@dizzle24, that was a very nice read man! Thank you for sharing [:
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I absolutely love this thread already and the idea of it! Well done to the two who have told their stories so far you guys are inspiring all collectors here. I also can’t wait to read what’s to come in the next stories to be shared 
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@dizzle24, I think a lot of us can relate to your story. Thank you for sharing!
@butchdawg32, the video was well done and the idea for the thread is for sure interesting. Would you mind adding me to the calendar?
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@dizzle24 You know what they say. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” You have been thru the ringer but you’re a good friend and a pleasure to have around! Hopefully your words touch home with people who read your story 
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@mcorey777, @rescuetoast, @danis04, @effectspore, haha thanks everyone for all the great feedback!! Its much appreciated and im happy everyone could enjoy it!
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Thank you @butchdawg32, @dizzle24, for those two amazing stories!
I’m sorry to hear about what you went through, Dizzle. But as mcorey pointed out, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
It’s refreshing to see someone with such an attachment to gen 2 rather than gen 1 :’)
Personally, on my old playground, the ex series cards were the best new thing ^^
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@palamec1a Thank you!! And I totally agree and honestly, thats why I dont regret the path my life has taken because its taught me so many life changing and valuable lessons which ill always be grateful for which might one day be able to help someone in need. So yeah, im for sure glad im able to be here to today to be part of this great community!
Also, @teraz (dont know if this tag will work) but youre day is today! just reminding ya!
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Pokemon Classics - Incredible video. This is the new type of pokecontent that I think most of us need. Let’s blow up your Youtube channel. Also, Amazing editing. an 8 minute video must have taken you hours. Simply, incredible and Thank you for sharing.
@dizzle24 - Thank you. Nothing is better than people being real and vulnerable. Really cool story. I’m glad I went back to read it.
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Dizzle… I’d call you but I don’t think you could help me with MY problem. You see, I’m old and I’d like to find a cure for that🤔
BTW…Thanks for sharing and, “Keep coming back”
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My history with Pokemon
I couldn’t come up with a specific topic I would write about, so I decided to tell you my history in the Pokemon hobby. I hope you enjoy it
I’ve been a Pokemon fan since the first episode of Pokemon aired in Finland back in 1999. I’ve never taken a break from the hobby, but there really has been some times during my life when it wasn’t so easy to be a Pokemon fan. Nerdy hobbies definitely weren’t as accepted at one point as they are now and I’m happy that things are more open these days.
Early years (1999-2002)
So it all began back in 1999 like for most of us. I was 7 years old back then and me getting into Pokemon was very casual - I would watch cartoons like on every morning during the weekends. For some reason I remember it was winter when Pokemon was new and it indeed was November back then, though I can’t remember if we actually had snow. It would be crazy if I remembered stuff that well from over 20 years ago! Well anyway, I was checking the tv guide to see what cartoons were on and I saw this new name “Pokemon” on the list. I thought to myself, sweet, a new cartoon! Well, the rest is history.
All kids around my age were hooked up in Pokemon as you could imagine. All kinds of Pokemon products started to appear everywhere. Unfortunately, I don’t have golden memories of opening TCG packs. It might sound crazy being a kid from the time those were the hottest stuff and new, but my parents wouldn’t buy me and my sister TCG packs because they were expensive. My childhood nostalgia cards are actually TOPPS - my parents bought us those instead because they were cheaper and you could basically get 2 packs for the price of one WOTC pack. I really wish I would remember what packs cost back then. Obviously our currency wasn’t euro back in 1999, but it still would be cool to be able to compare how things were.
Another thing that I got a lot of was some kind of a Pokemon gum product that had card-sized stickers inside. I treated those stickers as cards as well. A boy who was my neighbor had turned those stickers into cards by having his mom putting contact paper on them. I thought it was genius and I started to do something similar by myself but instead putting some scotch tape over them… Let me tell you, those ended up being very ugly but at the time I thought I was genius.
There was bit of a sad side to the fact too that I didn’t have WOTC cards. Of course other kids knew they were more expensive and they wouldn’t want to trade TCG cards to TOPPS cards or my stickers. The neighbor I told about earlier as the only child of his family and he of course has lots of cards, including TCG, TOPPS, and those same stickers I had. He would rarely trade TCG cards for me. For some reason I remember wanting a Jungle Pikachu from him and I actually got it in the end. I guess he only traded that for being a common card. I’ve always prefered Jungle Pikachu over Base Pika personally.
