy them remember that you will need these and you will need the right ones. For Gate Cards, all that matters is that you have some.
Cards for the TCG need to be discussed here separately from everything else. When you buy a new Bakugan from Gen 2, you will receive the corresponding character card. A few special combo packs will come with some special cards, but for the most part you will need to buy cards separately. As mentioned in the previous section, your best way of getting started in the TCG is to buy a starter set that comes with the 40 card deck (which will be indicated on the box). If you have specific Bakugan you want to use, choose a starter deck set that comes with Bakugan of the same color, as the Bakugan color determines what colors can be put in your deck. Since starter decks don't come with Evo cards, nothing will need to be removed from the deck to swap out the Bakugan, you will just swap the Bakugan character cards (which aren't part of the main deck). Right now, starter deck sets are typically $25-40, which isn't too bad considering you are buying both a TCG starter deck and a 3 pack of Bakugan toys.
After getting a starter deck, if you want to expand your collection your best bet at the current time is to buy sealed starter packs new online. Several sets have booster packs that can easily be found on eBay and on Amazon, and you can occasionally save money by buying eBay auctions for multiple packs. If you can find a Faction Pack, which is a sealed pack with cards focused on a specific Faction coupled with a few booster packs, for a decent price then those are definitely worth buying, but they don't show up a lot. And unlike a lot of TCGs, there are not a ton of bulk card lots or singles floating around online. Some cards will have an auction or two on eBay for singles, and some have nothing. You occasionally find auctions for a handful of cards here and there, but be sure to look at them closely, because if they primarily consist of character cards instead of the other types of cards (Evo, Flip, Action, Baku-Gear, Hero), they will not be useful to you at all unless you have or purchase the matching Bakugan toy.
Generation 3 Bakugan are currently in print, so they're a little different than the other generations when it comes to buying them. They are easiest to find at your typical large chain stores--Walmart, Target, Meijer, etc. Amazon also sells them, but because of the existence of chase figures, online retailers (including the previously mentioned stores' online shopping) will often not sell single Bakugan, just the larger combo packs and starter kits that do not differ from case to case. It is also important to note that there are some sets that are exclusive to Walmart, Target and Amazon specifically. For example, Target has exclusive distribution of the "Street Brawl" Bakugan sets, which are Bakugan that have graffiti style designs on them. In my personal experience I also found some of the Bakugan "Mythic Packs", which are transparent plastic Bakugan in small plastic pouches instead of full boxes, at Five Below. If you are looking for a specific chase figure in Gen 3 that you can't find in a store, your only real option is either online communities dedicated to buying/selling/trading Bakugan, or paying quite a bit of a premium on eBay. If you do buy used Gen 3 Bakugan, you will want to try to get them with the character cards, as unlike previous generations they have no stats printed on the toy itself. But, if you're desperate, you could always print a proxy card with the stats, as there isn't a large used market for them yet to easily replace cards separately. You will however want to be sure to get some Gen 3 Gate Cards, but Gate Cards are not specific to specific Bakugan, so you could get some Gate Cards from another set and be fine with getting unpackaged Bakugan without cards.
One thing to note about Bakugan releases, that to my knowledge were a problem in previous generations as well, but only really relevant to new releases: the way Spin Master announces, releases and ships Bakugan is...extremely haphazard. You may hear of people finding Wave 4 figures in their local stores while your stores still haven't gotten Wave 3. New Bakugan never seem to get announced so much as they get leaked. Release dates are extremely vague. So you largely have to just accept that Bakugan will show up whenever they show up.
As with many toys and games, there are various extraneous products outside of the core products that you may want, or may not want, or may think you want and later find out you do not want them. So, I want to cover some of the things you might come across and share my thoughts on them from the perspective of an adult who collects Bakugan to play the games with (obviously these opinions may differ from that of an 8 year old child).
One of the first accessories you might see, from any generation, is battle arenas. I have tried the green arena from Gen 2, and the ultimate arena from Gen 3, and frankly, neither one is better than just playing on a table. They tend to not lay as flat as you'd like, and they tend to get in the way of your arms as you try to aim your shot. The Gen 3 arena in particular is very much designed for you to use the little ramps to roll the Bakugan down, which is probably great for younger kids but not how an adult is going to want to play the game.
