Hello friends, fellow collectors and everyone else,
I suppose this post is a long time in the making (there were several people who knew or at least had an idea this was coming). The first thing I’d like to say is thank you all for the last 5 years. Pokemon, collecting, hunting, trading, selling, running a store and most of the conversations have made up such a huge part of my life during those years. I’ve learned so much and you’ve all helped me grow. Thank you all for everything.
Where should I start? Like many of you, I got my start playing the video game. I have a lot of vivid memories, mostly frustration about having to find batteries for the early generation. I can clearly recall the start menu on my pokemon gold having over 200 hours. countless hours spent running in fields hoping to find a larvatar or pupitar and not damn ursaring. Tyranitar is bae, tyranitar life and tyranitar is love haha. I played variations of the games over the years and even went back to play the older versions. I picked up the game again during a job overseas where I had broken my foot. My package got stuck on a boat and took 30 days to get overseas. During the time I was waiting for my new DS and pokemon games to arrive I started looking up pokemon and pokemon collectibles. I came across Primetime Pokemon and SMGquest. I originally wanted to get a few of my favorite cards to make a poster board for my wall and hang them next to my variant comic book covers. Over the course of the deployment i kept buying more and more cards. This was around 2012 and I started to really enjoy it. Then came my surgery for my foot and all the follow on issues.
I used to be a very physically active, outgoing and adventurous person. This injury, the surgery, and the amount of complications given by the military made my recovery less than adequate(torn tendon, shaved bone to fix, broken to angle up). At first walking or standing for longer than 10 minutes left my feet in a lot of pain and swelling. It made it very difficult to even participate in what i used to do and the pain sapped the fun out of any activities I could do. It eventually took me about 2-2 1/2 years to be able to walk, hike and even run without much pain. I’ve learned to take ownership of the fact that I still could have done something during these last few years. Being extremely sedentary with all these injuries has made the road to full duty difficult, but not impossible. As soon as one injury healed or got stronger, either another injury would flare or some yet unknown weakness would break. I’m glad to say that I am doing much better. The reason I saying all of this is not for any sort of sympathy. I want you to all know what pokemon, collection and being part of this community has helped me through. I was not the best version of myself during this time. Partly, I used this hobby and community as a way to avoid dealing with all the issues in my life. From this I’d like you all to take away that you never know what someone else is going through, so be kind to those you meet, offer a friendly smile or kind words. You never know how much it could mean.
I have several reasons for selling off my collection. The first of which is monetary. I am currently in my 4th year of undergraduate with another year left. My goal is to get into a DPT (doctorate of physical therapy school) and they require their own pre-requisites outside of the BS. It takes about 5-6 years for most to be able apply except for the few rigorous schools that have it set up as a 7 year direct pipeline. I am trying to pay off any debt that I have so I can get loans for DPT program and even a little help at the end of this 5 year B.S. My other reasons are that as I am getting physically healthy, I am working on the mental, social and spiritual strength and health that I lost during those times I was injured. Some of these goals are lofty, other are selfish and other things I feel I need to do to regain what I’ve lost.
My two biggest goals are to own my dream car and to help rebuild and unite my family. These are dreams that I’ve had for so long and I feel that now is the time. This year feels like a turning point in my life. I no longer have the time to invest in pokemon and to be honest seeing my cards started to remind me of the things I neglected. Balance is healthy in life and I hope that my future direction will have it. There are other hobbies that I’ve stopped doing and I miss it.
Why I went with PWCC? They offer the biggest visibility, they same fee if I were to sell it myself while doing nothing more than filling out paperwork & shipping. I don’t have the time to organize, list and ship 515 pokemon cards. I know that cards under $50 or 100 have an added fee of $5-6 plus a %. I understand I could have sold them myself. However, I believe overall I will get at least the same amount of money. I also went with PWCC due to stress that is involved with selling this many cards. DPT school is very competitive and I need to keep getting A’s to make myself stand out. I understand there are several draw backs to the way the current auction is set up.
Originally I had shipped my orders to them in groups. Group A to G/F. They were organized according to series and types. Group B was all the secret rares. Group A was all the higher end PSA 10 ex. Group C was all the Full Arts etc. I wanted to have each group on it’s own day spread out over 3 weeks. PWCC has days allotted to types of cards and years. Had I spread it out the only option would be half now and half in a month. What it comes down to is that this was the best decision for me given the options. Early last year I had car trouble and that’s why i finally started selling things. I wanted to do it all with PWCC however I needed a car ASAP and I sold some stuff on my own. The car still doesnt work and I’m out $4500 plus another $3k+ for school. Doing that small auction on my own solidified my desire to use PWCC to manage this huge collection.
There is much more going on, but this covers a large portion of the story. I hope it helps you all to understand what has been going on for me over the years and what this hobby has meant to me during that time. I still have several Tyranitars (especially the newer ones and my 1st ed discovery psa 10). If anyone wants to chat just message me. I will be leaving my IG and YT up.
¡Gracias por todo mis amigos!
Michael Parr
