Little update on where I’m at in the hobby so that I can someday look back on this time and think “what was I doing”. I’ve been buying a lot - between PWCC and a few other consignment blocks I’ve picked up a couple hundred graded cards as well as a pretty hefty chunk of raw cards from Japan. The bad news, however, is that most of the things I’ve been buying aren’t actually in the direction of my primary collection goals. I just keep stocking up on things that I’m loosely interested in and fall through the cracks of “market price” on overlooked auctions. From this process I’ve learned a few things:
a) There are deals happening every day. The sheer volume of cards being exchanged means there are decent items out there constantly hitting 30-50% below “fair value” and I can’t buy them all.
b) The time I spend chasing good prices isn’t worth it - I could just put that time toward other income sources to cover more than the difference.
c) When the rare items I want do pop up, I should just go for it. I haven’t really regretted “overpaying” for anything yet, but definitely regret passing on some things over a price difference that’s trivial in the bigger picture.
Anyways - some cards.
This is the first prize card I’ve bought. A lot of people seem to hate this card, but I really like the Pearl/Diamond/Platinum concept as such a straightforward tie-in to a specific era. The actual mid-era trophies (numbered trainers) completely blend together in my mind, while many lower-tier prize cards (DPP, scroll, key) are very distinct. It wasn’t on my top priority list, but so many hit the market at the same time that I decided to just get it while it’s readily available. Still not sure if I’ll really go for the other two, as the price tier I expect on them opens up a lot of other options…
And for something completely unrelated - a Theater Limited VS set. I picked up other copies of the Latis previously and it opened the door for me to appreciate the set as a whole - lot of great art (except you, Crobat… what did they do to you) from some of my favorite illustrators in a very concise JP exclusive set. I was thinking about going for a full set and then one happened to pop up on PWCC last month, so I went for it. Almost complete in sequential certs but not quite. I’ll definitely say that buying a complete set outright feels a little deflating compared to filling things in piece by piece over time, but I’m still really happy with this pickup.