Miracle Gro's Collection (Update - 7/22/20)

It’s about time I made one of these. I knew I had to when I got the mail today, which is the first card I’ll be showing here.

A little background of me as a collector: I was born in 2001 after the original Pokémon craze. I was introduced to the video games by my friends in school around 2nd grade (7 years old). I remember playing Platinum to absolute death and later SoulSilver when it came out. I started collecting the cards closer to when I was 8. My first booster box was from my grandmother on my birthday. It was Majestic Dawn and I pulled Leafeon Lv. X. I was kind of disappointed because it wasn’t Garchomp, my favorite Pokémon, but at least it wasn’t Porygon-Z. I collected on and off all the way up to Plasma Storm-ish. My last box for a few years was Boundaries Crossed. I got back in around the end of my freshman year in high school when I was looking at my old cards in my closet. The most notable card I had was a Jolteon Gold Star in EX-NM condition. I started researching and dove heavily into the newer sets. I moved a lot of cards around with Reddit users but hit a stale period after I filled out two binder sets (Ancient Origins and Evolutions) and some other miscellaneous new cards. I wanted to start getting into older stuff and single cards above $20. Here I am now on E4, not full of money (I couldn’t even work legally until my birthday a week ago) but full of enthusiasm.

To stop myself from procrastinating further from reading the book I have to before school starts, here are some of the highlights of my collection:

The king. Easily the most valuable single card in my collection. The Gold Stars were just going out of style when I started but damn are they so much better than the Lv. X cards. This is the best set card that came out after WotC and is one of my favorite cards of all time, easily top 5. The artwork is powerful, the Pokemon featured is the popular Rayquaza, it’s shiny, and, more specifically, it’s a Gold Star. So much right there. I purchased this from a user on here, not sure if he is comfortable with me shouting him out because we spoke exclusively privately but you know who you are, shout yourself out in the comments if you please, and thanks again. :wink:

Another big boy. This was my first PSA card I’ve ever gotten. I bought this on one of the first threads I made here. I had intended to get a Charizard just to leave in a toploader because I’d never had one but after some consideration (and people telling me that I was crazy for thinking I could get one NM-M ungraded - probably right) I decided to get this one already graded. Solid decision in my opinion. Since we communicated about it briefly on the thread I’ll say thanks again to @swolepoke for this card.

I said that I started collecting in the Diamond and Pearl era, so this is the best card to represent that as a whole. I was always familiar with all of the English cards, but when I saw this, a Japanese exclusive promo hyping up the upcoming Arceus movie, I couldn’t believe it. And it has Ash on it. I got this card back when it came out and I saved it and graded it. I always prided myself in taking care of my cards while the other kids at school were, shall we say, grubby grabbers.

A very recent card. Not much to say here. I pulled it myself. Its artwork is among the best ever in my opinion. It strongly represents the whole XY era as the name suggests. Just looks really good.

Aaand thanks for reading/skimming my first post. I hope to update more in the future.

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Very cool psa cards and stories! Even though I personally got into pokemon when the early ex series came out, I too love the DP era (reason why i love there blisters). Its the era where I could actually buy a good amount of packs with my own, hard working money. Even now I just recently decided to pull the trigger and buy a favourite psa 10 lvx of mine.

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Update time; just got in this Venusuar from @garyis2000.

Now I have 2/3 of the original starters in holo. Here they are together:

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Just got this in the mail today…

…and both together.

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I got Machamp today and Megneton a while ago. This in conjunction with a Charizard puts me roughly 19% of the way done with the PSA 9 Shadowless Set. I don’t actually know whether it’s feasible for me to complete this in the near future or not as the prices for certain cards keep growing. Thank god I swooped in and got Charizard before it doubled in value. My strategy is basically just to go down the hierarchy (Blastoise has been my top priority for a while. I make exceptions when I am able to find good deals (like Machamp; I actually got Magneton before I decided to chase Shadowless). I’m not a very high resource collector, maybe with Christmas coming I can make something happen. IDK.

Machamp is the most slept on card. The price of the card would make you think that it’s some easy thing to find these decks sealed anymore in Shadowless. The cards were also not packaged very well in the Shadowless ones (unless I’m thinking of something else) making the mint grades hard to achieve on a similar level to pack-fresh (okay maybe not for 9s but 10s are NOT easy for this). Finally, it is needed by both Shadowless collectors (hi) AS WELL AS pure 1st Edition collectors. Part of the reason this card is slept on may be because the lack of designation by PSA, ergo the pop being hard to read and strategize with, but that isn’t reason enough. I think this card should easily be in the $300-400 range along with its brothers and sisters in PSA 9 condition. The shadowed version brings it down too much.

