So not Pokémon related per se. But made a pretty dumb mistake buying a baseball card and feeling like the sellers knew I didn’t know what I was looking at. Kinda wish I did my due diligence and did some more research. Thankfully it wasn’t a bunch of money but was still expensive enough (under $500 but over $200). Nevertheless what’s done is done. Feeling bad about it.
Have you ever made a mistake when buying a card?
Think you’d be hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t 
despite my wisdom, I do this all the time
I’ve bought cards many times where my brain wants it to be in better condition than it is, and I pay NM prices for a MP card. I have plenty of time to look it over, but excitement gets the better of me and I miss something obvious like whitening on the middle edges 
Low pop PSA 10s
I bought a psa 9 gameboy lugia for $600 a couple years ago
and do they become high pop psa10s in a short time after you bought them?
During safety trainings I was made aware of the 2 bucket analogy, which I personally think is applicable in all aspects of life.
You have 2 buckets in life. One full bucket called luck and one empty bucket called experience. The aim is to fill your experience bucket completely before your luck bucket is empty.
Almost, all good decisions come from learned experience and application of those previous lessons to your current situation. Unfortunately, more often than not, experience is obtained by surviving bad decisions and borrowing a little bit from the luck bucket.
Of course, this is just a wild analogy which emphasizes luck as being a major factor but the point is as long as you have learnt something, you should be good to go further.
Cheers!
Happens a lot 
The trick is to not fomo and always sleep on it, especially if you only recently started “wanting” the card.
Too many collectors go into bad debt to buy cardboard as they get addicted to the chase / flex.
Good debt is fine if managed correctly.
Also it’s good to remind yourself that there will 99% of the time be another opportunity to buy it, even if it’s low pop.
Happens all the time, I rush a deal too much and then I noticed a light scratch or a little white spot on the card that I thought was mint.
Not really since the ones I did pick up were 1st Edition WOTC & ex. Moreso additional copies showed up on the market, demand was based on a label premium rather than the card itself.
I still like the cards I picked up but in retrospect a 9 would’ve been more than fine. When you see prices tank and start feeling a sense of existential dread, you know you were mainly chasing conditional rarity.
Lessons learned. Part of this is growing as a person and knowing what you want.
Non-tcg is quite a ride of mistakes both when buying stuff and when not buying stuff. I’ve naturally severely overpaid for cheap stuff and even bootlegs when i’ve thought i’ve found something rare, but the even more painful experience is not to buy something and realise your mistake only later. I’ve not bought stuff when i have thought i can do that later only to find myself still searching another listing after 4 years, i’ve not bought something since i’ve felt it’s too pricy only to buy it 5x more expensive when i realise the value of it, i’ve not bought it since it’s so obscure i’ve thougt it can’t be official, and i’ve not bought it since i’ve thought i already have it only to discover it was a variant i didn’t know exists.
Thank you everyone for your replies. Lesson learned but still wasn’t fun
I can definitely relate as I’m on the cheaper side when it comes to buying things 
I’m always thinking about whether something will come up cheaper in a future listing and am not too familiar with the rarity of a lot of non-TCG items.
I once paid $600 for a card that’s is now worth under $50. I’ve made many mistakes and I’m sure I will make many more but that’s all part of the journey.
There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.
My hobby is mass bidding on ebay auctions I think I have no chance of winning during times of emotional crisis, winning them all, bugging out, and then charging several hundred dollars to my credit card.
I do this several times a year.
It makes my collection really fun to flip through though, it’s all over the place lol.
It also increased my credit score 
My biggest regrets in the hobby have always been not buying things as opposed to buying them.
For every time I’ve “overpaid” for an item that has gone down in value, there are five times I’ve “overpaid” for an item that I would never be able to obtain at today’s prices. For every time I’ve taken a risk on a card and it turned out to be in garbage condition, there are many more times I’ve taken a risk and it’s turned out to be mint. Tl;dr, collecting involves risk, and if you don’t take risks because you’re afraid of making mistakes, you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunity.
The only real mistakes I think I’ve made are faults of judgement or a lack of due diligence on my part. Occasionally I’ve been bidding mint prices on Yahoo auctions and not reading the description fully (where flaws in the card are noted). I also have been scammed a few times on Yahoo/buyee, but the listing was suspicious and I should have noticed the red flags and not been so careless.
Its not really a mistake, but I sometimes wish I bought one or two more very large ticket items rather than buying say 30 or so $100ish cheaper items. While the quantity made me happy early on, I am sort of at that point where I now know I don’t need everything and rather focus a little more on quality vs quantity…that is after I finish a couple sets I’m looking to complete
Besides the “I didn’t get rich like I could have” or “I didn’t buy this $50K item when it was $300,” not a lot of mistakes, no.
I bought the wrong box one time, I was in a hurry to get 1st ed Gym Challenge for some reason when I should’ve bought Expedition. And I’ve bought singles a handful of times, which really isn’t my thing.