Nostalgia trip : Share your pokemon memories

General
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Hi there !

After reading Is The Magic Gone? - #70 by c0ll3ct0r from @smpratte , I thought a lot about my childhood memories and the magic around it all.

A few similar posts have already been created in the past, but it was a while ago. So I thought it could be cool to share memories in 2026 and keep the magic alive !

I propose that you guys share 3 memories (or more if you want) :

  • 1st memory : Do you remember your 1st contact with pokemon ?
  • 2nd memory : What’s your best memory as a kid ?
  • 3rd memory : One memory about cards ?

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#1
My very 1st memory about pokemon was at fall 1999, I was 8yo kid. We were visiting some friends of my parents who also had kids (we were friends too). One of them had just gotten pokemon red and I remember we watch and play all together for the entire afternoon. Everything was so cool : music, graphics and the magic of discovering this whole world for the 1st time. It was the beginning of a great adventure ..

#2
After that, I have plenty of good memories around pokemon, especially at school with cards & gameboy. But my favourite remains the day I was with my dad at the car dealership (he was buying a new car) during the spring of 2001.
It was not fun for me at all and from my child’s PoV, it tooks ages.
When we finally took the road back home, I remember my dad saying :
“Tu as été sage, on va passer faire 2-3 courses pour ce soir et tu pourras prendre ton jeu pokemon”
→ “You were well-behaved, we’ll stop to run a few errands for tonight, and you’ll be able to pick up your pokemon game”

I remember so well standing in front of gold and silver at the shop, feeling like I was facing a live-changing choice. I choose the gold version. I read the jacket all throught the mall and during the car ride home, I was so happy.
Back at home, I ran into my room to grab my gameboy, went back to the living room to hide behind the sofa (it was my “secret place”) and started playing .. I picked chikorita that day.

#3
As for cards, I think i’m the most nostalgic about the last time I opened pack with my best friend (at this time) when we were 13-14yo. Pokemon was considerred “not cool” at school by then.
We bought a few ex-dragon boosters and opened them in my parents’ garden. It was late summer and we had played a lot Ruby/Sapphire during thos holidays. I was already fan of Dragonite and Latios : I pulled them both that day. My friend got Latias (his fav’ too), Golem and the (secret) Charmeleon. It was such a good day, and I still have those booster wrappers today.

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Efour Digest - Daily summary of activity
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  1. First contact was at my friend Ali’s house… We would have been 10 or 11. He had Pokémon red on his Gameboy and I didn’t have a Gameboy yet. We used to take it in turns swapping after battles. We had no clue wtf was happening but we couldn’t stop playing.
  2. We didn’t have the internet at home, but we did in school. There was this website, no idea what it was called now, but it had fan created Pokémon on there and we wrote the URLs to our favourite ones on scraps of paper to look at on breaks.
  3. My fondest memory is probably taking a trip to Japan back in 2005. I was 18 and venturing out of the UK without my parents for the first time. I remember going to Harajuku station on a Sunday to see everyone all dressed up on the bridge outside it, on a crisp Spring day. I remember strolling down the street opposite the station and nipping into a toy shop and picking up a packet of Mirage Forest, and one of Flight of Legends. I pulled the Lapras from Mirage Forest that day and I kept it with me for the next 20 years until I finally got it graded. Somehow it got a PSA7 despite not seeing a sleeve between 2005 and 2020.
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First contact was when I was 5/6 years old, a little before Christmas me and my grandparents were celebrating early. I was opening my presents and inside was a brand-new Gameboy Advanced SP and a copy of Pokémon Red Rescue Team. It’s still my favorite Pokémon game to this day.

My best memory was in 2011, when little 11 year old my got to visit the Black and White tour at the Mall of America. It was so much fun! I got to do a little trivia show, and saw really cool Zekrom and Reshiram statues, got my Zorua and Celebi promo from watching the new at the time Zoroark movie in the mall’s movie theater and even got to play a demo for the games!