I also had a Pokemon Panini -sticker album that I collected stickers for very faithfully. I think it’s almost full if not complete actually. I loved the fact that it also had information of all 151 Pokemon at the time. I took it outside with me often and treated it as my PokeDex as it had all the info. I still own that sticker album and you can see that it definitely has been very loved and been outside a lot. It’s somewhere in my storage, maybe one day I will post pictures of it. I’m not sure in which box it’s in so it would take some time for me to find it right now.
I remember playing Pokemon with my sister and I would always be Charizard or have a Charizard. Yes - I was one of those Charizard loving kids back then. I always dreamed about flying with a Charizard and having him as my partner Pokemon. I guess the Pokemon anime influenced this a lot. While Charizard personality wasn’t the nicest in the beginning, I loved the fighting spirit of Charizard and how faithful he became to Ash in the end. During our play with my sister, she would also have influence from the Pokemon anime and wanted to be and have a Jigglypuff so it would sing and have my Charizard go asleep. I always tried to say stuff like Charizard is closing it’s ears so it can’t hear the singing and fall asleep and all that stupid stuff. I admit I was trying to be a stupid know it all kid when it came to Pokemon.
When it comes to Pokemon videogames it took me long time to get any actual experience from them. I never owned a GameBoy myself. I was always asking for one on my birthdays or Christmas and never got one. One of my friends had Pokemon Red and I visited her house while her cousin was there too. Her cousin wanted to battle with me using the Link Cable. I was like ok fine. Nobody told me what to do and being 7 or 8 years old I really didn’t know any English. I didn’t know what all the things on screen meant. Well when I finally found where to choose attack I would use some random ones because I didn’t know what each attack did. I think I only managed to beat my friend’s cousin’s Charizard because the Blastoise I used had a water attack and water was one of those few words I actually knew in English back then so I knew how to use one supereffective move, haha. So that’s my whole experience with Red / Blue. I never got to experience any gen 2 game on a real GameBoy console.
Of course I can’t forget to mention Pokemon The First Movie. It still holds a special meaning for me and it was the first movie to ever make me cry. Obviously the part where Ash turns into stone and all the Pokemon start crying was the part that made me cry too. I had never experienced something like that even though I had seen The Lion King where Mufasa dies and all that. So the First Movie had emotional impact on little me. The second Pokemon movie was amazing too, but I always wondered who is this random guy with Ash and not Brock?? You see, The Orange Islands episodes were never aired in Finland and that season was completely skipped. So I’m sure I wasn’t the only one wondering what happened to Brock as none of us knew who Tracey was. Also a fun fact: the movie is called Pokemon 2 here in Finland and not Pokemon 2000 because it wasn’t aired back in 2000 here. I still have the VHS of the movie and it has copyright date of 2001 so I guess that’s when it came out.
I was still a big Pokemon fan, but I would notice that the overall popularity started to drop. I think this change started to happen during 2001-2002. Kids in school didn’t talk about Pokemon anymore. I found Pokemon toys from clearance and all that stuff. There would still be some random Pokemon stuff around like Pokemon lemonade for example which is something that I miss a lot. The lemonade was blue and I remember it was so good. My mom was so strict with soft drinks when I was a kid so I could rarely have one, but when I had my dad buying it for me a few times I remember it was great. However I think it wasn’t around for very long. My favorite shirt to wear used to be a red Pokemon sweater that had a print on it with Ash and various Pokemon, I think they were all electric types. I ended up wearing it so much that the print started to peel off. Overall I started to feel quite lonely with my Pokemon interest. I had another sticker album for Johto-region and I casually got some Johto-era TOPPS cards too. But when it came to other kids Pokemon wasn’t as cool anymore.
