I’m curious how people with childhood cards incorporate them into their collections.
Do you keep them separate from your other cards? Any particular way of organizing them? Are they “just cards” in your collection, or do they feel special?
For me, I keep one vintage English binder that is mostly childhood cards, with a few newer additions to round out some pages. I actually put a small slip of paper in the sleeve on the back of any newer additions so I can always remember which cards are “original”. In my nostalgia binder, I make sure to keep one of each artwork of every vintage card I used to own from my original collection.
There’s one place where I bend the rules. I have a side collection of Eeveelutions, and all of my childhood Eevee-related cards live there along with newer acquisitions.
Included a small selection of nostalgia cards to share with the class
i love these binder pages!!! the geodude/bill/geodude page is so fun, i feel like there’s a joke there that i’m not getting lol. or are they just cards you like and had a lot of multiples of??
to answer the question, my childhood cards are the core of my collection, i have no need to ever replace them with nicer condition copies!! i know which ones are which since i made a little collection spreadsheet before i started buying cards (also i just recognize/remember them lol). i am toying with ideas for how to mark them in my binders but i won’t force it because it would rlly only be a benefit to others, i don’t need the identification!
any childhood cards i have that don’t fit my current/future collection goals i am slowly feeding to my nephew, or have put up for trade with the fine folks of E4
Hahaha, the Geodude/Bill page was just because I needed to fill some space, had a lot of extras, and thought it’d be funny.
That’s awesome to hear that your childhood cards are the basis of your collection, and it’s nice that you are able to tell the cards apart!
I too have traded away some childhood cards, mostly duplicates but also a couple cards I didn’t want. This card haunted my nightmares and I was eager to pass it on
lmaoo i was wracking my brain like “is it bill and ted? because of “dude”? or is it the brick wall being broken by the geodudes??” i love that it’s just how it ended up
I gave away all my childhood cards in the 7th grade to some lady who came over for dinner with my parents because she said her kids loved pokemon. Huge bummer.
It’d be nice to have some of my own cards regardless of their terrible condition. They’d have their own special binder. Probably this binder
I sold off my gen 1-9 living dex as well as some sentimental cards that went to better use (e.g. selling my shining Charizard to purchase a jogging stroller).
My childhood eevees are graded, including my first ever promo card from toys r us (Pokémon organized play OGs stand up)
My non eevee binder now includes cards exclusively of sentimental value, whether they be important promos, cards I played competitively, and gifts from friends
I mix them in with my vintage master sets where applicable
Makes me proud to see all my well loved childhood Neo Discovery Umbreon, Dark Dragonite, and Rocket’s Moltres in my master sets next to pristine cards I bought
Of what I have left of my collection from my childhood, some of it is integrated into my species collections. My vintage Japanese bulk from my childhood are put into specifically colored sleeves so I don’t lose track of what was from my childhood. (Since I still casually collect vintage Japanese) Everything that doesn’t have a specific home is currently stored in a bin in top loaders. I’ve debated having a specific binder section for them but part of be prefers keeping them completely separate and in the top loaders.
I keep my childhood collection in a separate binder. I also graded some of the cards that are especially special to me just to protect them. When I graded them I made the decision to keep the dirt/grime on the card so they are encapsulated as I found them.
At this point, my childhood collection is mixed in with my regular collection. I’ve even replaced some LP-HP cards from my youth with EX-NM cards I received as gifts with other orders once in a while. For context though: I had about 1k cards in my youth’s collection, and therefore not all are noteworthy or sentimental to me. There defintely are some cards I would never get rid of though, but even those are mixed in with my general collection for the most part.
The most noteworthy ones:
The Moltres promo I received at cinemas as a kid, my favorite TCG artwork. I graded it for nostalgia sake a couple years ago:
The first Pikachu I pulled as a 7 y.o. kid is in my Pikachu collection (I also have a NM copy of the same card). It’s an unlimited edition Jungle Pikachu, and I wrote a 1 on the back to mark it as my first Pikachu card ever, since it was HP already anyway (even though I hate HP cards with text written on them - unless it’s a signature - and this one I did myself.. ).
The first holo I pulled as a kid (Base Set Chansey) I traded away soon after (I cared more about quantity than holo cards, so a 3 for 1 trade was a no brainer for me at the time ). But the second holo (or third, since I opened two Jungle booster packs at once), I still have, which is also still one of my favorite cards from the Jungle set because of it.
I’m just gonna quote this old post of mine, which also included the fourth card I wanted to mention anyway:
Also, I keep a checklist of every non-duplicated card I own (little over 16k unique cards rn apparently), and you may note some grey rows in that document. Those are all cards I took over from my little brother’s youth’s collection. We made an agreement that if I’d ever sell one of his cards, I’d give him 25% of it. (And yes, he knows I almost never sell, especially not from my non-duplicated cards. It did include a Shining Gyarados; Shining Steelix; and Crystal Nidoking, FWIW. I’ll defintely give him 25% iff I ever decide to sell those.)
I’ve done a lot of sorting and resorting and consolidating as well as both upgrading and downgrading my older cards over the years. My plan, ideally, would be to hold on to my specific copies of key cards that I’ve had since childhood but for most of them I don’t fully remember if it’s my copy from 25-30 years ago or one I swapped lol That said, I did select about 15 cards that were my first favorites and that I know I had a copy of way back when and set them aside in “the good” binder
Most of my childhood cards are part of my main binders now. One reason is simply the price. As a kid, I was lucky enough to had pulled a few holos like fossil Gengar, Moltres or jungle Vaporeon. These days, it would be not only expensive to get a second copy but also pointless since I just don’t collect doubles.
And the main reason why I have my played cards mixed up with my recent mint additions is that they simply make my binders truly mine. Every set has a story that spans 20+ years and only I know where each (well, most…) card is coming from.
Most of my childhood cards were sold when I was 16/17 at a yardsale. I only kept a few favorites. A few are scattered in the display. The rest are in a small binder.
I’ve debated having a specific binder section for them but part of be prefers keeping them completely separate and in the top loaders.
For context though: I had about 1k cards in my youth’s collection, and therefore not all are noteworthy or sentimental to me. There defintely are some cards I would never get rid of though, but even those are mixed in with my general collection for the most part.
