I feel your pain. I grew up poor myself so I tend to stay modest. I also like to collect raw ungraded cards myself too as you know already :-). The fact that almost any card worth collecting is being graded is kind of frustrating. I find myself buying near mint/mint cards that are more like light played. Or there are plenty of sellers not disclosing the fact the card has a dent or crease. Sometimes they angle the card so you can’t see the damage. I understand for old wotc cards but it’s very annoying when it happens when buying more modern eras. PSA graded cards are great but a modest collector that isn’t flipping cards like myself or you for example don’t want to pay the psa premium. I’m happy with what I have tho. Just figured I’d share my concern as well. It is what it is tho
I literally started a side hustle eBay business to be able to afford dropping a few hundred on Pokemon a month. I’ve also been lucky enough to sell stuff off to make higher end items more affordable. Remember to never live outside of your means because I felt myself slipping during the last year with price increases!
Check yourself before you wreck yourself.
For years now I have been as focused on what I do with my time as with my money. Work has typically required 2-3 days per week of travel. Coupled with 8am to 7pm days when not on the road, family, exercise, etc, time is a huge constraint. I have worked in the same field for over 20 years now. Retirement is basically my next major financial goal and I’m not in a huge hurry.
COVID has allowed me the time to build a large Pokemon collection and in all honesty probably get years of collecting into just 6 months. I have sort of raced to do it not exactly knowing when the work/life balance may swing back the other way for me. I always take money into consideration, but I want to make sure I have enough time to both digest (organizing and cataloguing cards is a bear) and enjoy what I purchase.
What my dad told me when I was young.
“If you can buy something that isn’t a necessity, stop and think, and again. If it doesn’t stop you from looking after yourself or your family, you can buy it without worrying”
Probably sounded better in chinese.
Agreed, and I found that quote of “if my whole collection went to $0/burnt up I’d be fine” a little disingenuous because it seems very clear that a large amount of this forum has significant amounts of their net worth tied to collectibles and mainly Pokemon.
@azulryu I think it’s best to step away from efour and Instagram sometimes and go to places like Reddit for example because you’d be surprised how excited people still get for cards that are not worth all that much. This is especially true for my main collectible comics as I see people excited all the time for showing off their favorite books, which are usually worth like $30 and don’t have an “investment” future
I was the one who said that. I never said the quote speaks for everyone. But it speaks for me. If my entire collection went up in flames my life plans would remain the same.
And the quote is not even just a metaphor, since our collections are made of cardboard it’s something I’ve thought about literally. I would never want to put myself in a position in which one incident of bad luck had a significant impact on my life.
I do agree that many people are in a different position, who would be in a serious pickle if suddenly their collection vanished overnight. But I don’t speak for them, only for myself.
That’s fair and that’s great to be in that position, but it wouldn’t even hurt a little financially to have hundreds of thousands of dollars disappear? That’s a home, or a lifetime worth of international traveling, or a child’s college education, gone.
If a person had several hundred thousand dollars of their money in the stock market, you wouldn’t be asking how they could do that and still expect to buy a house, travel, and pay for their kids’ college education one day.
Again, that’s why I mentioned that I justify my purchases in large part because I view these items as alternative assets.
Granted, these assets come with more risk than other types of assets. Some might even call it “speculation.” But regardless of what terminology you want to use, I have an understanding that when I buy cards that I could sell them one day should I ever have need of the money. (Although hopefully that won’t be necessary.)
But I’m not putting all my eggs in one basket and I would strongly advise against anyone doing that for any type of financial asset, and that especially applies to something as volatile as collectibles.
I’ll say it again - it’s not something I would bother parking my money into at all if I did not love owning the cards.
This is me. As long as all bills and food are covered I’ll buy what I can afford
I have never paid more than $1k for any single collectible in my life so I’m not in the same category as many of you but most of my purchases have come (incoming hate from everyone here) flipping cards and sealed product over the years on ebay. I have been collecting long enough to know what was a good deal and when to cash out and upgrade my collection. How i justify my purchases is that no matter how much i make from my job and such, my purchases rarely come from my pocket. I just consider what I do trading with using ebay as the middleman.
