The Sun & Moon base set had six, the majority of sets in the era had nine, and the grand total for the era crept up into three figures. While there was energy now included in the gold section too, the number of golds ramped up. They took an idea and did it again and again until no one cared about it anymore. That could honestly be the tagline for the entire Sun & Moon and Sword & Shield eras no matter what the subject matter. Then Sun & Moon came along and ran the idea into the ground.

Two more in Roaring Skies, and two more in Ancient Origins which gave us a nice little golden subset before the rest of the era.

Primal Clash then dropped and gave us four nice new golden trainers as secret rares. XY started off the era without any gold sightings for the first few sets, the closest thing was Phantom Forces giving us a very nice silver Dialga in the same style as the Reshiram and Zekrom. I do like these cards, and I especially like that the style has only been repeated a handful of times throughout the game (pretend that I whispered that bit in case The Pokemon Company hears and decides to put twelve of them in the next set). The two secret rares of the set were Reshiram and Zekrom, and outside of energy symbols and text the cards were entirely gold. The next set, Legendary Treasures did not give us any golden trainers but did introduce us to a new type of gold card. This treatment continued across the next few sets with Random Receiver in Plasma Storm, Max Potion and Ultra Ball in Plasma Freeze, and finally Rare Candy in Plasma Blast. Rocky Helmet was simply the first trainer card to be part of this set, and as there was no special shiny form to draw the eye, the amount of gold of the card was heavily ramped up. The gold was subtle, and all of the focus was on the shiny Pokemon. Since Next Destinies each set had a few secret cards, of shiny Pokemon with a gold border and some gold features on the card layout. It seems like an odd choice, but the card started out within another subset of cards. The first card that resembles what we now think of as gold cards was Rocky Helmet back in Boundaries Crossed.

Pokemon gold cards