There is a song by minor threat called, “salad days.” It describes how if you spend too much time longing for the past, you miss out on the present.
For an entire new generation of collectors this, right now, is another golden age. So instead of what iffing about the past maybe it’s best to hope that ten years from now we can reflect on this time period in a similar way
If you got to collect during this early 2010’s you got to experience something magical that most people never will.
Funnily enough, I didn’t even know HGSS even existed at the time. I suppose when I got in Black/white had just come out, and I certainly didn’t know that existed. But yeah for some reason it’s like all those modern cards at the time didn’t exist. It was easier to be in a vacuum, like the ways of old hadn’t yet evaporated completely. I also didn’t know about resources that we know about now, like bulbapedia and such. And I never used them, hence why I didn’t discover then-obscure japanese promos so easily, and the like. So it was easy to look up vintage stuff and so only vintage.
What’s also funny is I now think HGSS era is amazing. The final good era imo. Not as good as E series, but still high quality art there man. Phew. BW is today what vintage was 10 years ago, and I still think it’s the first big meh era where things got stale fast. Holos changed, classic art styles disappeared quickly, computer done illustration came in hard and fast, etc.
Definitely some good artwork in HGSS, it’s a very mixed bag in my opinion. Interesting to hear about your discovery of japanese promos, I think many people went through that.
I never did. My brain is like a sponge so although not the all-seeing eye I would certainly describe myself as someone who, to a certain extent, operated on the forefront of knowledge at the time. Vending (there was so much focus on vending there for a time, vending sheets and german Base boxes are synonymous of that era to me) japanese obscurities, foreign, all manner of sealed rarities and even trophies. I took all of that into my mind, but it didn’t spark an interest beyond mere data collecting. I definitely felt that japanese and english became more and more “equal” after BW was released, something I feel even stronger about now. If I could go back in time I might have reconsidered collecting Japanese BW-XY, as well as japanese DPP promos which I think was a killer era for promos.
But ulitmately my heart was and is firmly rooted in english Base-EX.
Hmm. I think the killer era for promos is '96 to '07 or so haha. Interesting you, who doesn’t collect japanese really, expressed a fondness for the later era of JP promos rather than the original era. I know you like english for the earlier eras of course.
Vending for example. It’s CRAZY how late I discovered those. Discovering that they were a set came so much later than my first actual vending card. That’s the funny way in which things happened. I didn’t even “discover” the vast majority of later pokemon until E4. That’s 2020 man. Like no idea about anything modern (and by that I mean 2011 and later!), and even some super vintage. 'Cause I was never a big internet person. 2020 made me an internet person, and E4 got me excited about utilizing the internet this way, as weird as that is. I learned what I was missing from back in the day, having been a staunch opponent of being an internet user. It was mostly about lifestyle desires, wanting an older way of life. Things have changed a lot.
For me, anything past HGSS era, whether it be promos, set, JP/eng, you have to pick the diamonds out of the rough.
Here’s a funny anecdote for our thread here. Just a little while ago there was that thread of past purchases… I learned you can look back at amazon purchases like to the beginning of time. I only looked up the booster boxes – I totally forgot I would buy singles on there sometimes haha. Why I wouldn’t have exclusively used ebay is that my account was created in early 2013, so I suppose I was still getting integrated with ebay, which I had only used seldom prior. Also why I didn’t combine shipping on this particular order I can’t venture a guess (unless I did and the archive splits them up).
I’m gonna really age myself out here but Diamond & pearl - Call of legends were my golden years for Pokémon as a whole. Games, tcg, anime. I remember the first time I ever interacted with pokemon I was given a cousin’s old ds lite with diamond that he had game sharked so i had infinite master balls. Still have that copy too. I got out sometime around the end of call of legends before B&W. I remember the release of the BW games especially, really only because I had grown up on a dairy farm with 12 siblings quit isolated from the pokemon community so when the one or two friends I had in town got out it was only a matter of time before I did. I always held onto my games and once a year I’d pick one to play through again. I remember the day I got HGSS with the pokeWalker I got HG and my best friend at the time got SS, looking back at it that was the day I peaked with pokemon. The binder full of non holos (because I was a dummy and didn’t like the holos) I absolutely cherished now with a new game that had 16 gyms my smol brain couldn’t handle it
For a lot of them I think I do prefer the same era as you. It’s more about the exceptional…exceptions, haha. Like, this is what I wanted 4th gen to feel like, this is what I would’ve swallowed whole from 4th gen if they came like this out of english boosters (together with other unicorn diamonds like the beloved Stomfront Zard and SL Lugia of course.)
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