How/why did you find elitefourum?

General
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@lyleberr @mrbubbles I got curious and went through some old chat records to try to formally follow the breadcrumbs of how @Llyrwenne and I joined.

October 2020
I won an auction for an Ancient Mew with the card facing forward instead of backward. This is just a packaging oddity, but really uncommon for these releases so I was happy to have it. Llyrwenne, ever the scholar, immediately got Googling the different packaging variants of Ancient Mew so she’d have full context for what we were discussing. While doing so, she found this topic: https://www.elitefourum.com/t/sealed-ancient-mew/

I knew I had read threads on the forum before, but this was the first time it registered that all these Google searches were leading to the same website. I didn’t really take a close look at this posted thread, which will become important later.

December 2020
While I was assembling my 1st Edition WotC sets, something I wanted to do as a compliment was collect all the original Japanese cards that had their art altered during localization. I thought that would be a really neat addition in the back of the set. Llyrwenne and I were discussing the cards we knew for sure had been updated when she again got Googling and turned up this topic: https://www.elitefourum.com/t/censored-artwork-of-the-pokemon-tcg/

Similarly, I was considering expanding my collection of Starmie cards to include Starmie cameos. By now Llyrwenne had been accustomed perusing E4 for certain topics and she turned up this thread: https://www.elitefourum.com/t/list-of-all-pokemon-tcg-cameos-english/

At this point, both of us had begun to appreciate the depth of knowledge contained in the forum archive and benefitted from the special focus of various topics that differentiated the information here from Bulbapedia. Llyrwenne decided to make an account to participate in these discussions, but I remained in the shadows for personal reasons.

February 2021
It was getting difficult to properly identify and track my collection of WotC flip coins. The documentation had some gaps and I had sufficiently collected up to the point where those gaps really mattered. Due to the narrow appeal of the subject and the obscurity of many of the releases, I had hit the end of the road on what was already documented and out there. Llyrwenne suggested…

Llyrwenne — 02/14/2021 10:13 AM
I could try making a thread on that TCG forum? Might be able to get some leads on the coins we’re unsure about.

So away she went and made this topic on my behalf: https://www.elitefourum.com/t/help-verifying-wotc-era-pokemon-tcg-flip-coins/

I still refused to join.

March 2021
Llyrwenne continues to use the forum for both of our benefits, asking questions and presenting me with information she turns up here on my increasingly esoteric collecting goals. I was trying to find Pokémon League ephemera and activity books and she found a YouTube video from a forum user that depicted an unboxing.

Llyrwenne — 03/15/2021 1:19 PM
This guy got stacks of them, might be able to get one of each from them

Stagecoach — 03/15/2021 1:19 PM
This person is selling… I should contact them.
Do they have social media other than YT? A Twitter maybe?

Llyrwenne — 03/15/2021 1:20 PM
They have a Facebook and they’re on that TCG forum (stumbled upon this vid in their collection thread)

Stagecoach — 03/15/2021 1:20 PM
This is from just last month and only has 72 views… hopefully I can connect.
Youtube doesn’t have a messaging system, does it?

Llyrwenne — 03/15/2021 1:21 PM
Nope.
So either joining that forum or creating a Facebook account seems to be the way

Yet still I persisted. I found a round-about way to contact that user based on their YouTube and Facebook information. I remained steadfast in not joining the forum.

April 2021
I’d begun lurking the forum some time ago, but still had not made an account. While browsing or searching something about Ancient Mew, I rediscovered the original thread that kicked this whole story off: https://www.elitefourum.com/t/sealed-ancient-mew

And this time I actually took a closer look at the topic and realized something: I was already in it.

A picture I’d taken and shared elsewhere on the internet years prior had been found and posted in this thread to support the search effort. This was it for me. I thought I was resisting becoming a part of the forum, preferring to stay a lurker than become a contributor, but in a way I’d already been one the entire time.

Stagecoach — 04/01/2021 2:20 PM
Maybe I should finally join this forum.

I finally joined on April 7th, 2021.

The moral of the story is that it’s Llyrwenne’s fault. Every time you read one of my annoying posts, blame her.

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One of the first things I did after finding Pokemon hobby again in late 2013 was creating account to Finnish Pokemon forum ( still exists but practically it has been closed for 2+ years since no one can’t write new replies anywhere ).

Rightaway I noticed it was mainly visited by players but there were good amount of collectors as well, one of them was @maggara who suggested I should try visiting UPCCC and that’s exactly what I did. After some lurking I created account here as well in early 2014 and I never had to regret that decision.

It’s a damn shame so many different forums are closing down and people are forced to join Facebook, Reddit etc. , that’s why I consider E4 being positive exception which becomes better place year after year. :slight_smile:

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I don’t remember, all I know is that it was a long time ago. It must have had something to do with Scott or Gary.

