Totally agree. You echo a main part of my point above, to have a shot at all you’re looking to get you have to dig deeper to optimize and think about what should be bought when. There are way more eyes in the market today
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As someone who joined the hobby in late 2019 (right when things started to get heated), fomo has been a continuous companion. And at its worst, it took a heavy toll on my mental health.
However, it’s not all bad. I hate to admit it, but without the fomo, my collection wouldn’t be what it is today. There are so many cards that would take many years to get if I hadn’t bought them when I had the chance, and some are already out of reach if I wouldn’t own them right now. For older Pokemon cards, there certainly is something as warranted fomo.
In my experience, this also separates an actual collector’s hobby like Pokemon from a money-driven hobby like many NFT collections I’ve invested in. There was also fomo in the latter, but it was temporary and hence unwarranted because just a few months later, you could have bought the NFTs for a fraction of the price. On the other hand, the prices for 95% of my collected PSA10 cards have never retraced since I got them, all while the market is supposed to be in a cool-down phase. It scares me tbh.
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Me too, there was certainly an element of fomo when I bought a lot of boxes over a decade ago. I knew it was now or never, probably wouldn’t get the chance later on, which I was certainly right about. I had expected to have more money in the future, but other things to spend them on. The way it played out, didn’t have that much more money and I had even more things I needed money for than I previously imagined. And Pokemon became a lot more expensive than I had dared to dream of.
It was also…tohmo? Trauma of having missed out 
I wanted to have the experience of opening an entire box, not just buying 3-4 packs with a pit in my stomach i.e the childhood experience.
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Like everyone my fomo took place during covid. It was a black swan event and im not too concerned anymore. Stuff moves more slowly now which means fomo does not happen.
But a thread on the biggest fomo decisions during 2020-2021 would be interesting. I bet every single person here has a crazy story or 2
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100%. I think modern is worse today than 2020. If there is a silver lining, the 2020 new wave of demand was more spread through vintage and modern, where today modern is such a crazy bottleneck. I’ve never been so turned off from something I like (English modern).
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The Giant 2020-21 FOMO thread needs to happen…
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You know, 2020 WAS a traumatic experience, not necessarily in a bad way, but it was shocking, and upsetting, and created a sense of potential loss in many ways. Just like any jolt to the system, it would be natural if it DID create for most of us, some irrational instinct to jump at perceived opportunities.
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So, I was going through stock and as I’m running out of space in my current storage solutions, I’ve noticed, I have a comfy position in the things I want, and while there are some still good deals popping up, I don’t need to buy. I think while I don’t have strong FoMO, there is a sense of “is it enough? What if I did just a little more?” I imagine this is similar to how traditional investors feel about their investments. So, I’m going to be switching venues and sticking to PkMn in a collecting vein ONLY for a while. See what happens. I’m tracking the things I would buy were I buying, but I wonder if the final stages of FoMO need to be purged from my system.
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That has been my exact experience as well.
After gaining some experience, the “I have to buy this scramble croagunk right now!” turns into “even if I don’t get it, there are 100 other really cool rare cards I could track down”.
I think more people who entered during the last hype cycle are figuring out that there is no need to rush into purchases, which could be a factor in the current market lull
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Thanks to this forum (and learning a lot), I can say that I unFOMOed myself -at least- regarding the majority of set cards and binder copies.
I’m still working on it, since the pandemic was a traumatic event for me. Looking back to my thoughts and decisions I can really say that I wasn’t thinking clearly.
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Because I think this is an important topic and worth a revisit from time to time, I have also managed to successfully un-FoMo-poison myself. I was at the early part of this year, certainly bored with many things, and this hobby was one of them, but…
…by focusing on my goals, a few small easily attained and grander in scale; one larger chase card/set; I was able to rejuvenate my desire in collecting. I also wonder if the FoMo frenzy followed quickly by the deluge of modern full arts and rarities was just too much to process. Maybe I was overwhelmed.
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I’ve been playing gacha mobile games for over a decade where the experience is entirely FOMO since entire game strategies/builds can be locked out because you decided not to shell out money during a 2 week period over a 3+ year long lifespan of the game.
I don’t really feel this issue in Pokemon collecting at least since I know even super rare cards with the exception of a few will show up eventually somewhere for some price.
Maybe it’s copium but sometimes being unobtainable (from missing out at the period of time) is what makes certain aspects of the hobby magical, at least to me. Like as a species collector, damn I sure do wish I was the person who won the auction on the sample set eevee cards from a bajillion years ago. In my mind that will always be that cool legendary thing that exists as part of history.
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