Think it over. Find what is right for you. That will make it more fun. You can look at www.elitefourum.com/t/japanese-english-or-other/12837/1 for what other members do.
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Have you checked out AmiAmi?
Here is a link to their website: slist.amiami.com/top/search/list?s_keywords=Pokemon&submit=Search&pagemax=40
And here is a link to the latest Japanese box: www.amiami.com/top/detail/detail?gcode=CGM-7027&page=top%2Fsearch%2Flist%3Fs_keywords%3DPokemon%24pagemax%3D40%24getcnt%3D0%24pagecnt%3D1
They offer top-notch prices and inexpensive shipping if you don’t mind the wait. I didn’t mention it previously, but another great plus to Japanese cards is that you will be among the first to enjoy a new release of cards. Like @omahanime said, the quality of Korean cards is kinda less. My biggest complaint with Korean cards is that they have little to no market. They are difficult to sell for any appreciable value.
You guys have been so nice and helpful. Thank you.
I’ll give AmiAmi a look when the site is back up.
Yes compared to Baseball trading cards, Pokemon is minuscule.
Just to put it in perspective, arguably the most sought-after complete set to get in English is the 1st edition base set. The most expensive card to obtain in that set is the Charizard. A PSA 10 can fetch around 3-5k, a PSA 9 around 1k, and ungraded versions vary on condition from 100-600. Once you get past the Charizard, the rest of the cards drop in price considerably to the low one-hundreds.
Lets use the PSA 9 Charizard at 1k
Now lets take a random baseball set, one of my favorite: Topps 1993 Finest. This set was the very first set ever that featured a parallel insert known as a Refractor (think of the E-series sets with the reverse holos). This set features 199 cards (not counting the box topers), and each 199 card has a refractor version of it.
A graded PSA 9 version of Ken Griffey refractor sells for 2k.
However here is where the difference lies, it doesn’t end after the Griffey, there are still 20+ cards you need to obtain at this price. So in other words this particular baseball set has over 20+ 1st edition Charizards to obtain. I believe a complete set sold around 10k, though it has been claimed that some have spent well over 50k trying to complete the set individually. And this is just 1 set, not even including the vintage stuff. 1 out 1 Pokemon trophy cards do not compete with 1/1 baseball cards either (generally).
Now how Pokemon compares against other Playing card games like Magic and Yugioh, I think they are little under Magic, but they may have changed with the increase popularity of Pokemon in the past 5 years.
Pokemon still has HUGE opportunity for growth though, it will probably never get to the sports cards values, but it could easily dominate the Playing card game scene in the next few years to come. Sealed box prices are evident of that
My suggestion is just buy some cards to get that urge over with, and then afterwards you’ll realize if its something you wanna do. (I wouldn’t go full-blast right off the bat though). Take a look around at other peoples collections and see what appeals to you. Honestly I always change my collection goals every few months it seems like for different reasons, but I love collecting Bulbusaur, Ivysaur, and Venusaur cards though - they’ll always hold value to me 
This is true. If you compare vintage sports card prices, pokemon looks like charity.
You should be able to find a dealer that will get you a box to your doorstep in a week. I thought you perhaps lived in a country where shipping is more of an idea rather than a service.
Also, if you do get back into collecting, your best source for anything is eBay. That is the main place to go to for buying anything. If you want new boxes, stores such as amiami, or other stand alone stores will be great for that, but if you are looking for a specific card, or want to do some research, eBay is your best friend.
I’m actually interested in collecting the first gen starter cards as well, which is why I want to start with the XY boxes.
I’m probably gonna see if I can start with a japanese booster box to see if it is just an urge that will go away once I open some packs. If I still feel like collecting afterwards, I might stick with japanese cards until I can start making more money so I won’t feel bad for spending so much on english cards.
or
I’ll end up saying “screw it” and just get an english box, but do my best to only buy them once in a while.
I have no intention of collecting 1st edition base set. I might one day try to complete the non-first edition base set (I think unlimited) by buying singles because I already have a lot of the holos/rares from when I was a kid. I like the 2nd edition holo though.
Don’t know if this has been said, but you don’t have to set out goals and such when you start. When I got back into it, I just bought a tin or two here and there for awhile before discovering eBay and getting into singles collecting. I bought and sold a lot of stuff before I really started to get an idea of what I was passionate about and really wanted to have in my collection, which is different for everyone.
I only have one regret from when I started collecting, and that’s spending too much money on new sealed products, which I warn every collector against. A tin with 4 packs and an ok promo card runs $18+ in stores, and single packs are $4 and up. If you get them online they’re cheaper, but you also have to factor in shipping. That tin or two I mentioned earlier adds up, and the money could be much better spent on singles. For example, you could pick up a Charizard EX Full Art for the same price as a tin. You almost always lose money on sealed products, but also lose the thrill of opening.
I definitely agree with everyone when they say start with Japanese over English. Japanese is way better value for money, is better quality, and you get new cards sooner. Japanese Emerald Break is the same as English’s Roaring Skies set, but Emerald Break came out in mid-March and Roaring Skies won’t come out until May.
of course amiami is out of stock on the boxes I wanted. How long does it take for them to restock? I wanted the wild blaze box or one of the first XY boxes. also, how much money does it typically cost for shipping? I backordered one of the boxes with EMS (best shipping option) because I thought it would show me the price before confirming the order 
It shows the price before paying and you can change at that time. You can also get Wild Blaze at www.nippon-yasan.com/cards-pokemon/6848-pokemon-card-game-xy-expansion-pack-wild-blaze-box.html
ok, so I finally bought some packs. I got them for cheap off of ebay from a trusted person/business (a ton of reviews and positive fb). however, considering that the packs were cheap, I expect that they were probably weighed. He had packs you could instantly buy for $5.49, and also a ton of them up for auction that I don’t think went higher than $3.50.
