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@neverforget50in07, Just remember to use a silver sharpie or something visible on that Giovanni. Good luck!
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Ah okay I gotcha! Thanks for that and yeah im not looking to sell mine either. I actually would love mine personalized just because Typhlosion is part of my favorite pokemons evo line (see avatar for reference haha) and its my fav art of it by far. Also looking to get my Dark Raichu done as well, but having it made to me would mean a ton so I hear ya on keeping them!
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Nice cards
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Good luck with them
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I originally wasn’t going to post this lot I bought off ebay but I got it today from FedEx (came within 4 days from the day he shipped from Japan, shocking) and with the announcement of Gen 4 remakes today I felt I should. Since it was a spur of the moment buy and I didn’t expect anything interesting, I was very surprised how fun and awesome it was to see cards that were all part of Gen 4 and items I’ve never seen before.
The price was very reasonable ($210) for a priceless experience. If anyone knows what it said on the Pikachu note I found in the book it would be nice to see a translation.
Edit- I will update with a couple more photos as I found some more cool cards for my collection. I’m surprised that all the cards that came in this lot were actually mint condition.
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I’ll admit. That looks like a blast. XD Congrats on the additions!
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Final part of the lot I bought. Overall this opening was like a flood of nostalgia for me. Finding all these cool promos was very exciting as well as a couple of LV. X cards, and the pokemon center Charmander card. Perfect Friday for me.
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I decided to order another Japanese lot off of Ebay again ($220), and it didn’t disappoint. I would consider the value higher than the 1st lot I purchased a couple of weeks ago, but the 1st lot was more interesting in terms of items that were included. It took me a couple hours of looking through the binder, organizing, and sleeving the cards. Experiences like this make me wish they could happen more often than they do. Here are the pictures of most of the cards.
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Haven’t done anything in a while with my collection thread (just noticed that my collection isn’t even on here, only random pickups lol). So here is another random pick up from today while I was at the Big Apple trading card show. I was also given a free Pikachu wrapped cookie with the Gengar purchase. Overall pretty happy to get a sealed Yamabuki deck for a decent price and the Gengar alt art.
I received the fossil cards for free from a guy that opened a pack there to see if it was real. It was and he gave me the cards. Great experience.
Overall I loved being in NYC for college, great way to wrap up my last few days. Cant wait for my junior year next semester. Once I get back I will definitely have to post my pick ups from last semester and my actual collection.
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All my signatures and pick ups
This was the view from the line near the end for the people that made top 60
Long line Outside at 3AM
These are my pickups and autographs from Baltimore Regionals. Overall the experience was unique and I most certainly wont forget it. Saturday I was there only to just look around and buy a few alt art cards. Later that day I went to the cheesecake factory and ate with my girlfriend and went back to the Hotel for the unexpected next day. (Honestly if I knew this event would be like this, I would have never of went at all)
THIS IS A LONG STORY ABOUT MY TIME ON SUNDAY, READ AT YOUR OWN DESCRESSION
On Sunday morning I knew I would have to arrive early to get in line. I set my alarm for 2:15 and arrived at the convention center around 2:47. When my uber pulled up I was surprised to see an already long line. Me and my girlfriends were numbers 48 and 49 before they removed 6 people inside for cutting the line. The time went by sort fast to be honest. I witnessed some guy buy spot 13 in line for 2k, I saw someone flip a spot they bought $400 and sold for 1k even though it was not even guaranteed that that spot would make the cutoff, and I happily paid someone $500 to get one of my cards signed. I was glad my Girlfriend had someone to talk to for a bit as well since she doesn’t know much about Pokémon, but really likes Baltimore. She met a real nice girl that was also Vietnamese who was in line behind us.
I talked with so many people, and everyone was super nice that I interacted with. The craziness however started at around 3:30am (this is an estimation based on videos and pictures I’ve seen) when two people cut in line near the 30s and were being called out on It and refused to move. I never would have thought that Signed Pokémon card would be this crazy to obtain. The one girl with 10.3k Instagram followers and her boyfriend were left alone until the staff organizers came around 6:45 to get everyone’s name, and numerous people spoke out against them.
