Rising prices are stressful, and it’s getting harder to find joy in hobby, but it can still be found 
Where have y’all been finding joy recently?
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:))))))))
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Saw someone local reorganising a binder full of their favourite bat Pokemon at a local league recently. A big mix of cards/eras/conditions, just whatever they could get hold of without thinking or caring about cost.
Made me realise there’s still a lot of new genuine collectors out there enjoying the hobby despite how insane the market has become in recent years. 
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Selling/trading off my extras has been very enjoyable. Narrowing down my collection to what I enjoy the most is the way
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I’ve found my joy recently in redoing my collection spreadsheets, adding more pokemon to my list of species collections, and starting to collect all languages for my primary species, Sableye :]
I’ve also been enjoying vending at my local shows to sell my older expensive cards that don’t spark joy anymore (mostly BW/XY)
Expanding the scope of your collection and trying to catalogue every last thing that fits into it can be a lot of fun! And a lot of stress once you inevitably learn about an unfindable japanese lottery promo you never knew existed. And costs 40 thousand dollars.
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Im grateful for what I have after seeing how prices are now and not having to worry about being priced out too much.
One of the biggest benefit of staying with the hobby for many years.
Also, pretty happy about telling one of my friends who is very new to collecting about southern islands. He likes it so much, he bought the whole binder set on ebay.
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I’m finding it fun to try to keep up with newer sets and ripping a tiny bit. I feel it brings me back to my roots as that’s probably how we all started collecting.
I also might be weird but I’m actually a fan of pokemon/collecting social media. While I admit there is a bunch of cringe, I find a lot of joy in seeing other people’s collections big and small. I don’t mind seeing other people flex cards that I’ll probably never be able to own. Just seeing the cards is a pleasure.
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The cards that I want are like -20-40% all time high, so I am still pretty happy but still priced out. Alsoo I enjoy looking at niche promos a lot and honestly the more you’re off social media the easier it is to enjoy Pokemon to wipe off the noise
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I’ve actually enjoyed being back to selling on eBay. I’m off during the week usually (when my girlfriend and everybody else are at work) so I have a lot (too much sometimes) of idle time. It’s been a good time killer. It’s also been pretty entertaining reading the stupid messages I get. I’m living the eBay Garbage thread now 
As far as actually collecting, I’m working on binders of all the old back Japanese sets. It’s been a refreshing change of pace honestly, going from obsessing over PSA 10 master sets to just enjoying the cards.
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i love making a binder that has cards i simply enjoy when i look through it. i mostly go for the art not the price, even though i do have some expensive cards.
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I’ve recently started collecting mid era full arts and am working on a light play to moderate play condition binder. I never really paid attention to these before, but I’m having a lot of fun discovering and hunting down these beautiful cards. My goal is to spend $50-75 or less per card and also am okay mixing in Japanese versions as needed.
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- Rearranging binders
- contemplating new, cheap collection goals
- saving up for previous goals
- appreciating illustrators that I hadn’t before
- interacting with the wonderful people of e4
- Participating in events (like @crindy’s mail exchange)
- learning about new cards and working on my blog
And more!
Also more recently I’ve been prepping for the signature exchange
Sneak peek:
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I think you and Big J know where 
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Species collecting. Now it still does kinda suck if your species is Charizard or Umbreon…but with 1000+ pokemon these days, there are lots of great options that provide a good mix of lots of cards, rarities, cameos, high and low end., etc.
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My latest joy has been my backlog of unread threads clearing project on E4, so much fun discussion and collections! Other than that there’s a lot of joy too for example in new cheap AR cards, making fun binder pages for certain artists with a personal style and species collecting in general. I’m doing my best to dodge the toxicity so both people and the cards + other merch in the hobby are still extremely enjoyable for me.
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I found joy in expanding my species collection to all languages! I was mostly done with English minus some stuff out of my price range currently. So it’s been nice finding so much joy in picking up literal hundreds of bulk cards again. Joy can be found in all corners of the hobby!
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