I’ll give you my perspective on the whole collecting thing as I recently started collecting after stopping as a kid. It is a completely impulsive/compulsive hobby. If you really think about the logic behind it you’re paying for shiny pieces of cardstock that apart from the artwork have no real redeeming worth. There is no real rarity involved as they could have easily printed millions of whatever card your after for almost no extra expense. That being said if feels damn good to rip through multiple booster boxes for the first time, make lists upon lists, tracking down hard to find cards, find new cards you never new existed, and talk to others that do the same. It is costly, and yea you can rationalize it by saying the cards will be an investment, as it has for people of the past, but hoarding comes into play as well as the essence of collecting being worthless if you sell the stuff you collect. So, just realize it is a steep slope. It is not very fun in my opinion to only buy and collect a couple of cards. Maybe it’s just the deep seated brainwashed child version of me that remained dormant for at least 12 years but I like collecting now. I’m still not totally convinced they did not have subliminal messaging in the advertisement of Pokemon back in the day
No company just “prints” cards after their intended print run. Every card has a print run. If there were to be an actual re-print of a card, which occurs in every hobby, it is planned and released in a separate set, usually with some sort of difference in appearance. At the end of the day it is a business that is printing a product.
The nice thing about pokemon specifically is that there are promotional cards that have a very limited print run that will never be re-printed. This is something that occurs in sports as well, but it is much less contrived in pokemon. The cards represent a specific event and were only printed for that event. They end up capturing a moment in time, and really enhance the collectiblity of the card.
But at the end of the day it is just a hobby, and you should do it for primarily personal enjoyment. The investment aspect should be secondary.
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well said.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet, but I did try to get back into collecting a couple years ago too. I ended up buying the first black and white box, call of legends box, additional packs (a total of roughly 80) and sleeves/binders. I spent a little over 400$ in about a month on all that. I’m definitely gonna try and take it a lot slower this time, even though like you, I like buying a bunch of packs at once. If I’m convinced that the cheap packs I buy on ebay aren’t being weighed, then I think I’ll be okay just buying a few packs every couple of weeks from there.
Well, yea. I wasn’t really saying it was specific to collecting pokemon cards. MY point was that there is not really a limited quantity that could be printed, like they aren’t working with some finite resource or a crafted product where the material or the skill required to put it together is somehow limited which in turns makes it rare. The rarity of pokemon cards is much more superficial than say the rarity of a painting. Someone is actually making a business decision to limit the production of something rather than the rarity actually being imposed by an uncontrollable means. It’s like there would be a demand for say 100,000 of a card they could print that many if they wanted to but instead the create the rarity by only printing 10 for a specific event.
I never fell comfortable with buying packs. I mean if you were a business that sold packs and singles why would you sacrifice money to stay fair. I’m convinced that a lot of the websites that sell Pokemon cards weigh out the packs and put in a few packs in each order proportionally that have the good cards (less than would normally occur to make more money but avoid suspicion). A business wouldn’t be very successful if they didn’t at least rig the system to their advantage just a little. I have been buying from blowout cards or similar websites. They don’t sell singles so there is less of a chance they would have any benefit from weighing stuff. I guess I just stay skeptical.
Hoards of all non 1st edition cards are likely warehoused. The Topps hoard comes to mind. Media Factory actually understated its numbers years ago on Birthday Pikachus, Lucky Stadiums etc. They cost a lot of people a lot of money but made a pretty penny for some of their reps.
Nothing in their charter or government law disallows them from hoarding or reprinting.
USA companies have some governmental restrictions like stated limited print runs. For example, 1st Ed WOTC sets were believed to be 10% of the overall run. But that wasnt true. The law purported to be a “maximum” of 10%.
It was far less important in the early years in Japan because of the milder collector interest. But once they saw people like me who were willing to stuff their pockets everything changed.
One day I’ll tell some stories, maybe write a book lol, about stuff that was going on. It would be wrong to do it now because some of the players are still active;)
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Secrets are no fun
Just start with what you’d like to have. It started for me when I found my old base, jungle, fossil sets.
I then found the niche of cards I wanted, and enjoyed every minute of tracking them down. A few people here go for certian individual Pokemon, rather than full sets. I collected all the new XY sets, but haven’t bothered anymore, as I only like the EX/M EX and full art stuff. I have stacks of the normal holos that I’m just not into…so it might have just been better to buy the cards I wanted in the first place…but where’s the fun in that?
As far as “investment” goes, unless something is a steal, it’s rarely worth your effort, time and hassle.
By the time ebay and paypal take their cuts, you need to have made atleast 25-30% on your original cost to be worth it usually…
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The item doesnt have to be a steal at the time of purchase to be a good investment. I bought a lot of packs and cards 4 years ago which wouldnt have been considered a steal, but today are worth 5x what i payed for them
and ebay fees dont come into consideration for the person making the investment, the same couldnt be said for the seller however