Collector Emotions: Part 1 - Grief

[Dyl]

Grief is the anguish experienced after a significant loss. Although grief most often occurs in relation to death, divorce, separation, health-related loss, or difficult life adjustments, it can also occur in other aspects of our life.

Pokemon connects many of us to strong memories, friendships, family members, and periods of time in our life. A natural consequence of these real connections may be grief, particularly when how we collect, who we collect with, and where we see ourselves in the future change.

Have you ever experienced grief in the context of collecting?

This is the first of several threads that I hope to make about navigating collector emotions.

[niece]

I really like this idea! For many of us on this forum Pokémon has been such a long standing part of our lives that it definitely connects us emotionally. Grief is a difficult emotion to start with. I have not experienced grief in the hobby. I believe this is true, because I am fortunate that I still have most of my original collection and the connections with the people who I share that with. I can imagine losing either of those would bring a very strong grief.

[slowqueen]

I wouldn’t call it grief exactly, but mail theft can be quite sad. My package for a different Pokemon Secret Santa exchange was swiped off my porch while I wasn’t home, because UPS left it outside instead of in the secure apartment building lobby. The sad part was knowing how much thought and care everyone put into the exchange.

Things that would invoke real grief would probably be the loss of something irreplaceable or sentimental, or losing someone who I experienced the hobby with.

[Mr.Garrison]

Not sure if this is what you’re looking for but below is a copy paste from my collection thread. It took me hours to write but I felt it was necessary to include. Weird how memories can do that. Even the copy paste was difficult. So much so that I avoided it for the qotd. Yet here we are..

Out of every card in my collection this one means the most to me. After 9 months of grinding I still hadn’t pulled what I coveted most. Charizard.

On my 11th birthday my father took me to a game shop he found called “The Gathering Ground” to buy booster packs (or so I thought).

He walked up to the counter, pointed at this Charizard and said “we’ll take that”.

I can’t even describe the feeling. I had no idea you could purchase cards as singles and even if I had I would have never expected him to pay the amount they were asking.

At this point in time my father had been battling cancer for years and his health was deteriorating quickly.

He passed away about two years after this.

This is one of the last memories I have of him being in good enough health to go out and about and do things we enjoyed together.

I’d happily trade every other card in my collection for this one if it came down to it.

[niece]

@Mr.Garrison , I have read this several times on your collection thread. I appreciate your sharing this most touching and personal memory.

[tstark20]

Long winded, but here goes. So my dad was an extremely avid sports card & memorabilia collector. The man had the sort of collection that would make 99.9% of vintage sports enthusiasts green with envy. I definitely caught the collecting bug from him, in fact it runs through that entire side of the family. I’ve always liked sports well enough, but it was definitely never to the extreme levels that he liked it. I was always more wrapped up in my comics, video games, and cartoons! Despite that gap in our interests, we always found a happy middle ground in Pokémon cards! We used to rip pack after pack after pack, mostly ex era and unlimited base sets. A lot, and I mean a lot of 1st edition TR Base.

I was taught from a very young age how to keep my collectibles and possessions in great shape, and any card I ever pulled went straight into a sleeve and toploader. Additionally, as my dad was such a serious collector, I also became very familiar with grading as well. Much like many of us here, my dad was a big proponent of the PSA 9 agenda, “just as mint, but half the cost!” Despite being a man of standard means for most of his life, my dad was ferociously frugal and smart with his money, which allowed his buck to simply go further for the things he wanted.

I fell out with collecting Pokémon cards throughout high school and most of college, not out of disinterest, but more so that I simply allocated my focus to athletics, school, and my retro video game collecting instead. I always, always kept up with the games, but the cards just fell to the wayside. I kept 99% of my childhood collection, but did regrettably let go of some cards to cover things like going out and drinking in college, lmaoooo.

My dad passed away suddenly in a car accident in early 2018 during my senior year of college, which left a massive hole in our family. I went through a particularly dreadful year, what with that, breaking up with my first girlfriend, most of my best friends moving away, etc. I honestly was having the worst time of it, and therapy wasn’t helping, nor was trying to mentally escape with exercise or video games, as my brain was just always spiraling.

That’s when I started seriously getting back into my trading cards. I needed something to just shut down my brain and go zen mode on. Sorting bulk, ripping packs, and looking at the artwork just really helped my brain get…quiet. Focused. Around that time is when I made the decision to go for every original ex card in a PSA 9. Those were the cards we used to get the most excited to pull from packs. They have always been my favorite cards, and always will be. My rediscovered love for the cards wasn’t just a hobby, it was a way for me to keep my brain occupied, and also to keep his memory alive to me. It made me feel close to him.

