I lacked one card from my childhood Jungle collection so I decided to open up my first pack in 15 years. To my surprise I pulled a non holo Vileplume; the exact card I was missing!
What are some of your lucky Pokémon experiences?
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Those are incredible odds! Congrats on the pull and completing your set! Such a satisfying feeling putting the last set card into a binder slot…
I dunno if I’d describe this as “lucky” per se, but 10+ years ago while in middle school I traded my Elemental Hero Tempest Yu-Gi-Oh! card for a Gold Star Rayquaza because I didn’t have the necessary fusion materials to summon the card so I figure I might as well trade it to my friend for a cool Pokemon card. Had no idea about the values back then, but I do now. So I’d say it’s pretty lucky that I didn’t have the fusion material monsters for the card and I had no possible way of predicting the card values back then and so the card I traded for ended up being one of the most expensive cards in the hobby haha. And that Rayquaza is minty:p
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Probably that I got my nostalgia hit earlier than the majority, which allowed me to pick up some awesome cards/boxes at extremely cheap prices.
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The two luckiest pulls I can remember:
I bought a Korean CP6 (XY Evolutions) booster box to get the non-Holo Base Set artwork Pikachu, with a small chance on the Secret Rare Pikachu. The set contains 16 Secret Rares, so I mainly bought it for the non-Holo Pikachu, and figured I’d buy the Secret Rare as single later on. But, I actually pulled it in one of the last packs of the box. 
The other one was this:
Of which I later graded two of them in my first BGS sendoff:
Greetz,
Quuador
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Dunno how lucky it was but I’m still proud of pulling a shining steelix back in summer 2002 as a teen buying random packs.
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Went card shop hunting at a random neighboring town and found a predominantly MTG shop. I asked if they had any Pokemon cards and they brought out this little tin with some cards that “an older lady” brought in. I looked through the cards which were all un-sleeved but contained two base set charizards (NM somehow), one 1st edition german blastoise (NM somehow), one 1st edition played gyarados, a few no symbol jungle holos (LP), and a bunch of random unlimited fossil UC/C.
I asked what he wanted for everything… he said I could take them all for $35.
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Same.
I wouldn’t be able to have nearly as valuable of a collection as I do today if I hadn’t had nostalgia hit much earlier than most collectors in the hobby today (2009).
Combination of being older than the majority of people in the hobby (age 31), being homesick during college, and having a little bit of spending money available during my college days as a result of money I made from poker.
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I had the exact same experience as you (almost), but with fossil! I needed two holos to complete fossil which were magneton and hypno. I had just (got extremely lucky to go along with this luck theme) got a half full 72 count box of long pack fossil in a lot of sealed stuff for 550 bucks. I figured I would open one up and I pulled the magneton! I ended up grading it two years later and it got a 10!
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First pack I opened in 10 years was a neo destiny booster pack and I pulled a shining mewtwo. This was in 2011 I think… before I got into serious collecting. I played with it in a sleeved deck then later got it graded a 9 lmao.
My buddy that same day pulled a shining charizard and then sold it about a year later for 70 bucks… ugh.
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We should have an E4 Poker tournament.
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Despite all of the Base set and Base set 2 packs, I never got a Charizard as a kid - couldn’t even trade for one. When Team Rocket and Gym Heroes hit the local comic store, I bought about 3 packs - 1 English and 2 Japanese (I loved the Japanese packs more). I got a Japanese Rocket’s Mewtwo and Rocket’s Scyther (two of my favorite Pokemon) and then an English Dark Charizard!
Pretty sure everyone else knows my Shining Gyarados story but I’ll summarize it: Read about Shining Gyarados from Neo, assumed I would never get it and forgot about it, bought packs months later, got it, based collection on it from then on.
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I got super lucky a few months back in pulling a Shining Charizard from Hidden Fates on only my second Hidden Fates tin.
Bought the first tin from one of my local card shops then had a feeling that I should just go have a look in another of my local card shops for no real reason and decided to pick up another tin - and that’s the tin that had it in. Divine randomness definitely won out that day.
I’ve never pulled a Charizard(I’m only a casual collector) before and I’ve been buying small amounts of random boosters since the base set. Never had the base Charizard as a kid so it felt super cool to pull one.