So, on that note, my thought is: if you are an adult who will be playing this game with other adults, don't bother with the arenas and just play on a table. You may try playing on a card/board game cloth playmat, but I find a smooth tabletop to be ideal. However, if you are playing with kids, they may find the arenas more fun and cool, or they may find the ramps easier to use than rolling the Bakguan themselves. If you do choose to get an arena, you can largely get whatever arena you want (pro tip: in the US as of writing this, the green Gen 2 arena is pretty easy to find at discount shops for cheap) as they aren't too particular to whatever generation they are from. The only caveats to that that I would add is that Bakutech benefits more from a narrow play area (as I described in the previous section) and if you are playing Gen 3 and using the Special Attack Bakugan, the Gen 3 Arena has higher walls that may keep them from flying off the table better. Otherwise, get whichever one you want. Also, Gen 3 also have "training sets" that come with little Clan themed stands for your Bakugan to sit in, and if you have 3 or 4 of these they are made to where you can make a circle with them to use as a small arena. Again, more useful for kids. There is a benefit to having some walls around the table, but you can easily use pieces of wood or almost any objects you want around the edge of your table to keep Bakugan contained when you put a little too many beans behind your spin.
Over the span of Bakugan's generations, there have been a lot of storage options out there. There are officially licensed plastic cases with little square slots for Bakugan to go into. I have a few of these and all of them are perfectly good storage, and you can still buy the Gen 2 cases new on Amazon as of right now for about $15. If you are looking to get used Bakugan on eBay, you may want to keep an eye out for auctions that come with a case, because you can occasionally find auctions with a case and some Bakugan for $15-20, which if you consider a case as being $15, you can often get the case and some Bakugan with very little extra over the price of just a case. I cannot vouch for every type of official case, but I have one plastic case from Gen 1 that holds Gen 2 and 3 sized Bakugan without issue, but just keep in mind that there could be Gen 1 cases that won't fit Gen 2 Bakugan. Some of the official cases have slots where you can fit cards, but typically the cards are made to stack over slots for Bakugan, so by storing you cards in there you will lose room for several Bakugan. I wouldn't bother storing cards in there unless you do not have many Bakugan to store.
There are a LOT of generic storage cases for Bakugan on Amazon, the type that 500 randomly generated fake brands sell identical copies of. There are a lot of zippered cases, which I have not tried because they do not hold many Bakugan. I have however bought a few of the plastic containers from these sellers that have foam inserts with holes cut for Bakugan, and inserts for cards and BakuCores. I have no issue at all with the quality of them, but I have to add that they were $5 off when I bought them, so they were $15, and have since gone back up to $20. I think that price difference is just enough to cross the line, it's nice that they have the perfect foam holes for the Bakugan, and they do hold a lot of them, but they're a lot nicer at $15 than $20. If you do buy any third party Bakugan holders, be absolutely sure to check the sizes, as some of them may be sized for Gen 1 Bakugan and not compatible with Gen 2/3 Bakugan. I've seen at least one tacklebox-looking case on Amazon that has one row of foam trays sized for Gen 1 and one row for Gen 2/3, which is fine if you collect both, but is going to be annoying for a lot of people whose collections are all from one generation.
Last in the storage category is tins. With TCGs like Pokemon, I always enjoyed tins, since you get a decent number of card packs and then get storage you can fit a lot of cards into. But with Bakugan, I find the tins to be pretty iffy in terms of value. Some tins come with two pre-determined (not random) Bakugan, and some only come with one. This may be worthwhile if you like these particular Bakugan they come with, but otherwise you're not going to be buying multiple tins as collectors items. And as for storage...they're only okay. I have a tin from Gen 2 and a tin from Gen 3, both are more or less the same setup--you have a plastic tray with a card slot and slots for 3 Bakugan (and for Gen 2 a small BakuCore slot as well), and a second identical tray that sits above that. They each also have a plastic topper that snaps into the plastic tray to hold the Bakugan in place. The issue with this is that you can either only store 6 Bakugan in a fairly large tin, which is not very efficient, or you can toss more Bakugan in the card tray, which is a bit of a tight fit veritcally but they will also be rolling around everywhere horizontally. The only truly useful storage I've found from these tins is for the TCG, if you are playing the TCG and have multiple decks it's a nice way to store your 3 Bakugan team and your deck. If you're using a Gen 3 tin, your BakuCores have room to fit in the card slot with the deck. But if you are not playing the TCG, the tin just means having storage that is hard to use, and that is extremely easy to accidentally open Bakugan on. Since they're metal, if your Bakugan roll too close to the edges, especially if you forget the top plastic layers, they can open easily. So I'd say get a tin if you plan on having a lot of card packs, or get a tin if you just absolutely love the Bakugan included in it, but you aren't going to be buying many of these.