At around 7:30am, everyone was let into the building single file and brought down to start the line for the autograph session. While waiting in line I had one of my cards cracked so I could get it singed, and I saw what other people wanted to get signed as well. This was a bit more relaxing, and it was nice that everything was being taken care of to remove the few people who had cut in line. Once the security came over to remove the guy and the girl (they even removed some their clothing so they could try and blend in) Someone a few spots ahead of me told me that they were arguing and saying to security that they were here at 1:30am. Then I was told that they would check the security cameras and if they were lying they would be removed. After around 30 minutes they were out of line as well as around 4 others near the front I think. So my new number in line was around 43.
We got signed in and the top 60 people had there names in the computer. I waited until 1:48pm to get called in and get signed. I have to say I was amazed how super nice the staff and Kouki Saitou translator was. They accommodated pretty much anything you would want on the card, as long as there was some type of personalization added. I got my 6 cards singed as well as a picture with Saitou himself, so It was a great afternoon. I saw the card that I had someone get signed for me and that card was a work of beauty. Saitou really took his time with his sketches and made sure all his signatures were not rushed.
I stuck around for about 30mins after talking and looking at other peoples autographs, and I was happy the one girl that was talking to my girlfriend outside in the morning got in to get her autographs as well. Sadly I don’t think everyone in the top 60 got to get a signature that day. I think the top 50 were the only ones to see Saitou.
My biggest trade came before I left. I trade one Card Saver 1 for 5 top loaders to a guy a I also met in line.
To make up for this day, I got out early enough (3:25pm) to go get ice cream and see the aquarium with my GF. This was what I wish I could have done on Saturday to be completely truthful. Saturday felt wasted for me, so I can’t imagine how the people that arrived at 5am that day feel.
Overall if signings ever happen again in the future, I really hope they are as organized and prepared as they were on Sunday. I heard so many stories about Saturday that made me happy I did not witness them.
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Nice to see you were able to grab a decent number of them! I’m sure the details about your experience you wrote out are helpful in learning for future events too. Next time just send me a message and you can meet all the other people from E4 
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Thank you. Yeah if I ever decide to do another regional, I would definitely do that. Without my Girlfriend with me I would have had not such a fun time, at least I had her to talk to on Saturday.
Was glad I was able to meet a couple e4 members though such as dunsparce on Sunday.
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Kind of a big update to my thread since I finally got around to taking picture of my small binder collection that I started back in almost two years ago before I started college. I also have a collection update from going to New York Comic Con last week.
At Comic Con I met 3 people:
- Michael Haigney (voice director, producer, and various voices in Pokemon)
I was very happy to Meet Michael Haigney as he played a very big role in the early years of the anime for Pokemon (When I was a kid, I listened to the directors commentary on movies 1 and 3 a few times since I found it so interesting, glad I could meet him in person).
- Jason Paige (Original singer)
Meeting Jason was by complete accident. I was roaming around the vendor booths and I noticed that I couldn’t really move out of the way at this one booth since I was being blocked by a few people in front of me. I noticed that the one guy probably 10ft Infront of me was Jason Paige. He was setting up his signing area, so I stayed there as I was accidentally in line. Very nice guy to meet, childhood me would of been starstruck.
- Bryce Papenbrook (voice of Eren Yeager)
My Girlfriend loves Attack on titan. Got his signature on a lenticular print for her birthday.
My 3 signatures and I picked up one card for my binder collection.
Bought a pop figure to be signed by him. I found it really cool I went to the same school as he did.
Meeting Jason was great as I was obsessed with the original theme song when I was 6 years old
My girlfriends birthday gift
Got a free custom card from Jason. Also Please listen to Michael’s podcast. His stories about the anime are great to listen to.
Now my small binder collection post. All cards in here are mint (except my error card) and even some of these were cracked from 9 cases. I pretty much only try to focus on adding alt art cards to my binder now. I find it fun trying to collect them.
I find this to be a cool little error card. I guess some ink is missing on this card. If someone knows for sure, please correct me if I’m wrong.
This card is a neat one as its a crimp and miscut at the bottom. I remember opening an ETB and pulling this card over Christmas break last year. I was pretty happy even if I don’t go out of my way to collect misprints and errors.
That is it for my binder collection. Eventually I’ll post my PSA collection which is my main collection and what I prioritize, but I’ll wait until I have them all together.
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Quick Update after going to the Toronto regionals.
This was a very fun event and I’m very happy I got to spend some time listening to Mitsuhiro Arita answer questions about himself as well as seeing him draw in person.
The first day (Friday) of the event went pretty well. I signed up for the sms queue and was able to walk around the venue and look at the vendors to see what was being sold. I sold six cards to 401 Games for a mint 1st edition Dark Riachu.
