I’ve been casually sharing my collection with some friends, but decided I’d finally make an account here to share my collection goals and recent pickups with more people who may be chasing the same things or find my stuff cool!
Since I got back into collecting in late 2020, FA Trainers were always something that interested me, but they were only a small piece of what I was opening/buying. But over the months I’ve found that trainers have kept my interest moreso than anything else, and so I’ve decided to focus my collecting efforts there.
Right now, I’m slowly chasing a binder master set of all FA trainers. All English ones, the JP/CN exclusives, as well as cards that aren’t FA trainers but still prominently feature trainers, such as Cosmic Eclipse secret rares, Rayquaza V Alt Art from Evolving Skies, the JP Red’s Pikachu promo, etc. For my favorite trainers and art on the cards, I’m also trying to pick up (or grade myself) PSA 10s of them.
Here are some of my main collection pieces (and generally some of my favorite cards) that I’ve picked up over the past few months!
My full collection can by seen in my PSA Registry here: PSA Registry
@pentagon, thanks! Hopefully it just gets better from here. Alola Friends certainly wasn’t cheap but I’m very glad to have it in my collection (especially because it seems like its price has continued to climb since I bought it, so I got it at a good time)
@shadowrex, likewise from what I saw in your collection post!
@davie, Me too, it’s one of my favorite FA trainer arts! Looking forward to seeing the Galar Friends one that’s supposedly coming in the JP holiday set (so I assume around next Feb for us like Shining Fates).
Good to hear you came around on FA Trainers though, and thanks! Can’t wait to keep adding to it
@tromboneguy360, Mine too, though I’m also biased because Dawn is my favorite trainer haha! I hope she gets her own FA some day…
Agreed on the starters, they’re great all around and I think Turtwig in particular is super underrated (though I’m again biased because I usually pick the grass starters lol)
I’m trying to prioritize the B&W/XY era as well as JP exclusives right now as SM/SWSH are more plentiful and easy to find (though I’m still buying those when I spot good deals), so I’m glad to add these few to the collection!
The Red’s Pikachu promo isn’t really an FA Trainer, but like I mentioned in the original post, it still prominently features a trainer, so is the type of card I’d pick up. I don’t have a total count for those yet as I haven’t decided exactly which ones I’ll make part of my overall goal, but hope to have it solidified at some point!
Very happy to grab Shauna and Karen as I’ve had my eye out for those two for months now! The Shauna and Wicke are also both drawn by Naoki Saito who is my favorite FA Trainer artist so that was nice to add to the collection as well, and then the Pokemon Trainer’s Nurturing card has Yamper which is great because it’s one of my favorite Pokemon from SWSH!
Happy to have snagged a Pokemon Center Lady as that’s a rare one, and then the Misty & Lorelei tag team is one of my favorite FA Trainers!
But wait, there’s more! (insert Billy Mays impression)
I also picked up a scanner so that I can scan each card in my collection rather than taking crappy quality pictures with my phone. Over the past couple days I’ve gone through and scanned everything, so my PSA Registry (link in my original post, but I linked it here as well) has been updated with those high quality scans. Here’s an example of the vast upgrade in quality, with the left being my phone and right being the scanner. The colors pop so much more, it isn’t blurry, there’s no shadows/lighting mishaps, etc. Very happy with that image quality and being able to scroll through high-res scans of my collection
An interesting piece of FA Trainer history here as the N from Noble Victories was actually the very first FA Trainer card, a whole decade ago now. Wild Ghetsis is pretty old as well, also being an FA trainer from the B&W era (of which there are only 8 total). Ghetsis is also the first PSA slab I’ve owned in that older slab style, so I’ll have to reholder it at some point. Still mostly focusing on hunting down those B&W/XY era ones, but man some of them are so hard to find (lots less than 15 pop in a 10).
Lately I’ve also been wondering if I should ease up on my “only English 10s” rule, because some are so damn hard to find that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to. Wondering if I should change it to 9s and above (really just to get my hands on 9s from B&W/XY era since those are a bit easier to find), or to maybe consider Japanese 10s as well. I feel like it’d betray my interests a bit because I’m less interested in Japanese cards and find 9s less satisfying, but at the same time it’d at least make my goal of collecting a “complete set of FA trainers” feasible if I had some of that leniency. Idk, general musings I’ve had lately as I peruse various sites and struggle to find 10s.
Either way, glad to add these two 10s to the collection and will continue to keep my eye out
Nice additions! I think it’s reasonable to go for mixed grades to complete the art set initially and “upgrade” to a matching set over time whenever you happen to find the missing pieces. You can still enjoy the set progression with some asterisk gaps while you may be waiting months/years for the right card to pop up on the market.
@kevinertia, thanks! And yup, that’s pretty much exactly how I’d be looking at it - 9s to complete it visually, but then when I do hopefully eventually see 10s, pick those up to upgrade and then sell/trade the 9s. I actually do have a couple of the older 9s that I’d picked up months ago (Skyla from BC and Korrina from FF), so I guess you could say I technically already started breaking my rules before I’d even initially decided to go for a complete 10 set lol. Foreshadowing at its finest
Updated the chart in the main post with the new numbers too. Slowed down for the second half of the month in terms of purchases, but got some stuff I have my eye on
Been about two months since my last post! Pretty drastically changed my collecting goals in that time. While I was originally chasing a complete set of PSA 10 FA Trainers, I’ve since done some re-evaluating and decided doing that isn’t for me, with a big reason being I couldn’t justify spending notable amounts of money on slabs of trainers I either don’t really know or don’t really care about, even if I like FA Trainers in general. I’ve also come to miss opening packs and having fun going through all the cards.
SO, with that in mind, I’m now switching to doing a binder master set of FA Trainers instead as that’s a lot easier and cheaper to chip away at. I’m also buying booster boxes again and having fun opening those as I slowly chip away at master sets. I’ve also sold off about half of my slabs at this point.
Moving forward I’ll be mainly working on those binders, BUT that doesn’t mean I’m entirely stopping with slabs. My favorite slabs were spared my sell off, and I still plan on picking up/grading slabs for upcoming cards that I’m excited for (Brilliant Stars looks sooooooo good).
That about concludes my update for my overall collecting goals and such! Here are the few new slabs I have gotten lately - all three are ones I graded myself
Ghetsis is pretty old as well, also being an FA trainer from the B&W era (of which there are only 8 total). Ghetsis is also the first PSA slab I’ve owned in that older slab style, so I’ll have to reholder it at some point. Still mostly focusing on hunting down those B&W/XY era ones, but man some of them are so hard to find (lots less than 15 pop in a 10).