@pokecollectoramy, I do scour through Reddit at times and have bumped into a few members there as well. I should do more of that too if I ever feel like taking a break. Thank you for the suggestion!
One of the fascinating things I’ve noticed from this hobby is just how ridiculous sometimes prices spike before settling down. It’s quite literally watching the stock market at times. Prices rise like crazy and suddenly you see people selling the same things like crazy, but then it drops to a crazy low price so people start buying until it eventually steadies out. There have been a couple of outliers, of course, where the rise continues to climb exponentially.
I’ve mainly set a global threshold to myself for my savings account; a certain amount I don’t want to go below (20k euros right now, to put it into context). This only applies to the expensive purchases, though (250+ USD). Everything below it, like new Pikachu set releases, are just being bought when I find them. This does mean that if I’m below it due to those smaller purchases (which includes Hyper Rares…), I try to get it back up again before making any big purchases.
Just to give a quick overview of my life situation: I have a good-paying full-time job (for my age) as software developer; still live with my parents; and don’t have any major expenses besides my collectibles.
A few years back (< 2018) I used to put ~40% of my wages on my savings account every month, and had everything else to spend on collectibles. At that time, when I was only collecting Pikachu cards and twisty puzzles and had never bought any card/puzzle above 500 USD, I could easily get by with this strategy. And I actually could put more money on my savings account manually every few months, despite everything I bought for my collections.
Now I collect a lot more at once, and have bought five cards for over 2k USD thus far (I’m hunting more higher end stuff for these collections, since the lower-end is mostly covered by now). From January 1st to December 31st in 2019, my savings account dropped by about 10k euros despite having worked that full year. Not really an issue, and it can easily be explained: I started my National Index collection including shining Pokémon (i.e. Gold Stars and Neo Destiny triple stars); I bought The Masked Royal and Extra Battle Day promos for my FA Supporter collection; I bought some Art Academy cards for my Pikachu collection, and little over 200 Pikachu cards have been released in 2019 alone (which quickly adds up despite the low individual cost - don’t forget shipping costs for example); I started my Yu-Gi-Oh rarity collection, which also included one 2k card, and about ten above 250 USD; and I bought all five Ancient Mew cards in PSA-10 (also roughly ~1.5k in total). So yeah, I basically just bought A LOT in 2019, haha.
Right now my new strategy is to not go below the 20k euros on my savings account when making big purchases. 20k of course still sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that since a few years ago it’s close to impossible to buy a house as a starter here in The Netherlands, without at least some money in addition to that. Mortgages we can receive from the banks are at an all-time low, and a lot of the more affordable houses they built to help starters are bought up as entire streets/blocks by large foreign countries to use for rental houses or simply as capital investment. Although I’m happy living with my parents right now, I of course have to think about the future as well. Also, once I have a house with mortgage and hopefully family with kids (currently still single), daily expenses will be higher as well, so I wouldn’t be able to spend as much as I do right now.
Tbh, it’s kind of a dilemma in today’s market. I want to slow down, save more money, and buy the cards I want perhaps a year from now. But at the same time I know the price might be doubled or even tripled by that time and it would be better to buy it right now… Anyway, I won’t be starting any new collections anymore (I hope, haha), and since I’ve been able to acquire a lot of nice cards in the past few months for my collection goals and am closer to finishing some of them, I can use my time and money to focus on the remaining collections (i.e. Pikachu), and mainly keep up with new releases.
A few other relevant minor notes:
- I have a company car for which I only pay around 120 euros each month (including gas). I used to have my own car, but someone crashed into me and it was total loss (fun fact: I bought it for 4.2k euros, drove in it for about a year before the crash, and received 5k euros from the insurance, haha. My little brother said I should buy a new car and let someone crash into it again
). - I’ve never had any major health issues, and here in The Netherlands the health insurance covers almost anything (to some extend). When I was born it already costed roughly 100k Gulden (old Dutch currency; probably ~45k USD at the time) to save my life from what I’ve heard (helicopter; three different hospitals; surgery; being attached to a brand-new breathing machine; etc.), but unlike some countries (i.e. the USA), it’s all covered by health insurance here in my country, as long as you have health insurance and pay for it every month of course.
