How Do You Keep Ebay Hunting Interesting?

Collecting
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I have recently shifted my collecting strategy from ripping any modern sealed I can find to buying mostly vintage singles. I credit this forum for helping me better understand collecting goals and what I want to get out of the hobby. Currently I am working on an Unlimited Base Set and want to start species collecting Growlithe and Arcanine (the WOTC gym cards are my all time favorites). As I’ve shifted my strategy, I’ve been spending a ton of time on eBay and while I understand it is the easiest and, if patient, most cost effective way to acquire the cards I want, I have been finding it somewhat impersonal and almost too “easy”. I want my collecting journey to be rewarding and I fear that a simple search and click buying experience isn’t exclusively the experience I want.

I’m wondering if others feel this way too and am interested to hear how you guys keep your search fun and exciting. Do you put constraints on yourself in some way? Reserve certain cards for in-person purchases? Thanks!

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The searching is less exciting, its getting in the next piece of my forever collection that is really exciting.

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Totally agree - when the new card is in-hand it’s a great feeling.

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Theres usually a wall at some point, whether its no clean copies, price, no copies listed, a super niche variant or error with 0 recent solds, non english/japanese language cards, or something else. The flipside of the easy grind is that you can knockout lots of cards for your collection and not have to deal with all the walls.

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I think this reflects the difficulty of your collecting goal. Base Set Unlimited was widely printed and will be available until the end of time. If you’re looking for a bigger challenge, you might want to set your sights on different goals after completing this one.

I hope this helps!

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Definitely can see this being the case. I plan on knocking out a chunk of the lower cost Growlithe cards on ebay and then I imagine it’ll be an online and offline search for some of the more niche cards, especially Japanese.

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I think a lot of people suffer from this problem in one way or another. Some people get satisfaction from spending money, literally just the act of spending money. Some people only get satisfaction from moving closer to achieving their goal, like going from having 55/102 cards to 56/102 cards (I think most people in the hobby fall into this category). And then there are some people who only get satisfaction from moving closer to achieving their goal while following certain criteria…

Some examples of those criteria could be:

  • spending as little money as possible
  • making sure all purchases are under market value
  • only buying raw cards with the goal of submitting them for grading themselves

The criteria that you come up with for yourself depend on your collection goals and where you yourself get the most satisfaction. It will probably take some trial and error to find what is the most satisfying for you.

Keep in mind that the more rules you impose on yourself, the harder it will be and the longer it will take to complete your collection - but it can also make it all the more satisfying. Like so many things in life, collecting is about the journey and NOT about the destination. Nobody is impressed if you’re a millionaire who completed a set by spending 10x market value, and that also isn’t a very satisfying story.

Here are some of the criteria that I use when it comes to collecting:

  • I only buy cards at or below market value, with the vast majority of my purchases being below market value. It feels great to get a good deal, and even better to know that my entire collection cost me less than market value.
  • I take into account how much it costs to grade cards. If a PSA 9 card costs $40, is $10 raw, and $20 to grade, then I know that I could essentially get that card in a PSA 9 for ~$30. You have to take shipping into account and everything else involved, including what your time is worth, but the basic concept is the same.
  • I don’t buy sealed to open them - most of the time it isn’t cost-effective and I would rather wait for an individual copy to be posted for sale. In the case of Oddish it’s much cheaper to buy 100x Oddish from TCGPlayer rather than open packs, but your mileage may vary depending on what you’re looking for.
  • I don’t give in to spending an exorbitant amount of money on a card just because it has a low POP. A lot of the cards that I’m after have extremely low population (like 1 ever graded), but I refuse to pay far more than it’s worth just because of that. Sure that would push me closer to my collection goal, but in the long term it leaves me with less money to spend toward the collection. If I have to wait years to come across the right card and grade it then it is what it is, but in the long run I’ll be able to get way more cards for the same amount of money.

I wish you the best of luck in finding a satisfying way to complete your collection! :innocent:

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Thank you for your thoughtful contribution! So far I have been trying my best to buy at or under market, although with many cards in base set and common growlithe / arcanine cards under $10 dollars I’ve found it’s not always worth my time and effort to save a dollar or two (I may even overpay by a dollar or two if I find the seller to be reputable and the card in great condition).

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Happy to help! I think your strategy is sound, especially when you’re only talking about a ~10% price difference. In my case I’m faced with a $20 card only being available for $200 so that’s a little tougher to swallow.

Given that things feel easy right now and you’re not really overspending on cards, I’m going to guess that you haven’t hit a wall yet (the wall like @thsigma mentioned). Walls are very satisfying to overcome but can also be frustrating. The more niche your collection is, the more walls you’ll hit.

Your Unlimited Base Set collection will most likely have very few walls, if any, based on how many of them are on the market. Your only barrier with those will most likely be price.

Your Growlithe and Arcanine sets are almost certainly going to hit walls (especially if you’re going for multiple languages). Enjoy things feeling easy while it lasts because it certainly will get harder as you get closer to completing your collection :smiling_face_with_tear:

Perhaps if you give us some more specifics regarding your collection goals we may be able to give you some more specific pointers and some ideas of the walls that you might hit.

For both your Unlimited Base Set collection and Growlithe/Arcanine collections:

  • What are your language goals? English? Japanese? All languages?
  • Raw or graded? If raw, are you going for mint/near mint/don’t care? If graded, do you have a specific number in mind?

Specifically for your Growlithe/Arcanine collection:

  • Are you going for cameos in addition to the traditional cards? I.e. cards feature Growlithe/Arcanine
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I love randomly discovering cards I’ve never came across before on ebay e.g. searching a certain species PSA 9 and finding old cards I never knew existed.

