Yes i absolutely get collecting fatigue. It definitely relates to my mental state as well. I have ADHD, so i really struggle with maintaining healthy relationships with my hobbies and what not. I get hyper-fixated on cards sometimes, where i literally will not be able to stop thinking about and obsessing over cards for periods of time. Sometimes its only a few days, but when i first got back in during 2020, it was a solid 3-4 months. It didnt help that everything was so crazy, but its really an awful thing because it ends up turning something you enjoy into something that causes you pain. It gets worse when im stressed and 2020 was my first year of uni, sooooo yea lol. I had to take a several month break through the winter of 2020/21. Since then ive been a lot more careful with how much i engage in certain things, and when i start feeling that way again i can be like “alright this is getting out of control, i need to step away for a bit.”
When its something youre conscious of, i think it becomes a lot easier to notice yourself burning out and going off the deep-end and then u can try to just spend some time away to refocus. Its still something im dealing with and i do still experience fatigue, but its better than it was! I also feel that it was helpful to reconsider how i engage with pokemon cards and try to focus on what i actually liked and separating that from all the overstimulating noise. Ive been putting more focus on building binders which has been very rewarding and enjoyable.
Definitely been burned out on collecting this past year, but its good to take a break once in awhile. Eventually the urge to collect comes back, and the cycle repeats. Just gotta let nature take its course.
Having some other hobbies helps break up the “sameness” of one hobby. I spend A LOT of time on youtube and often pivot between different youtubers that aren’t Pokemon related at all.
Collection burnout is something I’ve definitely experienced. For me, I’ll revisit older Pokemon sets that aren’t being talked about as much, or I’ll buy some Digimon cards, an action figure, or something else I’m collecting. Maybe I’ll play more video games and just mentally reset from collecting altogether. I never try to force my interest in any one direction. I really do enjoy this hobby a lot, so even if I do need a reset, it won’t take long before I’m itching to buy a random card off my wants list again.
I generally don’t get fatigue from collecting, but I DO get fatigued from buying. I have several smaller, low-value collections that I can add to cheaply, but as far as hobby burnout, I’d say, take a step back and do something else for a while. =) If you genuinely love it, you’ll find it again. I recently started sitting in with friends at jazz jams. It’s my new jam. (pun intended) and really makes me more excited for life.
Definitely can relate to a lot of the sentiments in this thread. Collecting fatigue comes and goes for me and I find it’s the worst when I let myself get too wound up in all the “noise” out there and try and chase too many cards at once.
It’s at these points that I find unplugging and taking part in my other hobbies is good for a mental reset. Pokemon is just one aspect of my life and while I do have long-term collecting goals, I still have many years ahead of me to accomplish them.
For me, I feel like I never tire of actually collecting. It’s such a personal experience that is always evolving and there’s always something new to buy or discover.
What fatigues me are other collectors. I used to check Instagram daily. There were so many people I’d follow and then unfollow after watching some dumb story. Whether it’s a callout or some cringe flexes or controversy stirring. It gets tiring. The never-ending hamster wheel of everyone chasing the next thing or trying to capitalize on the attention economy there. The incentive system where the loudest people most expensive images are rewarded. It’s super tiring. And then you recognize that you start playing the game too, and you start taking pictures of certain things a certain way at a certain time to maximize likes and follows. I just archived all my posts and uninstalled the app months ago and honestly it was a fantastic choice.
Youtube is another place that tires me. There seems to be such an appetite for pokemon video content in this hobby. Maybe it’s just me but I find nearly every content creator in this hobby virtually unwatchable. There’s basically pack openings (a genre that does nothing for me personally) and extraordinarily long investment/market analysis style videos. But out of Youtube comes this pool of microcelebrities and personalities that again feels like watching a hamster-wheel of other people trying to stay relevant.
It’s this constant grind mentality that is so tiring. Just everywhere people gather in this hobby turns into some twisted competition. And often it leads people to exploit whatever they can to get ahead at any cost. There are a lot of great little pockets of people you can find. Many of the people constantly on the grind I respect or consider friends. But in the end, the culture of the hobby is really twisted right now.
I might sound like an elitist, I don’t mean to be. I don’t think I’m somehow special and above it. I think the primary problem is the incentive system created by the larger platforms out there. If my only exposure to this hobby was instagram, I’d probably be PFM inc and treat every other collector with skepticism as if they were a competitor. I’d be more concerned about livestream an event than just enjoying it.