I never joined Pokegym in the old days because I had no interest in partaking, I only used it sparingly as a resource.

But then in 2019 I was thinking about getting more into the business side of things, and so I thought why not? E4 felt like the obvious choice since Pokegym was on life support and most of the people I’ve interacted with and followed over the years are members here.

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Scott or Rusty mentioned e4 in a video in 2020. I hated the old forum layout so much that I refused to make an account and became a lurker instead. When the site switched to this new layout, I finally made an account. Then the cabal held my family at ransom and I’ve been stuck here ever since in their servitude.

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I could have sworn you had been here longer than 2021 (and not just in photo spirit). I guess I assume that anyone who is reasonably knowledgeable in their posts or has an amazing curated collection has probably been here longer than I have.

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YouTube pack openings → SSSMMMPratteee → E4 - > Enlightenment :brain:

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I have autism so ending up here was never not an option.

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I collected Pokémon for 10 years before joining this site and basically the only people I spoke to about it were Rusty and Llyrwenne. It was a very solitary and private thing.

Participating in a community is still pretty new for me.

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I was really into Z&G videos in 2019 and by early 2020 I joined with the sole purpose of trying to buy an EX Dragon Box. That never happened of course and instead I found a resource of knowledge that I had no idea existed and a place to discuss cards with people during a time (real beginning of the pandemic) when I wasn’t really speaking to many others. I didn’t even collect modern at the time but being more focused on Pokemon over Yugioh completely changed my hobby habits these last 4 years.

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It was definitely via Reddit for me. Not sure what exactly the thread or topic was but it was in 2020 when I was getting back into collecting like so many others and I was probably googling certain beginner tips for collecting, storage, places to buy, or more information about the WotC era to get back in the know. Found a Reddit thread that pointed here and after a few months of anonymously lurking I made my own account. To this day this is the only forum I’ve ever become a member of, I try to minimize my credentialed social media presence wherever possible. The community is just so friendly, knowledgeable and welcoming. Also funny in the niche kind of way only fellow Pokemon geeks can be.

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We need a stagecoach + Llyrwenne history. How did you two meet??

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We’ll take that to the grave.

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I was getting more interested in learning about the hobby, inspired from the super in depth knowledge of Tcagaming (where I learned about grading, wotc, error cards, booster boxes, and the market in general) and then later Smpratte (where I learned more in depth about the market side of things and the idea of ORMB). Both would mention efour from time to time.

I originally wanted to just join the discord, since I was already in some other pokemon tcg discords at the time. Made a forum account to do so and started frequenting both. The migration really boosted my activity here, mainly since I could upload images a lot easier.

I try to recommend people here. Its a good place

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I was doing reseach on Gold Stars, one thing lead to another and wild SMPratte video appeared. This year is 5th active year on E4 and 5th active year trying to get every Gold Star.

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Well you seem to be doing a bang up job of participating so far. When I think of E4… i think of great pokemon tcg facts, but when I think of stagecoach… I think of your claim to fame :meowth:

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I’m sure we could do a much better job of spreading the e4 gospel across social media sites. But no one on the current staff has any desire to run any social media account (aka advertisement campaign) like the e4 instagram. Or like posting links to reddit in an inorganic way. @quuador has already done a good job in the past of posting links to e4 on reddit when it’s been relevant, from what I’ve seen personally. Generally, most users find out about the site via word-of-mouth or google.

It’s tough though because when we switched domain names, the “reputation” of the forum from the perspective of google had to start from fresh. So it took a long time to have those organic links getting planted across the internet again. Google ranks sites higher if they are frequently linked to. So for a while, we were pretty stagnant in terms of new members because there was zero attempt at social media outreach and zero organic search traffic. We are in a far better position now, with a lot of new members signing up every day like @Exocraze in this thread.

Personally I don’t prioritize trying hard and consistently to grow the active member count. I think we could do better but I’d rather hit my head against the wall than shovel links into facebook groups or run an instagram advertisement account. Instead, a large priority is to always have fresh blood coming in and some percentage of those users will stick. People come and go on the forum and in the hobby more generally, it can be a bit sad but that’s how it is. The true death spiral of a forum is when you lose a critical mass of regular users, which we are very far from but is inevitable if you don’t get any new members joining. Either way, we are well beyond that now that Google traffic has picked up.

If you want to help out the cause, just post a link to the forum on an external site whenever it is relevant.

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Discovered Through a “Pokemon Showdown! Beta” User, Tsunami Papi, known here as Tsunami Surskit. I checked out a little bit of the forum then made an acc. I now lurk here, and still have no idea what is going on 90% of the time, and make posts all the time. (Again Sorry For mentioning this) Since i play competitively i NEED to collect cards for the format i play, and like. and after looking at a few article topics for Base-Neo i was hooked.

Cheers!

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im-doing-my-part-serious

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5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Elite Fourum Memes