Later on during the day around 1:30pm I was able to get my cards signed by Mitsuhiro Arita. Meeting him was a fun experience. His sketches came out nice as well. It seems like he took his time with them. I also bought one of his prints since it looked like my past dog.
The next day I went back, I was able to meet up with some E4 members before the Panel. At the panel, Arita was pretty straight forward with his answers and declined to answer 1 or 2 questions due to his agreement with Pokemon.
At the end of the Panel, he signed for us. When it came to my turn, I believe translation was messed up and he accidentally did an extra sketch for me on my Raichu. That was the greatest accident to ever happen to me.
After the Saturday panel I left to go back to Buffalo, then the next morning went back to NYC for school.
Overall this was way more organized than Baltimore and I hope future events are exactly as smooth as this.
Photos below:
Here Is the Riachu that got an extra sketch, 
also the top was originally written in red but Ken (the translator) hurried to tell him that it was supposed to be silver. So this Raichu kind of has a red outline as Arita wrote over it with the silver. This card has the best story out of all the cards I got signed.
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The Orlando, Florida Regionals was My favorite regionals that I’ve been to without a doubt. Aside from the autographs, I was happy to spend time at Disney world on Saturday with my girlfriend.
On Friday, I walked 8 mins from My Hotel at the convention center to line up. It was nice being early to talk to other people in the hobby (It was also 100% more comfortable waiting in Florida than Baltimore, and Toronto).
The first day I was in the panel and I was able to meet her. She drew a great picture of the 3 Kanto starters, oddish and Pikachu. Watching her draw a picture as big as she did was quite the experience.
It was great to talk to many forum members as well while waiting around. Some unique things that I did at the event besides getting the cards signed were trading away a couple spots that I had for Harada and sold some bulk ultra-rare’s and slabs to vendors that I’ve been hanging onto for a while.
I left on Sunday and this was the end result of the cards that were signed. My two favorite cards of the event were the Lugia thanks to a fellow E4 member, and the non-personalized Gyarados as that is pretty much impossible to happen at a event.
Here is me and My GF with Harada (Even though My GF does not like Pokemon in the slightest, she loves Harada’s Polar bear art and the pins she was giving out as she thought they were cute). Harada even complimented my GF name, and that made her happy. Safe to say this was my GF favorite regionals as well.
Here are a few Disney pictures that I also wanted to share.
Overall, This was quite the experience and I’m excited to See Harada again next week in NYC.
I’ll probably be be skipping out on the next regionals due to school and the travel costs are starting to build up, but I will definitely show up for Connecticut.
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Beautiful sketches, they all turned out really good. It was nice meeting you and I’m glad I could help with the Lugia!
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Yep, it was great meeting you as well. Thanks so much. It will a while before these get graded but I’m glad I at least have them all in my autograph collection. Hope to see you sometime at another regionals event.
TLDR: Great event, thank you Alec.
Cards pictures below.
This is my review of the North Carolina regionals.
I will say this event went as smoothly as it probably could have given the amount of people attending.
From my personal experience arriving to line up at 2:20pm on Thursday to be 90ish was mildly shocking. It wasn’t bad though as I enjoyed talking to many people because that made the time go by fast. Self policing by taking a head count of each person that arrived and taking their name and giving them their number relieved much stress for many people I’m sure. I definitely would love to see this officially done in the future as it was needed.
One small criticism is the line up time. I know many people were mad at the fact there were people lining up before the evening. Many people expected the organizers to stick with the info given that anyone lining up before the evening would be removed from the line. Hearing that some people lined up as early as 9am and 10am on Thursday was an expected surprise in my opinion.
I’m not going to list ways that this could be improved, but I will say going forward this should be addressed and hopefully there will be an improvement for line up times when the CT regionals happen.
Over the course of the day and night, everyone showed off their cards, went to places nearby to eat without having to worry their spot would be gone (cause of the unofficial list that was made). gemmintpokemon also bought pizza to share for the whole line, that is something I won’t forget.
Once 5:45am Friday came, it was time for sign in. Once I signed up for the queue I arrived at my hotel at 6:30am.
The next day everything went nicely. Only the first 40 people went through the general queue that day, which was kind of expected seeing the pre selected sketches she was going to be doing.