I discuss these more unusual Bakugan types in the following section on identification, so reference that if you have yet to see any of these, but there are several weirder types of Bakugan out there with varying degrees of usefulness. Geogan are Bakugan that are in different geometric shapes, so they do not roll like regular Bakugan and are used as special abilities in the TCG. Nanogan are similar in that they have utility in the TCG, but as toys they are very tiny Bakugan that must be opened manually. Unlike Geogan, Nanogan toys are not necessary to play the game, and only the card is needed. My advice is to not bother with these when you're first starting out unless you just happen to find a great deal on them or think they look super cool. Though Geogan can be used in gameplay, they aren't really necessary to enjoy the game, and you'd get more utility as someone just starting to collect out of getting more Bakugan. And Nanogan are even less interesting to get early on since only the card is used with them, and you can find some Gen 2 products where Nanogan are bundled in with regular Bakugan and at least get more use out of the full bundle. I'd put both of these in the "only if the price is really good" category for someone starting out.
Cubbo is a little bit weird. It almost feels like it was an attempt at a spin-off product that never properly spun off. Cubbo is a Gen 2 bear shaped Bakugan that comes in different Factions and has removable clothing accessories. Cubbo is fully playable and is considered a regular Bakugan, but the reason I would say to avoid Cubbo unless you just think they're neat and cute is that Cubbo does not really roll up into a very good ball and therefore does not roll very well in gameplay. I think it's worth pointing Cubbo out specifically because I have seen more Cubbo toys at discount stores than regular Bakugan, so if your area is like mine you will come across these disproportionally.
Deka Bakugan are gigantic Bakugan that are cool to own, but not allowed in gameplay. My instinct is to just say "don't bother with these unless you just want to collect them as toys", but I will add that there are some Deka Bakugan, especially from Gen 1, that are fairly expensive now, so if you find one at a good price it may be worth buying just for that reason.
Platinum Bakugan were Gen 2 special Bakugan made of diecast metal. The packaging says both "Platinum" and "True Metal". These Bakugan are playable, though depending on your preferences you may like them or may find the plastic Bakugan easier to roll. However, they are totally normal Bakugan other than the fact they are diecast metal, so these are perfectly good to buy to play with. You'll know after getting one if you would want to play with them or not.
During Gen 1, a number of Bakugan licensed board games were put out. These board games were entirely unrelated to the toys and were standalone games. I haven't played any of them, so I couldn't tell you if they are good games or not. However, I want to mention them because if you are looking to buy Bakugan cards online, you will occasionally find random cards from these board games for sale, either mixed in with regular Bakugan cards or listed on their own. Be sure to familiarize yourself with what the cards from each gen used to play Bakugan look like, there are reference images on the next page for Identifying Bakugan.
For reasons I don't understand, in Gen 2 they released plastic figures of Bakugan. Like...these are plastic toys of plastic toys. Bakugan are already figures, so I don't get it. But you will probably come across these at discount stores that sell other Bakugan toys, largely because they don't sell nearly as fast as the real Bakugan. They will be easy to spot in packaging, since they are clearly not toys that can roll up into a shape. The only reason I can see to buy one of these is that the large packaged products with these also come with a couple of holographic promo cards, so if they're cheap enough to be worth it you may buy them for the cards. But otherwise these are useless. The bigger thing you have to watch out for is blind bags. Spin Master put out a series of blind bags with these same figures in them in Gen 2, and it is easy to buy them thinking they will have normal Bakugan in them. There have been blind bags in all gens with actual Bakugan in them, so the easiest thing to do if the Bakugan itself isn't visible in the packaging is simply feel the package to see if it's got a round ball in it or something else.
That's the basics of what you need to know to buy Bakugan for the game you want to play. On the next page, I will go into more detail on how to identify what generation of Bakugan a product belongs to, which is particularly useful for when you find loose Bakugan or random lots of Bakugan for sale.
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