Sadly I don’t think ebay will ever be as exciting for me as 10 years ago when collecting was much less popular than today. I’d bid on small collections or binders, and often they would turn up with lots of nice holos not shown in the photos, sold by oblivious parents or stores doing a clear out. It was so exciting to look through a binder or collection and discover I’d just got 5-10x more value than what I paid. Those sorts of listings virtually never appear nowadays as pretty much everyone is aware of the values and there are too many people to compete against + more often than not people are filling binders with modern cards and ridiculously overpricing it. I’m so nostalgic for the older days when vintage holos were literally going for £1 each

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For Unlimited Base Set

  • English only
  • Raw - at least LP for the commons / uncommons but prefer NM/M for the holos

For Growlith/Arcanine

  • Starting in English with aspirations to expand to Japanese
  • For now happy with just traditional cards but would buy cameos if I came across them, but not seeking them out right now

I’m trying to slowly dip my toes in to this kind of collecting, so my goals may seems basic to some, but I think it’s a good start for being intentional with my new collection!

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Sounds like quite the time…

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Given that you’re only going for English and not graded for your Unlimited Base Set, I don’t expect that you’ll hit any walls other than price.

For Growlithe/Arcanine it’s great that you’re starting with just English - that will make your collecting life easier. I’m in the same boat with my collection right now, I’m only going for English (plus Japanese exclusive artwork) and it makes it a lot less daunting. We also have the added bonus of not having to deal with the translation issues and trying to find cards in other countries! Growlithe and Arcanine are both pretty popular Pokemon so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to find those.

I just did some quick searches on eBay and it looks like even the cards that I thought would be harder to find are readily available. Since that’s the case, hopefully it won’t take you too long to find everything you need in order to complete your collection.

You may also gain additional enjoyment from starting a collection thread and posting your purchases as you work on the collection. People love to follow collections as they come together and it adds an additional feeling of satisfaction when others comment on your collection.

Good luck! Looking forward to seeing how your collection comes along :blush:

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I do but only for my Butterfree collection. It’s a constraint I put on myself to make things fun.

I’ve found that finding a $1 Butterfree in-person is genuinely more exciting (to me) than purchasing $1,000 card online. It’s not feasible if you’re after rare stuff though.

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@JoshsOddCollection has already given some great responses!

I ran into some of these feelings when I just re-entered collecting some years back. The strongest I felt this, at the time, was wanting to start a Sekio artist collection and then completing it in a matter of days with a nominal amount of money and bulk ordering on TCGPlayer. Although I love their art, the act of completing the collection did feel a bit empty. I could have upped the difficulty by doing normal cards + reverse holos + any other variations, but I didn’t feel like diving that deep into it.

After that, I decided that I didn’t want to do massive buys on TCGPlayer to complete collections. I now try to approach artist collections a lot more slowly and naturally, picking up common cards when I happen to run into them in person or picking them out from pack openings (for modern artists). For those that basically only have vintage cards, I’ll pick up a card here and there on Ebay or some other platform—not being in a rush to finish or complete the collection. I find this to feel more rewarding in terms of the experience/journey.

As I write this, however, I do feel an urge to just update the Sekio collection to completion again using TCGPlayer, given that I do love the art and buying a few common singles anywhere but TCGPlayer seems inefficient :thinking: The vicissitudes of collecting, I guess!

Your species collection goal also somewhat reminds me of my own. Since I was just jumping back into collecting, I wanted to start small and only committed to English only and one of each art for my initial species collection. Once I finished that, I was inspired by other species collectors on the forum and moved to all variants of English + Japanese, with a few exceptions (no non-officially released cards and no cameos). This is where my species collection goal sits at today (for the TCG, at least), and I haven’t felt a strong urge to jump beyond it at the moment, given that I’ll need a good chunk of funds to stretch beyond this line (e.g. all languages or cameos).

As an complement, I’ve found non-TCG collecting to be very fun. There’s a ton of stuff out there (especially for Gen I and II), so you’ll likely never “finish” the collection, but there’s just so many awesome items out there to discover.

I think it’s great you’re already thinking about how you feel while you try and reach your collecting goals. Everyone’s journey is different, and everyone finds happiness/contentment in different ways, so it’s important to find out how to make collecting work for you :slightly_smiling_face:

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I recommend going to shows and shops and digging through bulk bins and binders. Some of the most satisfying finds can be found in person, especially if you’re only after raw, set cards.

Buying in person allocates your time to an event and creates memories with your purchases. A strategy which nicely avoids the fatigue of endless online shopping.

Source: I spend too much time chasing niche promos online

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I really enjoy keeping my searching on eBay interesting. I do this by finding a good deal to only then think, yeah I can find it cheaper and not buy it. To then find that it explodes in price instantly. Love that so much as I seem to do it all the time!

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Agree with Banks. I’ve been attending more shows recently and have had a blast digging through cards. The only down fall is I’m not in a highly populated area, so after the first couple shows, I see many of the same vendors with the same overpriced cards.

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Definitely agree with this. I found my Unlimited Base Set Gyarados in a bin and even though it is not the best condition (probably why it was in the bin) the excitement of finding a card I needed in a big stack was great. Had a similar experience stumbling on a 1st edition shadowless Wartortle (another favorite of mine) - didn’t really NEED it for the collection but it brought me joy so I bought it. More time spent out in the world looking for cards will definitely create more of these experiences!

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Love when I do this with a $6 dollar card opting for the $5.25 card I find 2 hrs later… :upside_down_face:

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