If someone was entering the hobby in 2024, how easy/difficult would it be to replicate your collection? Would it be possible at all? Why/Why not?
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Anything is possible, but I think replicating many of the e4 collections would be financially challenging / time consuming
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Mostly easy peasy. I don’t think I have any real hard-to-get items (maybe some non-TCG items might be harder to get?), and pretty much everything is a non-graded set card, so not that much conditional rarity to boast either. But I’m also on the budgetier side of collecting, I think.
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My collection is all set cards except a mysterious Pearl and an arena, so I don’t think it’d be too hard to replicate. My special E4 signature binder along with my staff league / prerelease collection can’t be replicated ezpz.
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Interesting topic. If someone had 15k and a computer I’m 90% confident they could acquire every card I own in a day and 99% confident they could acquire it in a month.
The only thing that would be impossible to replicate are the memories and stories behind them.
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This is a really interesting question- I like it.
As for me, the bulk of my collection is made up of niche Piplup line cards. Prior to cobbling together my master list myself, there was no single resource for all of the cards and cameos in every language. Assuming you’re starting without all of that, you’re looking at spending dozens of hours on research alone.
Even discounting all of that, you’d need to both be able to find all of the niche releases I’ve acquired and be prepared to sink a decent chunk of change into shiny cardboard with little blue penguins on them. I had only found one Russian Piplup for sale in the nearly three years I’ve been looking, for example.
The non-Piplup part of my collection, made up of my childhood binder, full arts and other shinies binder, and standard playables boxes, would be annoying to try to find for decent prices, but theoretically could be done with enough capital. The playables box is comprised of years worth of collecting both English standard/GLC and Japanese GLC playable cards, which again, with enough time and capital, could be done.
The main issue in trying to build a mirror to my personal collection, and I’m assuming many collections here as well, would likely come from the fact that it would cost way more to acquire today than I spent for it. I’ve had the luxury of being able to be patient and wait for good deals on auction (or mislabeled items), but if you’re trying to snap cards into a collection as quickly as possible, you’ll be paying monetarily for the time not spent instead.
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The cards themselves wouldn’t be that hard to find but it would cost would be expensive. Not like over 10k expensive but still expensive. So it’s doable but I guess it just depends on the individual’s situation
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Most of my cards are available, just a little expensive so it would take some time to complete but less than 10k and you would be there by tomorrow.
But it’s irreplaceable because the memories that were made along the way around who I purchased things from and how I got the cards I did.
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Hard to say. It would be very expensive to buy and open all the booster boxes I have bought and opened, some of them are more difficult to find than others, but on the whole I think it would be a piece of cake to any wealthy person.
The value and attainability of the cards depend on how they’ll grade, the range is enormous.
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Some of my collection would be easy to get if the person had a decent amount of money and a eBay/Buyee account. Since some of my collection also contains niche cards graded by PSA in 9 or 10, you might have to wait a bit before they pop up, but eventually they should.
The other side of my collection would be hard/near impossible at the moment since they are autographed cards from different artists, and some don’t sign anymore or rarely sign at all. I suppose if the person is just looking for a signed card without caring about the type of card, condition, or sketch, it would be much easier.
Overall, If the person is trying to get my exact collection, it would be very difficult since I collect in niche areas and finding certain cards signed with particular sketches would be near impossible. If they are just trying to get a similar collection neglecting grades and other factors, it’s fairly easy if they have the money and patience.
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I like the question. It would be almost impossible (funny enough due to my sealed wigglytuff bisharp trainer deck), but also because of variant versions of decks that arent often found. Current market cost to replicate my deck collection I think estimates out to $60-75k? And thats only if you can find them.
Unfortunately its a lost investment because if you try selling a deck collection youll immediately have to expect a 50% drop in sale value, maybe more if the market isnt there for it.
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With patience, easy. I happily share my Raichu english master list. There’s maybe 10 hard to get cards in that. But if you took your time it’s very achievable
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Brand new? I imagine it might be very difficult - especially if you’re fresh starting out and only just learning about certain resources. The TCG side of my collection would be the easiest of course - with exception to signed and error cards. The non-TCG side I imagine would be borderline nightmarish. I used to watch listings 2 to 3 times daily for certain items and sometimes that level of commitment lasted way too long. Some items didn’t pop up more than once between 5, 10, or 15 years before the next one appeared.
Granted, as time has gone on, more and more folks have catalogued the non-TCG side of things and I’ve noticed a trend with the non-TCG: The more people become aware of them and the more they are shared with others, the more niche stuff starts appearing online for sale than ever before. This happened with certain postcard sets, TOMY Scratch cards, and even stickers.
In general, I think if the hobby’s interest continues to become more refined, it’d be much easier and a shorter length of time for someone to replicate my collection - though it would never be exact. After all, I didn’t think I’d be able to surpass collection goals with the Gyarados collector that inspired me to keep going. They actually reached out to me recently because of a 5 year old message I sent them on a since-defunct website. Despite having surpassed the amount of unique items, he STILL has stuff that I have never have or even seen yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone would be able to get even more than what I have today given enough time. They might not get everything I have, but I’d bet they had things I could only dream of having or didn’t even know existed.
It’d actually be kind of exciting to see.
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Easy enough i cant imagine any of my prerelease or staff prerelease cards are too hard to find. Might take a while and a little bit of searching but so far nothing has been too hard to get. Only thing is condition on them might be difficult to match as i tend to only grab ones in really nice shape.
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It would probably be 3-10x the money and time it cost me
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Harder today than it was last week. I’d like to think as my knowledge grows, it becomes harder and harder to replicate.
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Very tough but nowhere near impossible just will require patience
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If you mean replicate as in obtain the same cards in the same grades, I’d say it would not be all that difficult provided one had enough money, which would be orders of magnitude above what I spent. In fact, I’d say it would be easier today than when I did it because the hobby is so much bigger and there is way more being sold now than there was when I was building several of my major goals.
However, I think building my collection the same way I have built it would be very challenging today. My main technique for building my graded card collection has been sourcing raw cards and grading them myself. For example, building a full Japanese old ex set in PSA 10 by grading raw mint cards 10s is much harder in 2024 than it was in 2016.
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Impossible.
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Impossible. I have multiple pop 1 cards, some that haven’t appeared in over a decade. I think the best way to answer this question is there are plenty of people with a lot more money today yet they haven’t been able to compile comparable collections. Even with infinite money it won’t make cards magically appear.
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