Milhouse Collection - February PSA Sub Return! 30/4/25

[teamrocketop]

Dont knock me for it but I’ve played only a few of the FF’s, which one is Scott in? Btw, nice return DBZ sexy and always loved that FA Pikachu EX

[teamrocketop]

I didnt catch this, do you have a lot of the wave 1 cards? I got so much FF in bulk, think I am going to dump it and come back to Pokemon even harder

[milhouse]

Never opened any Wave 1 product, unfortunately. I bought my Wave 1 cards by accident when Opus first released and ‘Wave 1’ wasn’t really understood or known by most folk.

Scott is from FF2.

[itsturtletime]

Congrats on your returns!

[milhouse]

Another PSA return that is on the way back now. Once again generally pleased with the sub. A couple of misses on a regrade attempt and a card that went from a 10 to a 6 during QA. Honestly most annoyed about the Cynthia getting a 9. I just wanted to get the 10 and move on, despite how ‘easy’ they are to buy.

Evolutions Charizard was a very late addition. I found it in a stack of cards in a drawer that I hadn’t looked through in years. Funny how that works.

DBH is peak PSA abbreviation labelling.

[pfm]

@milhouse

Cynthia getting a 9.

did you forget to post this one?

[milhouse]

[joponnes]

What is that dragon ball thingy even supposed to say

[amwolf]

Good card, much appreciation

[milhouse]

‘Ultra God Mission 6: Miraculous Limit Break Campagain’

[joponnes]

And then psa decided to translate that in Polish

(Edit: not sure if polish language jokes are too european or even too finnish)

[milhouse]

Small update. PSA holiday special returned lightning fast. Quickest turn around I have had in literally years.

A few Ls in this sub for some of my non-Pokemon items, and got some 8s on some ex era cards that I was hoping for 9s or better on. But this is the game we are playing so I don’t let it bother me too much. Still some big Ws in the sub, however.

Side not: The abbreviating on the Bulma is just the worst, they had so much room to make it not read ‘GIRLS CP’ smh.

[ReganRampage]

Wow your collection is absolutely incredible!

[milhouse]

Preliminary return results from the TCG Special at PSA. Fingers crossed a 10 doesn’t get dropped to a 6 like last time.

My grading results have been a bit below what I usually manage to achieve the last couple of subs, partly due to the fact I am submitting more ex era holos that are notoriously more difficult to achieve 10s on, but I am not discouraged or overly upset about it. Just have to manage expectations.

Here are some Ws from the sub:

[milhouse]

Returned from a trip to Japan this week, have some collection updates.
(Quite a bit of text so scroll down if you just want to see what I bought)

I went to Japan for reasons that were not Pokemon card or collecting related, it was simply to have a break and enjoy myself for a few weeks. I had some card buying money, of course, and would just pick up what I happened to come across and like.

I’ve never considered collecting retro video games, I already collect too many things and my brain has perhaps been wired to automatically focus on mint condition or sealed copies of things, the latter being considerably expensive like in Pokemon cards.

I happened to be in a second hand pop-culture shop in Shinjuku, that I entered on a whim because it was in the same building as the Godzilla shop and I thought they might have some cards to look at. I found myself wandering through the video games section and was surprised to see that it went all the way back to Famicom (NES).

Not only were there loose cartridges available for purchase but a shockingly large amount of used boxed copies available that came with all the guts + manual + anything else that came with it at the time of purchase. To cut what could be a very long-winded story short, the bug got into me and I decided to go through and see if I could find boxed copies of many of the games from my childhood. The limits on myself were that I had to have played it, or it be part of a series I did play. A list was created, and I slowly worked through to see how many of them I could cross off.

It turns out, most of them.

Boxed copies of all Final Fantasy games from 1 to 10-2:

Various RPGs: (Bahamuts Lagoon, Chrono Trigger, The Legend of Dragoon, Pokemon TCG Gameboy, Harvest Moon, Seikendensetsu 2, The Legend of Mana, Digimon World 1)

Persona 1, Persona 2: Innocent Sin, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, Persona 3, Persona 4, Kingdom Hearts, FF15

(I didn’t intend to buy a Japanese copy of FF15, but I saw a steelbook collectors edition for 1200 yen and couldn’t pass it up).