Anyways, me and my sister ended up being friends with our neighbor’s grandchildren. We had moved to a new place back in 2001 and I think around 2002 me and my sister ended up being friends with these 2 girls that were sisters too. Me and my sister born in 1992 and 1995, and them being born in 1993 and 1996 it was a great friendship combination as we were all around the same age. The greatest thing was that the girls were Pokemon fans and still had cards too! This is where we bonded very strongly and I have great memories of doing lots of Pokemon related stuff with them for years, especially during summers when they spent more time at their grandparents.
Fun memories despite Pokemon not being popular and finally getting into TCG cards (2003-2007)
So with these grandchildren of my neighbors we did so much Pokemon related stuff. Trading, playing, anything. Every summer here in my city in Thursdays the market place will be full of people selling stuff that is kinda like a garage sale but with various people selling their stuff in one place. Our friend’s grandma brought us there almost every thursday and we bought Pokemon cards every time! I remember when I went with mom she wouldn’t let me buy holo cards and stuff if people asked like 3 € for one. To her that was expensive. So I ended up mostly getting non-holos from there because mom also didn’t give much money when we went with our friend’s grandma, but it didn’t matter. We would check cards together and everyone would buy something. And there were Pokemon card sellers literally every week! Maybe it was for the fact that Pokemon wasn’t popular anymore, but it was amazing. And on the way back home we would show each other what everyone got. Summers during those years were so great and enjoyable and it’s something that I miss a lot. This was also the time when I started to get more TCG cards because most of the cards people sold were TCG.
I also learned how to play the TCG during this time. Once for Christmas I received a gaming magazine that came with a Pokemon TCG game for PC. It was the simple version of the game where you can never build your own deck etc and this creepy looking blond girl would teach you to play. However it was how I learned the basics of TCG and I teached the younger girl of my friends to play it too. My decks weren’t amazing and so weren’t hers but I mostly won. I had learned English more at the time and understood some of the card wording thanks to the PC game so I could translate the text to her as she being younger she knew less English than me. Even though she often lost she would keep playing with me which is something I really appreciate because my own sister never had interest in playing TCG with me. We used a playmat that also came with that same game magazine. I still have the playmat here and it also has some damage and dirt because we would often eat something while playing. My friend’s grandma would always offer something to eat, all the time! Just grandma things am I right?
Unfortunately there was the down side as in 6th grade (in 2004), I started to get bullied in school by 2 girls who tried to be so cool and so adult at the time even though we were all just 12. I was still quite child-minded back then. They wouldn’t even have plushes etc anymore or toys overall, while I still loved plushes and figures etc (and I still do at the age of 27, almost 28!). I got bullied because of my interests (and probably also by the fact that I was the “good kid” who never did anything wrong and always did what parents or teacheres told me to do). It’s unfortunate. I also had a friend who I was good friends with, but she also tried to be more adult in a sense. She was 11 and I was 12, so she was younger than me. She would come over to my house every morning before school because she wanted to watch me play Playstation. I enjoyed her company but she did some not-so-nice stuff such as starting to peel off some window paint art that I had done with Pokemon. I had a Treecko etc on my window and she started to peel them off saying stuff like “you shouldn’t like this anymore”… It wasn’t nice. Our friendship pretty much ended when I went to middle school and she was staying in elementary for one more year.
I finally got into buying TCG packs during this time of my life when I was in middle school. I can’t remember seeing any Neo or E-packs in stores here back in the day (or I didn’t know where to look for them), but when Ex Emerald was out I ended up noticing those packs at a grocery store. Of course I had to get some! I saw Rayquaza artwork and Rayquaza was already one of my favorite Pokemon at this time. This is where my collecting started to be a little bit more serious. Packs were finally back in stores here and every coin I would get I used on Pokemon cards. I loved the Emerald set as it had lots of my favorite Pokemon in it. This is why Ex Emerald is my all time favorite Pokemon set. The cards, the art, the Pokemon, the memories. Reverse holo pattern blew me away too and one day I ended up pulling my very first ex card, Raichu ex! I also loved booster pack art so much at the time that I put the packs on my wall. My sister would always tease me and ask “why do you have trash on your wall???”. Ex sets were amazing and my nostalgia for them is probably why it’s my favorite era. Nostalgia really has an effect on what ends up being someone’s favorite. For example WOTC-era isn’t my favorite but it’s probably because I don’t have the nostalgia of opening those packs. Meanwhile I opened lots of ex-stuff and enjoyed cards with my friends which makes it my favorite era. I never ended up pulling a Gold Star though.