Saturday was my day to get the cards I wanted signed. This was a fun and tiny bit stressful day. In the morning I went to the panel and that was a highlight and amazing to see. Mrs. Himeno was very well prepared and seemed very humble showing off her work. I was absolutely amazed by the level of quality that went into this panel. Getting to witness original pre production work is something I would never take for granted. The questions I personally asked at the panel were
What year did you publish your first manga?
Her answer: two years before she started to work for Pokémon in 97, so around 1995.
My next question: what’s your favorite Pokémon card you have designed?
Hew answer: Donphan from Ruby & Sapphire because the background has a fantasy like tone to it with pink trees.
My next question: did you have a 2nd second passion when you were younger?
Her answer: yes! She wanted to work with vehicles and mentioned that she would have liked to work on a plane, but her English was not good enough since she focused all her time into art.
My last question: have you ever watched any of the Pokémon movies or anime’s to get a better idea of how the Pokémon looks?
Her answer: she tries to stray away from watching Pokémon or looking up other Pokémon related material to come up with her own ideas and stay creative.
After the panel I got two cards signed and she told me in Japanese “Thank you for asking many questions”. It felt nice to hear she was appreciative of my interest in her past works and life.
Throughout the day I was waiting for my text as I was in group 7. I stuck around the convention and talked to many people that I’ve seen at past regionals and who I saw in line. Around 5:30 my group was texted and we got our stuff signed. I was ecstatic with how all my cards came out. She even referred to her phone for one sketch she did for me. On Saturday she got through 8 groups with about 8 each per group, so around 64 total on Saturday.
Sunday I left at 6:40am. But apparently 7 groups went that day. So through the event a total of 160 people got through the general queue roughly.
This event may have had its hiccups here and there (completely understandable due to the amount of people attending and popularity of Himeno) but was definitely a surreal experience to be a part of.
If I’m able to go to CT, I’m hoping that event will also be as smooth as this.
Thank you Alec and the Overload staff for making this event a memorable one.
Here are cards that I got signed from the event.
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TLDR- got bored on the bus back to NYC, so I decided to write about this event. Overall very fun. Great conclusion to the end of the east coast regionals this season. Signed cards pictured below.
Hartford regionals was definitely a relaxing event. I Originally couldn’t even go since an exam was on the same day, but thankfully it got moved to online. Even though I wasn’t able to make it through general queue to meet Mr. Ariga or have any panel this time around, it was still worth going. I was able to meet so many great people that were able to have this event as their first artist event. I Was very happy to talk to people from past events.
Definitely made some cool trades that made this entire event worth taking a gamble on the lottery system.
I had some help gaining a few signatures from people within the community. Very grateful for being able to get 3 of my 4 cards I wanted to get signed by Mr. Ariga if i had gotten the chance to meet him.
Even though I was definitely disappointed to see the line change to lottery about 1 week before the event, I totally understand the reason and hopefully they keep it as an online lottery for the future to keep everything fair and not to have people spend large amounts of money on travel or take PTO to take a gamble in person for these events.
Definitely felt bad for a lot of people at this event as well, definitely wish circumstances could have been different for many (especially for my group 16 people), but there is no one to be mad at since it’s all just luck and everyone knows that going into this event.
My happiest moment from this event was being able to trade a signature to a very nice kid that I obtained from the NYC Harada event as it was his first signature. His next signatures came the next day from Ariga. I Was definitely happy to see him get something worthwhile from this event.
Sadly this event had a few disappointing moments but nothing that could be controlled I believe. I felt very bad for a friend that missed his panel, that was very awful to see knowing he was only late by a few minutes.
The last disappointing moment was for a guy that I got group 16 with as it was his first event he went to and he was hoping to get a signed shining Lugia and gift a signature card to another guy in Line that helped him get a new shining lugia as he unfortunately lost his while waiting in line during Friday morning.
My final thoughts about this event I’m very happy that it seemed Mr. Ariga was very interested to meet and talk to everyone who was able to meet him. He truly has a genuine interest in being at the event I believe and seeing him being social with everyone is something not every artist will do.
I believe this event did what it was set to accomplish which was have the artist enjoy himself in a comfortable environment and for him to interact with his fans.
Hopefully I can actually meet him in person sometime in the distant future.
After going to every overload event regionals this season, and talking to numerous volunteer staff throughout each regionals, I do see the effort that it takes to make sure everything can go smoothly and fairly as possible for the attendees as well as the artist who is the main priority in this case.
Pictures below are of my cards that I was able to get signed. My only thought when I look at these thought is I wished I could have talked to him and witness him draw these in person.
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