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. 
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.