My favorite card memory was back in 2022. I was playing Magic the Gathering Commander at a friend’s house when he remembered he had some old Evolving Skies he meant to give to his nephew back when it released. He offered to let us crack the packs as something to do. One of my other friends end up cracking the Sylvie Vmax Alt Art. I made a passing comment on how that’s my then gf (now fiancé)'s favorite card. He not only sold it to me for $200 under MSP at the time, but also split it 50/50 with the dude who pulled it. Now that I’m half way across the country I still wonder how their doing sometimes.

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Me (7 y.o.) and my little brother (5 y.o.) were zapping through cartoon channels on the TV when we say a boy throwing a weird ball at a caterpillar (end of episode 2). Since we were both intrigued, we continued watching the next episode.
A few weeks later, we each received our very first (English Base Set unlimited edition) booster packs from our parents.

Probably my first trade. My little brother and me were both lucky that we got a holo in our very first booster packs. He an Alakazam, and me a Chansey. But as a kid, I primarily cared about more cards and not so much about the holos, so when an older kid asked me to trade my Chansey for his Pidgey, Pidgeotto, and Vulpix, I happily accepted.
Later that same week, my parents were watching the 8 o’clock news, and they were talking about the Pokémon craze in our country. They stated some adult collectors would even pay up to 100 Gulden (old Dutch currency) for some cards, and they showed a picture of a Charizard, and.. your guess it, a Chansey.
Looking back, they likely meant 1st edition cards specifically. But as a kid I had no idea 1st edition cards even existed, and I doubt the news reporter did either. Either way, after that I was more careful with my trades at school (in my mind at least, since I had no idea about the value of any of my cards, and still just did trades that simply made me happy).

I’ve swapped the 2nd and 3rd ones, to keep the memories chronological. I’m not sure if it’s the ‘best’ memory per se, since it’s more like a collective of multiple memories of multiple years. But as a kid, we every year came together with the family during the Sint Nicholas fest, and read rhymes and opened packages. It’s pretty similar to Christmas in other countries, just on December 5th instead of 25th, and without a tree and ornaments and stuff. :slight_smile:
Both me and my little brother would usually get multiple booster packs among our presents, which we opened and all put on a single stack (after all the duplicates would already be split between us), and then we’d each pick one card at a time. They were very jolly moments, simply opening presents and laughing together with the family.

Greetz,
Quuador

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  1. My older brother was into Pokemon when it came out and even though I was very little when Pokemon was released in the US anything my brother was interested in I became interested in. My first real memory is watching him and my mom sort his cards. I still consider the Fossil Articuno he gave me to be my first Pokemon card.

  2. I’m not sure I have a “best memory” per say because there are just so many memories. Pokemon has been so constant in my life in one way or another it is hard to quantify “best.” But, remember the Dream World from BW? There was a summer where every day I would send a Pokemon to the Dream World and play on the website. I remember I had a friend who had like all the Pokedolls unlocked and in her house and being so jealous, but she was way more dedicated that me!

  3. I remember trading my non-holo Expedition Charizard 39 for a Japanese Neo File Typhlosion. I must have not had a Typhlosion card at the time because it was my only Charizard card and I typically didn’t trade away cards if I only had one of a species. I remember telling the kid he had to “take real good care of it” for us to do the trade since it was a big deal for me.

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  1. At the store to get my copy of Red/Blue for the GameBoy. Was devastated to learn that the box with the cool red dragon was sold out. Plenty of Blue boxes left though. Turns out that, on average, kids tend to prefer dragons to tank turtles. All forgotten though once I fired up the game and got lost in that, at the time, truly brand new experience.
  2. The hustle and bustle of the playground trading card scene. Real miniature NYSE vibes back then. I was lacking a certain assertiveness, so I got the short end of a number of deals :smile: . Honorable mention, finding Red at the top of Mt. Silver in Gen 2.
  3. One which nicely connects to the present day is when Neo Destiny released and I was floored by Light Arcanine. Thought it was the most beautiful card, still do. Unfortunately for young Ormly, the playground council of boys had decreed that any card with flowers on it was for girls and shall not be collected by any self-respecting boy. Had to conform to societal expectations with gritted teeth. When I started casually collecting again last year, purchasing a copy was one of the first things I did :slight_smile:
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