Basically it just feels like there are too many people who engage in this hobby as a brand and not just as a person with an interest in collecting. Engaging in this environment is really draining
Is collecting fatigue the same as getting bored with your collection? To counter getting bored with my collections I always try to avoid checking boxes. Meaning that I don’t like to collect what people tell me to collect (sets) but rather try to do things my own way (pokédex). This way I have more sentimental value for my collection making it harder to get bored of it.
Sure, I also get tired of the whole hunting and buying process sometimes and like most people I change my focus to something else for ahwile. I try to keep my collections fairly small making it easyer to store them away for some time because if your collection is an entire room there really is no escaping it which could lead to people seeing it as a problem and in worst case they sell it all. With my smaller collections I’m in it for the long run because I can store these things easily and therefore shift my attention to other things with ease.
Where not machines, everyone needs rest somethimes but taking a break doesn’t mean that it’s the end. The beauty of collecting is that you can always continue on it no matter how long that break was.
Removing IG for Pokémon helped me enjoy collecting at my own pace a lot more. As great as collections are posted on the platform, there was never a need for infinite scroll feeds where I might subconsciously compare myself to someone else’s goals
I consider myself fortunate that I have not faced a collection fatigue yet. Personally, I had slowed down quite a bit last year and this due to being priced out and having more personal expenses. I really decided to make some choices what my collection should look like and go on from there.
However, this year has been quite the opposite for me. I am still collecting at an infrequent pace, but, I have really started digging into the history of Japanese promo cards. This feels like a completely new aspect of the hobby for me. It has changed my perspective to the hobby from being a mere check-lists and filling binders to actually reading up information on how / when promos were handed out. This has helped me appreciate the cards more no matter how common the promo.
I would like to echo this from @Dizzle, that I feel this same way about Japanese promo cards. Since these cards are Japanese (not my primary language) and some of the personal blog-like information / experiences is hard to find.
Finally being able to share this information with fellow collectors via this website also serves as additional motivation.
I’ve been collecting for almost 8 years now, and I’ve hit fatigue twice thus far. Once was near the end of 2019. As (almost) all of you know, I collect Pikachu TCG in all languages and variations. In 2019 alone, a total of 233 Pikachu TCG cards were released, which is roughly one every 1.5 days on average that year. Although I do own all 233 of them now, it was very hard to keep up. Not just financially, but also in terms of time consumption.
Unfortunately, shortly after 2019 came the pandemic, as well as the massive market explosion. Although less Pikachu TCG cards were released in 2020 (143 to be exact), the cards on average became more expensive. And this especially held true around Fall and Winter of 2020. Even English McDonald’s cards printed in the millions were going for 40-50 bucks each on release, which used to be 2-5 USD in the past. It honestly just caused stress and drained the fun out of collecting Pikachu cards (especially since it’s not my only collection). So because of that I decided to stop collecting Pikachu in all languages from February 27th, 2021 onward†, which was the 25th Pokémon Day. In my head the 25th anniversary was a great time to adjust my collection goal without feeling too bad about it, and it was a great decision for sure. Collecting right now is at a much more reasonable speed, since I primarily keep track of the English releases† now.
†: I still collect all languages from before this date; I also made an exception for the Base Set artwork (e.g. the 25th anniversary Jumbos or Celebrations full arts) which I will still get in all languages; as well as one of each non-English exclusive artwork (mostly Japanese promos) - without worrying about stamp or holo variations for those.
It’s funny how you say ‘cards are just cut and dry’, since when I first came back collecting TCG cards, I’ve also learned something new every day and researched a lot myself for Pikachu releases and minor variations. These days I learn a lot less about the TCG and new cards however (since I’m frankly already a Pikachu and foreign language TCG expert at this point ).
After I had completed my Seviper TCG collection (my favorite Pokémon), I also started delving into non-TCG products. It’s indeed a lot harder to find information on or even know everything that’s out there, since a lot of things aren’t documented at all. Especially if you want to make abundant collection updates on them, haha (I’m still in the process of gaining information about a lot of non-TCG cards and stickers for my next Seviper collection update).
Exactly the same for me. I’ve been collecting all kind of things since a 5 y.o. kid, and I’d probably keep collecting until I die of (hopefully) old age. Whether that will be Pokémon or something else time will tell, but I will always be completing something in my life, that’s for sure.
