The Dark Question of the Day throws out all the pretences of a wonderful community and exposes the possibly not ethical morality of the hobby. Questions are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like. Questions are purely meant for educational purposes and not offense.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
Today’s Question: QotD: In the realm of Pokemon, how have you positively used your ‘tism?
Helpful Considerations: Memorizing key details to min/max purchases and sales to realize the gaps? You won something with some really specific pokemon facts? Made a whole website for like minded individuals, (if you build it, they will come)?
I had an innate comprehension of olderrarerminterbetter from a young age, and would often try to ‘bulk out’ my trades for cards I knew were harder to acquire; for example, trading a whole zap theme deck for an unlimited base chansey holo. They were getting a holo of ‘equal rarity’ and coolness alongside 59 other cards. I was getting a card I knew I could only acquire through booster pack gambling. You can argue ethics all day long with an 8 year old but it’d be like arguing with a brick wall.
Not directly related to cards but my fixation over Pokemon led to me to learn a bit of Photoshop, Illustrator and Procreate. This because I wanted to recreate card templates by myself and create custom sets, making proxies and so on.
Also, even in my absolute ignorance as a kid (I didn’t use any sleeves, good quality binders, or anything like that), I came to the conclusion that others were pretty filthy with their cards. So I still have a bunch of childhood cards that are in fairly good shape honestly, and binder-worthy for sure. When I finally started collecting again in 2015-16 card protection was already my top priority. Not that much of a win, but at least I had the right mindset from the start.
When I was more active, over the years I’ve had a good number of folks ask me for help finding obscure non-tcg items for their collection - mostly from other species collectors. And in other cases, I’ve found items that would interest others and sent them a link. Granted, this has also been done for me so I like to see it as a way of paying it forward.
I’m not sure I quite understand why this is considered a dark question, but I really enjoy the encyclopedic knowledge I have for the hobby. I love using it to help others and deepen my understanding! Always love learning and sharing.