I kept buying Pokemon cards. I was in middle school and while I tried to hide my Pokemon hobby and interest from the so-called cool kids to avoid bullying as those 2 girls that bullied me in elementary as they were in my class in middle school too… I made friends with a girl in middle school who also liked Pokemon and other similar things as me, so I made a new Pokemon friend, yay! When I saw her cards she had a Entei Gold Star… She still has it today, what a rip moment to have a Unseen Forces Gold Star as the only one. But the value doesn’t matter to her, but the memory that she got it and I told her that those were really hard to get and that I never got one from a pack myself.
And another of my friends in middle school started to have some interest in Pokemon cards thanks to me. She told me her mom had thrown all her Pokemon cards away some years ago along with her toys saying that she is too old for those things. She had like 1 or 2 plushes left and that was it. I thought that was insane. She clearly didn’t want to let go of those things so soon because I got her into buying Pokemon packs. She would hide her cards and I was so sorry for her but also glad that my mom never told me to stop my Pokemon hobby or to throw anything away that I had. One day we went to a kiosk and she bought one pack of Ex Legend Maker. One pack. And she pulled… A Registeel Gold Star! I couldn’t believe my eyes. One day I managed to get that from her though and ended up trading it for a FRLG Charizard ex. Idk if that was a smart move. She later lost interest in cards but I’m happy I could make her interested at least for a short time.
As you can see lots of things happened during this time of my life when it comes to Pokemon. I saw a commercial that had pokemon.fi -website on it. I was like wait a minute - a Finnish Pokemon website? I went there and through the official Finnish Pokemon site I found a Finnish Pokemon-forum which I joined. There I started a trade thread and ended up trading a looooot with other people. My trade thread was one of the biggest of the forum and I had hundreds of different trades there. It was crazy. The down side was that most of the people there were serious TCG players and I was just a collector who only played TCG for fun. I got some cards for my collection by trading competitive cards. I had stuff like Shining Charziard, Charizard Gold Star, and so on. I really enjoyed trading and took the forum very seriously.
I finally got my proper experience with Pokemon games at this time too. The younger one of my neighbor’s grandchildren got the original Nintendo DS as a Christmas gift and 2 games for it - Pokemon Emerald and Pokemon Diamond. I helped her a lot on Pokemon Emerald. And one day she did something amazing. She was going home and she said I could keep the DS for some days and complete Emerald for her if I wanted. To me that was like a dream. For years I wanted to have the proper experience of a Pokemon game and I finally got it thanks to her! I beat the game for her and she was just happy about it and not mad at all that she didn’t do it by herself. And to give her fairly new console for me for days to do it… It was super nice from her.
Trying to get more serious with TCG and getting older… (2008-2014)
In 2008 I went to a “vocational school”. It’s what they taught there on English classes what it was called. Basically you choose a field of study and after you graduate you should be ready to work. I chose IT and studied it for 3 years and graduated. During that time I continued my Pokemon hobby as normal. My class was full of nerds as you would imagine so I didn’t need to worry anyone making fun of my Pokemon hobby. People in my class would share Pokemon roms and we would play Pokemon and other games even in class sometimes. I still have those Pokemon roms saved here so I could boot anything up if I wanted. I ended up completing many Pokemon games that way, like R/S/E, FR/LG, DP… It was great. I was also with contact with the grandchildren of my neighbors for several more years.
As I was at the Finnish Pokemon forum I really started to get more interest in competitive TCG. I figured I could go check it out how tournaments are. The closest city with tournaments was (and still is) about 50 km away from me. I took a train to there and a guy from the forum would come meet with me and bring me to the tournament venue as I had no idea where it was. While it was nice to be surrounded with like-minded people, I felt a bit lonely there. It’s not easy for me to start speaking with anyone and it seemed like people already had created their own friend groups and knew each other. I knew most of those people from the forum so I started to combine usernames and faces in my head as it was common for them to be called with their forum name even irl (probably happens in E4 community too I’d argue?). Anyways I think I lost all games I played. I wasn’t very happy about my experience. I ended up going to a tournament again and that time a girl would be there who I spoke with a lot on forum DMs. She didn’t play and she came here only to check out how it is there and she brought cards with her. That time I enjoyed much more and she was already into buying stuff from Japan back then. She had PokePark cards and lots of stuff I had never seen before. She traded me some cards and I was very happy about it. That time I enjoyed much more, but my actual tournament results were trash as per usual. I got so nervous and always did stupid mistakes. The other players were so experienced and did everything so fast I was really lost about what was going on and got nervous about doing my decisions fast too. That kind of play really isn’t for me.