I think that’s why I stress so much about my collections, and about the current state of the market. It’s all just very personal to me. It’s a part of me and my identity, for better or for worse. That said, now that I’ve completed the major collecting goals I initially was shooting for, I feel like I can kinda sit back and close this chapter of my life, which is all the more fitting as I turn 30 in the summer. (Not that I’m done collecting, of course! I’ll be buying shiny cardboard for the rest of my life )

I miss the man a lot everyday, but having completed my goals makes me feel a little more content on the inside. I’m excited for this new phase of my collecting, where I can maybe relax a bit more and just enjoy things that catch my interest at random, rather than feeling like I “HAVE TO” complete something. I also want to get back to rounding off my “wanted” list for my retro game collection.

I hope to one day have an overall collection even close to as awe-inspiring as my dad’s sports collection was. We kept his most important keepsakes of course, but me, my mother, and my brother decided to liquidate a large majority of it. It wouldn’t have been fair to expect my mother to continue housing such an expensive collection that decorated an entire basement from floor to ceiling. That said, my dad taught me everything I know about sports, trading cards, collectibles, etc. It’s been nice to continue that family legacy of being collectible nuts in my own way.

[CR4WD4UNT]

Within the context of Pokémon card collecting, I would check my social media accounts/banking and credit apps when I remembered to and see that I had sold cards for a quarter of what I had bought them for (at full market). Sometimes a day or two apart, in terms of purchase and sale dates.

I got desperate when the bank wouldn’t stop calling. I had some cool cards.

Addiction is real, if what I said doesn’t make any sense then try being me, haha. (That’s a joke.) There’s almost too much I could say and please don’t mistake my personal experience through this admission as vulnerability through oversharing. If you have dealt or are dealing with substance abuse then you aren’t alone.

[brendantheclayboy]

I’m feeling grief that pokemon is getting otherworldly with its cost, so stratospherically and incomprehensibly expensive that it’s getting harder to justify buying much anymore. Just stupid expensive for the most mundane of cards.

When I’ve been so close to closing the book on my primary goals for a couple years, and just makes me highly consider selling certain cards I never wanted or intended to sell because it’s equally hard to justify keeping them.

I cannot believe the prices I’m seeing for so many cards I bought even post 2020 at 1/10 the price. I mean forget about cards i bought in the dark age. Those are like 100x now.

Pretty devastating.

[martin]

I have always been a collector at heart and have only ever made one sale a couple years back. It was on FB marketplace, a bunch of vending series cards that I no longer needed. The amount of effort it took me to make this one sale was insane. I think I made about $30 excluding the time invested, shipping and overall energy. So I thought yeah no, that was the last time.

This year however, I will have to start selling “again” if I want to keep being engaged in collecting. I know I am not good at it and it stresses me out unbelievably but it will be the only way going forward if I want to finish my wotc binder.

(Respect for all the sellers, it sounds easier that it is)

[smpratte]

I think most-all older collectors share a general grief. The 1999-2019 era was the collecter era. Most cards were still within reach. The pace and vibe was more relaxed. You felt more connected. Today collecting feels like a job. The magic is still there, its just hidden in more noise.

Outside of the cards, it’s personally hard seeing people come and go over the years. The revolving door of hobbies is tough, as you put emotion into people online that move on and never hear from again. Its more abrupt than real life, but not unreasonable, as this is a hobby after all, and there are many more important things in life, but its still tough.

[rainbowgym]

This week I lost another of my “collecting friends”.
We are a group of adults (now seniors), starting collecting at the start 1999.

Yes we know we are older, we know it will end someday. But it’s hard to loose people. It’s hard to see your group become smaller and smaller.
All of us started 25 years ago and all of us decided to sell (parts of) their collection a few years back.
For all of us it was difficult to sell. It has been part of our lives for a long time.
I would call that grief.

[CR4WD4UNT]

I am so very sorry for your loss… my deepest of sympathies to you and everyone else who knew them.

[niece]

@rainbowgym . I have always appreciated your insights and comments here. I am sorry to hear you have lost someone that you shared friendship and a hobby with. It is never easy and hard to grow older knowing you will lose friends.

[brendantheclayboy]

I mean I’m a long time seller on ebay who has sold since 2012 on there. But most times I’ve sold it was upgrades, buying a lot and taking cards I wanted and selling (very easy to do pre covid where you’d buy 20 holos for cheap, take 10, and sell the other 10 and break even), doing a sort of trade card for card, selling cards for friends who knew of my expertise in the matter, and so much more.

But now it’s like… I for the first time feel like I should sell cards that are part of my collection that I won’t replace. Like it will leave a void. But it’s crazy man. I am grateful I do have some duplicates, only for the reason I would buy many copies of some cards to find the perfect one because it was one I obsessed over. Starting later in my collecting I decided I needed mint cards for wotc and old backs. That created a problem where I’d buy something thinking it was amazing condition and not be happy with some detail and therefore accumulated a few. I’ll start with those obviously since I was too lazy to be consistent with selling when I started selling higher volume in 2020, but I really feel tempted to thin out some stuff because it’s too wild to get $500 for a card you bought for $20. Or just make funds for a few sets that you want complete.

herr martin if you ever need some help with listings you can hit me up my friend ill be glad to spend some time helping you if you ever want.