Also got graded a 10 with PSA which I’m super happy about considering it’s the first card I’ve graded myself.
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A few years ago I bought 3 1st Edition Neo Revelation booster packs from a seller on Ebay. He accidentally sent me 5 packs instead of 3, so I contacted him and paid for the additional 2 packs he sent. The first pack I opened was a Shining Gyarados! Graded a 9 and I sold it, regrettably…
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First card I ever pulled as a kid was shadowless Charizard. Still have it and the pack to this day.
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That’s incredibly lucky to get the 1 card you needed! My luckiest moment was I bought some base set heavy packs over the last couple years. Back in August, I decided to buy a few heavy packs from TCAgaming and have the holos sent to PSA. I decided I’d open one of my heavy packs. Low and behold, I pulled the Zard! After ~4 months it came back, and got a 10. Still can’t believe I bought a random pack on ebay that was 20 years old, and ended up getting a PSA 10 Zard out of it.
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I’ve had a few lucky experiences since I began collecting but almost none of them involve opening packs b/c I think I have whatever the opposite of a rabbit’s foot is attached to me for that.
Anyway - I found a guy on Craigslist selling a binder of cards and went to meet him. Pulled up in a hillbilly looking driveway and there were a couple old guys on the porch rocking away in their chairs with a bunch of miscellaneous stuff strewn about. Walked up and a young guy came out to meet me. Was super nervous at first b/c they didn’t look too friendly but ended up being nice down to Earth rednecks that were just enjoying the good weather. Guy pulls out his binder of cards that he collected “when he was in Kansas with nothing else do but collect cards”. Ended up paying $200 for all the cards. Sold everything I didn’t need for $200-250 and kept a couple good things including a Reverse Legendary Collection Zard. Sent it to PSA (perfect condition) and came back a 7 for whatever reason… Cracked it out and sent it back and it got a 10! (as it deserved). So I basically got a $1000 card (back then anyway) for free and a cool story to boot.
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About 8 or 9 years or so ago, I bid on, and won, a team rocket booster box off ebay. It was a random purchase as hadn’t bought cards in about 10 or more years prior to that.
Anyways, I won the auction for what I thought was an unlimited booster box. Low and behold, it arrived and it was 1st edition! So I popped the box, sleeved and toploadered the whole lot.
Fast forward to about 3 years ago, I got my old collection out and decided i was going to start grading after seeing YouTube videos. Ended up grading a few of the big boys in a 10 such as magneton and raichu, then later graded the rest of the whole set, getting 10s on most of the commons, uncommons and rares. Not bad from an £82 booster box!
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Off the top of my head:
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Pulled a Shining Charizard from my first Neo Destiny pack. Thought it might be fake due the triple star rarity.
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2011ish, bought 4 1st Ed. Neo Revelation packs, one of each art, for $6 or $7 each online. I was in high school making $7.75 an hour at my part time job so this was a lot of money for me to spend on vintage Pokemon. The TOP card I wanted to pull was Ho-oh, much more than a Shining. On my 1st pack I pulled a Holo Celebi, 2nd pack Lugia, 3rd pack – I was carefully lifting the cards up a tiny bit one by one to see the number since I knew Ho-oh was 7/64. Saw that 7 and I’ll never forget that moment! 4th pack was a non-holo Celebi. So all Legendary pulls too! Still have all 4 and their empty packs as well. One of my favorite Pokemon experiences.
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2003 or 2004, bought 1 EX Dragon booster from my local comic book store. Opened the pack right as I was leaving and pulled a Rayquaza ex. Genuinely SCREAMED on the street and my mom was worried! Ran back into the store to tell everyone
Thinking about this is making me want to open vintage packs!
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I almost thought that when I pulled my shining zard from a pack back in 02. I had to have a check online to get the info on it, but as I had pulled a dark raichu prior to that, I had a feeling it was legit…the triple rarity symbol though was new to me!! Haha
I didn’t have any sleeves on me when I opened the pack, in a toilet in a petrol station I think, so i had to be super careful and slid them in my pocket. Pulled a psa 8.5 15 years later so not too bad!
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