If You Could Only Keep 10 Cards

[BANKS]

@DarthEevee

This post is dangerous, because if I intellectually commit to an answer, do I sell the rest of my collection?

I agree, finding your top 10 is an interesting thought experiment. It has prompted me to figure out my priorities to start selling more. It’s cool to see all the stories and connections you all have made with your top 10!

@pikachutcg

I am interested in what you would pick!

Thanks for asking! I needed some time to put together my images. I love your grand party and Japanese trio. These are two goals that I would like to complete this year

For the moment, I appreciate what I have. Here are the 10 cards that I would keep:

#1 is my Yuka Morri autograph!

Stamped Johto Trio

I like big stamps

East Asian Language Trophies

This Vaporeon is special to me because it was the first card in my first PSA sub. Many thanks to @rtas for encouraging me to start grading my cards.

Espeon is special because it was my first buy that I found through E4, and it graded well, which I still can’t believe lol. All my thanks to @smokemon for being a homie and a great seller

Still need to find the Jolteon in traditional Chinese to complete the trio.

Pokedude is my role model

[Parallax]

This thread has taught me that you all have incredible Top 10 cards. Simply lovely

[smokemon]

Thanks for the tag and I’m glad the Espeon went to a proper home!

[eeveeteam]

@BANKS

Still need to find the Jolteon in traditional Chinese to complete the trio.

@yamahap45 do you have one?

[xliveandplay]

Easy choice for me, since my end goal is to bring my collection down to fewer than 20 cards (I currently have fewer than 50 ). So the following 10 from my current collection are the ones I’d keep :

[eeveeteam]

Major theme of 2020 - collectors selling everything into the hype and peacing out.

Major theme of 2025 - collectors massively consolidating and buying high end cards with that cash to have a small but mighty collection.

We’ve done the poll before - 10 $10,000 cards or 1,000 $100 cards.

[jawsh98]

True gems!

[Quuador]

In your earlier thread of ‘What are your top 10 favorite cards?’, I already had trouble posting just one comment: one & two..

But if I could only keep 10, though.
Honestly, I have no freaking idea.. My collections are collections, because they’re hundreds of cards combined. If I could only keep 10 cards, it no longer is a collection to begin with.

Of course I prefer to never get rid of the majority of my cards. But if someone theoretically would offer me 1 million USD each for certain individual cards, there honestly wouldn’t be any card I wouldn’t get rid of, even childhood cards.

Anyway, to at least give some sort of answer, these few come to mind:

This is my favorite TCG artwork, and this Moltres copy in particular I received at cinemas as a kid.

Seviper is my favorite Pokémon, and this was the last card I added to 100% complete my Seviper collection in all languages (excluding new recent releases after I completed it). This unlimited edition Japanese WCP Seviper is also the rarest Seviper card among all of them, with an interesting backstory of why it is so hard to find.

As a Pikachu collector, I love that they’ve made this card for the 25th anniversary. It’s so cool and unique to see 25 different illustrators collaborate on a single artwork, and I also love that each of those illustrators commented on it on the Pokémon website at the release of this card.

I would want to keep at least one copy of the many different Base Set Pikachu variants. And since the Ghost/Phantom stamp error is so unique, including it being a Shadowless card, it makes it the perfect candidate for that purpose.

These four cards are the 1st; 500th; 1000th; and 1500th Pikachu cards I added to my Pikachu collection. Of which I especially want to keep the 1st and 1000th ones.
(Btw, I’m closing in on the 2k mark, although it’s defintely going a bit slower since I stopped collecting all languages and primarily focused on English releases - I’m at 1949 at time of writing, fwiw.)

And that’s about it I think. There are dozens of other cards that come to mind btw. Some from my youth; some from my little brother’s collection that I took over; some with interesting stories; some very rare cards; some gifts; etc. etc. But there are a lot more than just ten of those (or four I should say, after subtracting the six already mentioned above)..

Greetz,
Quuador

[JJHurtaz]

[yamahap45]

Yes, but unfortunately I don’t have any doubles, as it’s my personal PC.

[kamex]

Love this thread - so many hits, so many great stories too!

[shockerb37]

An impossible question really, but fun to think about. My tentative ten:

Scizor is one of my favorite Pokemon, and this Dark Scizor is my first ever holo shift. The crown jewel of my Scyther/Scizor collection.

I love errors that drastically change the color of a card, and this Dark Alakazam missing the yellow ink layer is the pinnacle of that in my collection.

This Ancient Mew is both missing the white ink layer and off center enough to receive the minor miscut designation, making it the only CGC-graded double error in my collection. In love with the dazzle.

I love holo bleeds, and this Blastoise is probably my favorite from my collection. Very hard to choose though.

This Charizard is the reddest copy I’ve seen, my best error for Base Charizard. I’d feel remiss leaving it out.

This Magneton has a piece of clear tape that was adhered to the foil and printed over, used to splice two foil rolls together. Beautiful to look at, and one of the most singular cards in my collection.

Gold border shadowless cards are super sick, and this Charmander is my strongest example. Classic artwork, very nostalgic for me.

Another of my favorite Scizor cards, and the strongest example I know of for this repeat white ink error. Essentially a double holo error akin to Neo Revelation holos.

I found 43 copies of this Mew promo at a local store back in 2019 while shopping around with my dad. They were $5 apiece, and I have fond memories of the excitement he and I shared when we bought them all. Didn’t realize some of them were ink errors at the time, but I’m glad to have kept this example for my collection.

I bought this Clefairy holo shift ungraded around 3 years ago. I was so stoked when it graded Gem Mint - as far as I know it’s still the only WotC shift to have done so. Couldn’t leave it out.

[crindy]

all of these are just gorgeous oh my gosh, the ancient mew is mesmerizing. just the clear night sky

[smokemon]

Legendary!

[wooltchi]

Scratch my mew and mewtwo tag team. Im replacing it with mewtube

[Taigataipan]

Tfw @BANKS is forcing me to abandon AT LEAST 9 cards from graded 1st ed. Neo Genesis holo set.

I took a quick look through slabs and these are some of the highlights which aren’t going anywhere.

Favourite Base set holo and favourite starter evolution from original games.

One of the most iconic Gyarados artworks, liked it since first theme decks came out and seeing it in actual card was a dream come true in Gym era.

This list wouldn’t be anything without the goodies from Neo Genesis. It’s hard to imagine state of Pokemon if Johto games/cards didn’t continue the good work Kanto started.

In gen 2-3 Umbreon had stupid amount of good artworks, if I had to keep one the choice is always Neo Discovery holo, just beautiful.

Fan Club Magikarp is a top tier prize card, it would be nice to know what was the plan with Fan Club Gyarados which saw the daylight couple years ago.

Finally few japanese gold stars, Mew looks so nice with silver borders. Leaving PLAY Espeon out simply wasn’t an option, one of the biggest cards I’ll ever have in collection.

[slippingjimmy]

Lmao, did you really grade your cards a 10 in those fake slabs? Wtf

[missingno]

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