My cousin was also getting into Pokemon during this time. DP / HGSS era is his “nostalgia era” which is crazy to think about (he was born in 2000). He started to be interested in cards too and I taught him to play the card game. I also told him how there’s tournaments for it and everything. He started to get a lot of interest for that stuff and he asked his dad (my uncle) if he could bring us to tournaments. And he actually did a couple of times. The times we went together he would play in junior division and I would play in masters. I always did shit but he would always come home with some pack prizes as there were usually like from 2 to 5 players in junior division. Meanwhile masters was the biggest and most experienced division so I had no chance especially by always getting nervous. Once though there were so few participants overall that I ended up being 4th with 2 wins and I won one pack of Unleashed and got a Poliwag promo card for participating. I still have that card, maybe I should grade it just for the memory. I don’t think we ever went to tournaments again afterwards. I didn’t go alone and for some reason my uncle really didn’t want to bring us there anymore. My cousin was more interested in going than I was tbh. That’s how my competitive TCG phase ended haha.
And then finally in 2010 when I turned 18 years old my mom asked what I wanted for my birthday. I thought to myself, it will cost nothing if I ask… I said I would like to have a Nintendo DS. To finally make my dream come true and have a Nintendo handheld so I could play Pokemon games on a real console. And my mom actually ended up accepting my request and getting me a Nintendo DSi! I was so happy about it. I didn’t get any games for it though but the cousin of mine who was also into Pokemon and his family gave me a copy of Pokemon Platinum (this happened before our tournament adventures but I figured it’s hard to include these 2 things together). That’s how my own Nintendo hand held history finally started and since then I’ve gotten all the games (only choosing one version though).
As I was 18 that was when I also made my eBay account and started buying there. I’ve used eBay now for 10 years which sounds crazy!
When I graduated from vocational school and went to university I really started to rethink what I want from my Pokemon cards. I was collecting Charizard still at the time. Charizard, Salamence and Rayquaza mostly. I decided to stop collecting Charizard because it was getting expensive (this sounds ridiculous I know, if I thought Charizards were expensive back in 2011 imagine now!). I ended up selling my Charizard Gold Star etc on eBay to get some money. It was just temporary and I kinda regret doing it knowing the value of it now but it is how it is. It did feel right at that time as I was a student and used most of my money for bus so I could go to university and food so I could eat there. I didn’t have much spare so I sold some cards that I thought I didn’t need in my collection. I kept buying and opening new packs though. I never stopped with that.
I never finished my university though and for 2 years I didn’t study or didn’t manage to get a job. I was still living home with my mom and most of the money I got I still spent on Pokemon cards. Yup. That didn’t stop me.
A switch in collecting priorities and getting into graded cards, the “E4-era” (2015-2020)
I remember back in 2015 I was starting to be a little bit fed up with the Finnish Pokemon forum. It was getting quiet and was much less active than before. Less people wanted to trade or buy and most of the threads were about competitive TCG anyways. During the years of me trying to get into competitive TCG I realized I’m definitely more of a collector than a player. Which is why the Finnish forum didn’t really feel like my place anymore.
During the time of XY6 set’s release in Japan I remember Nauticads telling me about E4. I know him from the Finnish forum. I was interested in the XY6 set because Rayquaza was the main focus on it and I really wanted to get the Japanese box. I mostly had collected English cards at the time but the XY6 set interested me so much that I wanted to buy a box as I realized Japanese box are much cheaper than English, too. I bought it and Nauticads said there are cards in the box that can be redeemed for Shiny Rayquaza EX Promo card in Japan and that a guy on E4 (UPCCC at the time) could middle those. So I joined E4 and messaged Japanime to get my own Shiny Rayquaza EX. I didn’t join the forum full time back then though. I still tried to stay with the Finnish forum.
