Brand New Collector Looking for Advice

[Quuador]

@nonsensical

Its not meant for investor 1st mindset.

Neither is this forum.

Anyway, thus far @c0ll3ct0r comment is the best advice opposite of the “buy what you like”:

@c0ll3ct0r

“Buy what you like”, lol. Might as well lecture people on how to breathe while we’re at it. Everyone entering the hobby with some interest beyond pure finance is, per definition, going to “buy what you like”. Everyone with any concern for their financial welfare is going to attempt to buy things with some degree of tactical savvy, which I can only assume is the whole reason someone would ask for advice in the first place.

My general advice to beginners of all kinds: spend more time studying the hobby, and less time studying the people within it. Absorb facts, infer from facts, don’t absorb opinion pieces like so many people have been doing this last year especially. Smart people can still give bad advice, people without vested interests can still be misinformed and ignorance is even more common than vested interests.

Studying Pokemon is like studying everything else: you spend more time sieving out misinformation than learning true knowledge, and everyone has an agenda. A rugged sense of individualism will see you through all that. If that’s not an option, try to make friends who will be honest and helpful to you. You can do both, but you need to do at least one.

Personally: I had one rule when I bought big back in the day: never buy unlimited if a 1st edition version exists (except Base set). I didn’t really carethat much about the 1st edition stamp, but I knew the financial implications it would have. And so I only bought 1st ed, a move I’m very pleased with today.

Investing (aka making money by buying/selling long term), costs like everything in life that earns you money: time and effort. There isn’t a simple 1-2-3 method to makes you money investing in Pokémon, otherwise everyone would do it. There are a lot of opportunities to make money in this hobby, especially with how insane the market was since the start of the pandemic, but it takes study and effort to determine which are the best ways to make money. And those that do know how to make money in this hobby defintely won’t just share it to complete strangers.

So as mentioned in the quote above:

Studying Pokémon is like studying everything else: you spend more time sieving out misinformation than learning true knowledge, and everyone has an agenda. A rugged sense of individualism will see you through all that. If that’s not an option, try to make friends who will be honest and helpful to you. You can do both, but you need to do at least one.

Anyway, not sure why I even made this comment. In the 7.5 years I’ve been collecting Pokémon cards, I’ve only been doing that: collecting, and yes: “buying what I like”. And although I have absolutely no interest in selling any of my (non-duplicated) cards anytime soon or at all, some cards I’ve bought for 30 bucks are 2k+ now; some cards I bought for 3k are 30k+ now; some cards I’ve bought for 10 bucks are still 10 bucks now; and one card I bought for 1k dropped to 100 USD a couple month later back in 2018 but is at 1k USD again nowadays. All by just buying what I like and working towards my collection goals, AND spending time on learning, sharing, and searching almost fulltime. Anyway, whether it’s collecting, investing, or basically anything worthwhile in life: it takes time and effort.

Greetz,
Quuador