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Great show and tells! I look forward to seeing a Blastoise in the future.

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New acquisition from a member here, thanks again. Comment if you want to make yourself known. Family photo of my 25% complete Shadowless Holo set… probably won’t be getting done any time soon but I have 3 of the top 5-6 here which is nice. (Machamp though… watch him.)

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Nice work. Shadowless 9s look great!

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Smart decision grabbing the Zard before it going to 3-4k.

I’d focus on chansey, clefairy and raichu next. Scarcity is unreal.

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Some say it’s the end of the world and prices are tanking, but I see it as an opportunity. Got this for just over $100… probably my favorite of the Base Set holos and much cheaper than what I was very close to pulling the trigger on back in October. I remember there was only one on eBay and the guy wouldn’t go under $175 or $150… glad I waited. I’m not worried about the future, the card will be fine for value after all of the flipping stops. Just a natural increase in the amount of people willing to sell their copies following a price increase flooding the market.

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Beautiful card. First graded card I ever bought was a Shadowless Zapdos.
The person that sold it to you flipped it after buying it at auction the week before funny enough. Glad it ended up in your hands where it will actually have a home now, haha.

I know, I saw it in sold listings when judging what to offer. Hopefully you don’t see this number pop up again in your massive database for a while lol.

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I initially wanted the Mysterious Pearl, but that jumped out of my price range very quickly. Instead, I got this, which is still an awesome prize card. Bit of a break from Shadowless.

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My last update on this post was a little over two years ago now, and that is an accurate reflection of the last time I bought any Pokemon cards. I think I got burnt out and didn’t really have any clear goals. I got sucked back in when I caught word that Neo Genesis Typhlosion #17 (the Notorious T.1.7.) had a spike in price. I had one laying around that I sold for a quick thousand and just like that I was right back into collecting and being engaged in the hobby. Some of that money went to getting me a nice PSA 9 2006 Championship Arena. I still haven’t decided yet if I want to try to get the 2005 to match it but either way it’s a cool prize card to have.

Anyone who has seen my posts knows that Gen 4 is maximum nostalgia for me which adds even more to this card’s place in my collection. Because of the combination of prize/trophies/promos being excellent standalone items (Championship Arena, Grand Party,…) and me not having too much of an affinity for WotC cards (I certainly appreciate them but not the same as people who grew up with them) I began to wonder what else my collection could be. I have/had a partial Shadowless 9 set that I never got around to finishing for several reasons. First, do I really have the money to get cards like Chansey and Raichu which are extremely difficult grades and demand ridiculously high premiums (relative to my spending power)? And second, do I really want to spend money on Poliwrath and Clefairy? I think I liked the idea of having a complete set more than the action of actually doing it. So, I decided to trim some of the fat from my Shadowless set. Charizard is staying with me… I still love that card. The others I could take or leave. With that money, I decided to do the only logical thing: blow it all on a Mysterious Pearl that had been listed and relisted with no bites on Yahoo Japan with shitty blurry pictures. Shoutout to @chrisbalestra for helping me navigate that. It was my first time middling cards from Japan and it was extremely nervewracking, but today I can say that I finally have Mysterious Pearl. I have posts going back mentioning it when it was a fifth of the price it is today. This card is one of my favorite trophy/prize cards out there from one of my favorite eras and I’m so happy I finally own one. Without further ado, here it is:

And finally, just to prove I’m really about that Gen 4 lifestyle, here it is next to my Japanese copy of Pearl:

And just to round this off I wanted to include something else. Thematically different but I think it’s okay to not focus on the big ticket rare items all the time. One little collection piece I recently added is this Natta Wake Psyduck. It’s ungraded and I got it for a decent value. Maybe when I do another submission to PSA I’ll toss this in because I think it has a shot at a 9 but it’s still a nice little card with Himeno art. Not sure if I want the rest of the Natta Wake sets but I do like this one (I know it’s also an English promo).

And there are also some cards and sealed product I’m buying on the side for “”“investment”"" purposes (gasp) but I won’t show them here because they aren’t personal. Either way I’m glad to be back around in the Pokemon market and I hope you enjoyed reading/seeing the cards.

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Insane keep it up!! Congrats!

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Congrats on the card and great grade! Def one of my favorite cards as well. Dalgia down, Palkia next!

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