During this time I made some significant changes to my collecting. Opening XY6 was so fun that I decided I would start to get a box of every Japanese set that comes out going forward. Japanese boxes were so much cheaper compared to English and getting almost a full set of R/U/C in one box was amazing and I liked how Japanese cards looked. That’s where I made a proper switch to Japanese and I don’t regret it at all. I still buy some English packs here and there but definitely significally less than before.
I also bought my first ever graded card from Nauticads which was a PSA 9 Power Keepers Salamenc ex. I still have the card today. I slowly started to buy graded cards on eBay. I remember thinking how expensive they were but I was still often checking them out. At first I only bought Salamences but I started to get more and more of my favorite Pokemon and cards that I liked. I started to learn more about PSA graded cards, watched videos by Gem Mint Pokemon, Pokemonmaster556 and so on. I gained knowledge and at one point I finally made my very first PSA submission with Ludkins Collectables. Today I have about 400 graded cards in my collection so my collection has grown a lot in 5 years. I really enjoy this side of the hobby too. I still have various binder collections too.
I moved out to live alone in 2015 and had various work phases during the time that helped me gain more money and spend more with Pokemon. And I’ve been employed full time since 2018 so it has helped my collecting significally. Right now I’m happy with where I am with my collection and I’m happy that I decided to use E4 actively years ago. I never looked back at the Finnish forum. It’s basically dead these days and I don’t miss it at all as we have a proper collecting community here which I feel I definitely belong into more than a competitive scene.
If you took the time to read all of this - THANK YOU! I hope you enjoyed my history.
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@king Pokémon With the kool guy shades haha
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haha but wait, I do have a slight cure for that! That is to always keep young at heart and continue to stay true to yourself for with that, youll always be the same regardless of a few differing things from us “younger” folk 
and I will. Thanks for the kind words from everyone!
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@xzini I loved your write up!!! Funny because when you were mentioning it on discord I did not expect it to be so well thought out and long similar to mine haha, but i love a nice long tale!
I really enjoyed hearing your perspective though on someone who had a nostalgia from a non WOTC era of the tcg which is really great to see. Similar to my differing love for Neo/Gen 2, that emotional and real connection aspect could be seen in all parts of the hobby and that piece is what ive learned to be the best aspect of Pokemon overall because we can all take and adopt a part of it to make our own to share with others. Aside from that, i also really honor your continuation in the hobby throughout you lifetime as well which is something i wish I was able to keep my eyes and sight on myself. But, with all things considering, im still happy to have gotten back to it all now and happy to have have found this forum to meet someone like yourself to befriend in the hobby.
Thanks again for the share!
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@xzini Amazing story. I love how these stories are starting with the roots. I’ll have to check out your collection if I havnt already. Sounds like you have quite the collection it’s also funny how we all seemed to go thru a sort of hide my hobby because it’s no longer kool or simply stop collecting and rejoined later. I feel spoiled now to not have had to wait for packs or games growing up. But congratulations to your collection and great story! I’m glad you stuck with it and are so engaged in the hobby!
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Such a great idea, I haven’t felt that way reading long texts full of Pokemon experience for a solid 10-15 years, and the feeling is amazing.
@butchdawg32, the video is funny, brilliant, and moving. It’s superbly put together and is a gasp of fresh air: some humility lessons there. And I love the way the kid in yourself takes over to tell the story.
@dizzle24 , it is a darker story, but it is warming to see that your love for Pokemon and its universe survived all of your adventures. And to see that nothing, however overwhelming, can’t be overcome. Congrats on having found the spirit to win your fights!
@xzini , I can really relate to your story, from uncompromising parents (no TCG booster packs or sodas or video games before I was quite old) to the early days of internet and the Poke-Web, and the various playthroughs on Emerald, Platinum leading eventually to an interest in graded cards!
Thanks all for sharing these stories, Im looking forward to reading more!
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Reading/watching these posts has really inspired me to try and do something similar. So if it’s still possible to be added to the calendar I might give it a go. It would probably take a while to write everything though. 
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Sweet! I’ve got it marked in my calendar.
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