- I only go on vacation once or twice a year, so there also aren’t a lot of large expenses from that side.
- I don’t have any study debts.
TL;DR: As long as I don’t drop below a set amount on my savings account, I will make high-end purchases.
Greetz,
Quuador
I’m quite content with lower grades (7s & 8s) for high end cards so always consider what’s the lowest grade I’d be happy with for any particular card. Saving half the price of a card for a little which nick makes a lot of sense to me.
Yolo
I don’t think that’s something to be ashamed of. I started last year when I was still in college with no job so I was working with a set amount of money I’d earned from the Summer before. I basically spent time learning the market and finding deals, ended up making some decent cash. Now that I’ve graduated and got a job, I’m building my own collection while still finding those deals. I think as long as you have a passion for the hobby people shouldn’t hate for that
Never said i was ashamed of that. The issue is that there is a stigma on most places about “flippers”. I personally think having flippers is healthy for the hobby as it promotes growth. If something does not have value you aren’t going to have flippers. There is an issue when some of them are scummy and do things like cancel orders when the price goes up. I never do that. But I was the same way as you. Started when I was 15 so I def did not have a job so that was my only way to afford new cards. I do feel like sometimes it does go unappreciated when people grind like this for their collections by doing things like flipping. Just because I flip does not mean I am not a collector. I just have to flip to attain my collection goals with my how I operate with my personal finances.
@dragonwarrior, Its impossible to hate you with that profile picture! 
If you played competitive Yugioh around 2012 you would have reason too lol. Rescue Rabbit is my favorite Yugioh card of all time. Came out in late 2011 which was not long after I started collecting again since the early days and when I started playing competitively for the first time. This adorable little bunny was arguably one of the best cards in the game from its release till about mid 2013. I pulled one during the sneak peek (Yugioh term for pre-release) and it was my first real big pull (was around $130 sneak peek weekend). Ever since that moment I have just felt a connection to it. Still have that very one today. For you Yugioh players out there, yes I played Dino Rabbit as long as i could till rabbit got limited.
yugioh.fandom.com/wiki/Rescue_Rabbit
Like many others I try and keep my spending in check for the most part. The struggle between getting what you want now before the risk of the prices rising again is always in the back of my head.
Also for really rare items if I’m willing to take a card with a knick or crease to save the time and stress to track down another or if I would regret it later.
Overall I try to spend only what I make from my collection reselling on what I want to collect. But have spent a few thousand at less the ideal times before for good deals and pushed thru it.
If it’s not something you will see again in a month or two and wont cripple you buy it. If you see it frequently I ignore it till later.
Example I want a promo set of the evolutions gym badge promo cards. I could buy the set for about $40 i dont feel stressed to buy it as if they go up it would likely still be affordable.
But for rarer promo cards or high grade cards I’ll eat it to get it secured now and have one less thing to hunt for.
This question actually made me think because I haven’t yet made a purchase I consider high end but the accumulation of cards I have has added up. Honestly, I’m the same as everyone else, I make sure it doesn’t affect my savings, my ability to pay rent, the important stuff. I make sure that it doesn’t affect what flexibility I have to go do things with my friends and my girlfriend. Otherwise, I’ve come to realize that I treat the cards I have as pieces of artwork. I generally only collect cards that have artwork that is pleasing to me with exceptions made for cards that I think are historically important in the hobby (i.e. some base set cards).
Ultimately, high-end is a matter of perspective. A person with 10 million to spend will see high-end dramatically different than someone with 10 dollars. Most people will fall in between, aiming to spend as much as possible without compromising the rest of their lives which is responsible.