So I should add a little more elaboration to this to add clarity but when I say cut and dry I am of course only really referring to my experience in English and Japanese cards. Starting up collecting again Japanese to me was a huge mystery, but all of the information I needed for said cards was at my fingertips with a simple google search whereas In regard to merch, that information usually is not around and/or false due to poor research by others in this realm (I like to think of it as the early days of the TCG when people didnt know how many copies of the illustrator there were or not knowing the release info of x trophy). I never ventured beyond english/japanese just because to me anything there only seemed like a “copy” for lack of a better word since 99.5 percent of the time its just variants of a non exlcusive art featuring maybe a stamp or different holo pattern. That was always why going beyond the two main languages never seemed appealing to me because I just didnt feel like chasing the same thing over and over again with a mild difference. Of course im not sure on language exclusives that exist beyond eng/japanese if there are any, but yeah its just not desirable for me.
So with that being said, after i ran through all the bulbapedia lists and talked to many people here all my card needs were met quite quickly due to the time period and ease of information whereas in merch im still trying to figure out mystery after mystery of missing release information while also discovering new products weekly.
This is something that hit me during the pandemic. Collecting used to be an infinite pursuit for me. I bought what liked. I set goals, achieved them, then set new goals. But as the cost of doing this because so monstrously high, it would have been very demanding to keep doing this.
The financial burden of having thousands of dollars tied up in things I bought “just because” became too much to for me, so I started selling sections of my collection. Goals that were too expensive to complete took the fun out of acquisition, so I started abandoning some goals and liquidating my progress. I took a hard look at what I was collecting, why I was collecting it, and what I really wanted my “permanent” collection to look like.
I am now in the process of redirecting my entire longterm goal towards a totally different endgame that’s completely unlike the endgame I had in mind when I started. But this has been good, I think. I am glad I’m doing it. But the process of getting here was was not without its stress.
I’ll echo what people say about social media. I’ve never considered myself as part of any pokemon “community”, I think it’s a big reason why I’m never truly fatigued, beyond straightforward money issues.
I’m a member of one Facebook group that I check once every 3 months for all of 5 seconds until I see something that makes me wanna puke. I don’t have an Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Tiktok, Whatnot or any of that. Other than two friends and maybe one family member, the closest anyone has been to see my collection is my collection thread here.
Actually, it’s two Facebook groups, it’s been so long since I checked it that I forgot I was even a member.
My goals have definitely changed since I began. I didn’t get back into cards until 2019, before then I only collected figures, plush and other merch. For awhile I wanted to collect every single piece of merch of my favorite pokemon. But I slowly realized they would release new merch it seemed like every week and I couldn’t keep up. Now, my goal is just to collect what resonates with me. When I get bored of it and it’s no longer special to me I’ll probably just sell it.
Not sure if this counts as “fatigue” but I also get “collecting existentialism” where I wonder “what’s the point?” and get self-conscious about the amount of time I’m spending on the hobby and wonder if I should be using that time more “wisely”. It doesn’t help that I’m self-employed so it’s very easy to get sucked into an eBay / yahoo japan rabbit hole and find the whole night gone lol. But at the end of the day I guess, if it’s something that brings you joy and it isn’t consuming your entire life, is it really a waste?
Had this thought as well and brought this up to my SO. She compared it to pretty much (outside of a date night); Going out for drinks, attending a festivals/concerts, shopping for clothes/make-up, a night-in/out with her friends.
Thought about it, and as much as I love the newer sets that Pokemon came out with, I’ve stopped shooting myself in the foot for buying em’ after hearing what she said.
She even brought up that people buy, and probably buy more, drugs/alchy/cigs than I’ve ever spent on my most expensive Pokemon haul. You can be addicted, but you can also get the same satisfaction since satisfaction is subjective to everyone. Don’t be self conscious. We can resell our collections/downsize at any given moment.
Even though i have gotten and occasionally still get small collecting fatigues it’s mainly everything else fatigue i have and i wish i would have more time to go through my collection and sort it in a way i like it (and ofc get more of it when i have enough funds for it). Collecting still is a safety haven for me and an escape place from everything else and unless my modern collections get blown up by the amount of new releases i find it difficult to see any serious fatigue of collecting for me. The only thing i’m tired of is searching for certain cards for years and years but luckily i’m down to one card on that so when i finally find that topps chrome sparkle muk i’m in search of i hopefully can shake of the last bits of fatigue in collecting for me
The beauty of collecting is that you can always continue on it no matter how long that break was. 
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