Super Donkey Kong, Super Donkey Kong 2, Final Fantasy Tactics, Breath of Fire 4.

All in all the only games I missed picking up were Super Donkey Kong 3, and Kingdom Hearts 2. I saw plenty of copies of both, kept passing them up hoping for a copy with better box condition. I’ll be able to find both easily online.

I don’t think this little side collection will evolve MUCH beyond this. There are a couple of alternative versions of earlier Final Fantasy games that I might get to fill it out, but beyond that I am fairly set. It was a very pleasing experience of discovery and gave me a lot of the satisfaction from finding new things that I have been missing from Pokemon cards for a while.

Good times.

[milhouse]

PSA return from the 14 dollar special from (August?). This sub was much better than my previous, only 1 major loss which was a Fossil Gengar which got a 5.
Relieved that all my SDBH cards got 10s as well, they are beautiful cards but it’s always so awkward when one gets a 9.

The Ho-Oh and Pikachu are 9s that I thought were good enough to be 10s, so I cracked in resubbed. Glad they agreed with me this time.

[milhouse]

Harvest Moon 64 - JP - CIB
Strong cigarette smell coming from the contacts of the game cartridge for this one. Otherwise beautifully conditioned and clean.

BBM Crown Series 2024 - Terunofuji Auto
I bought this just a few weeks before the 73rd Yokozuna retired.

Wakamotoharu Auto

I have some more disposable income lately so I am working on building up my sumo wrestler autograph collecting, and also seeking out collectibles that bring me joy. Hence the deeper foray into video game collecting.

I still collect Pokemon, to be sure, will never stop. But I am just prioritizing other things for the moment.

[milhouse]

Got a real tasty package in the mail the other day, Discord users will have seen these already. But of course I want to share here! I still collect Pokemon cards, that will never end, but my attention has most certainly been towards other collectibles this past year or so and that trend is continuing for now. My scope of which retro games is expanding a little bit(I knew this would happen). But I am still keeping the reigns on what my boundaries are.

The biggest purchase in this order was a case of 10x Romancing Saga 3 for Super Famicom. This is perhaps not as big of a purchase as it might seem at first glance, these cases are surprisingly abundant for what they are (there is a story behind it). I picked this case up for less than original retail price. I just think it’s so cool to own something like this. The game is 30 years old. (I bought an extra, used, copy for contents photos).

Next up we have Thunderbirds for Famicom.
Thunderbirds was a pretty huge part of my childhood, me and my siblings would watch the few tapes of it that we had over and over. In my dive into retro game collecting I have come across many games from IPs I had no idea even had Japanese titles.

Seiken Densetsu for GB. Not a game I have played, but part of my collecting boundaries is that anything developed by Square/Squaresoft is something worth collecting.

Two minor additions FFX International Edition and FFX-2 (I have the other version of both games already).

[brendantheclayboy]

Duuuude. Ffx international! Seeing as ffx is my favorite game of all time im shocked and disappointed in myself that I to this day haven’t simply picked one up.

I usually love your retro game pickups too. Anything jp snes is always eye candy. I’ve been nerding out and downloading dozens of obscure jp exclusive snes soundtracks. I’m convinced they are some of the best game ost’s ever, those obscure titles mostly. I do have some from romancing. That art is phenemonal.

Nice stuff mil! That’s my treat for the day, seeing these.

[milhouse]

The artwork that you get on the boxes for SFC games is out of this world. Genuinely a golden era in terms of the artistic expression that comes with a video game release. Some games have such expressive and visually pleasing box art that they are worth getting just for that alone. There are rarities that come with hefty price tags of course, but I do love that the 90s console games are financially accessible even if you want to get Mintier CIB copies. I am having a lot of fun.

The dimensions of the SFC boxes mean they display so beautifully, as well.