Old School Collectors W/ Pics

I had a Facebook dude chirping that there’s no such thing as Pokemon collectors. All of us are either sellers/flippers or investors.
I don’t keep collectibles here so I went to my Nevada storage and grabbed a box I knew was from the beginning and contained all Japanese promo plus items. I was looking for stuff to show that if I wasn’t a collector why in the world would I still have stuff like this.

I thought it might be fun to show pics of of our earliest collectibles. I didn’t want to show my oldest Jpn promo cards so I picked these to show. Note these were the earliest PSA cases. The card I showed just gives an example of an old cert.

The second picture shows two items that I had included a note saying “Trade for tourney lab coat”. It’s my writing but I don’t recall the particulars lol.

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Here are my only surviving childhood cards; was super excited back in 2001 to discover 1st edition cards in the store, and Australia must have gotten shadowless cards

and my fossil box that I bought for $150 with my 16th birthday money :grin: still have the box, opened packs, holos (just realised i only got 11 -.-) and the rares

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Love it ace:)

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Did you hear about the guy that had his box opened by customs?

This is the card that got me into Pokemon, my friend gave it to me after his deck went through the washing machine in his pants pocket.

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Yep pretty sure I seen him on one of the facebook groups telling everyone about it, that sucks big time

Nothing too special/rare, but these are all cards with a story behind them from the collection of my youth.

I remember being 7 years old and zapping on TV, when we came across a boy throwing a red-white ball against a caterpillar, ending the episode (episode 2, where Ash catches Caterpie). Since it looked interesting, we kept looking, and episode 3 started. Me and my little brother both enjoyed watching it.
A couple of weeks later our parents bought us our first booster pack: English unlimited edition Base Set. I don’t know anymore which non-holos it contained, but it did contain a holo Chansey. As a kid however, I didn’t really care about holo cards - all I cared about was more cards. So on the playing ground of school, I traded my Chansey for a Pidgey, Pidgeotto and Vulpix; 1 vs 3 was a no-brainer for 7 y.o. me.
At the end of that same week however, the Pokémon craze was on the 8 o’clock news, where they mentioned some collectors would pay up to 100 Gulden (old Dutch currency) for single cards, and they showed Charizard, and… you guessed it: Chansey. They probably meant 1st edition Shadowless copies of those, but as a kid I had no idea these differences exist, and I doubt the news reporter did either.

A few years back I bought this Chansey for just 2 or 3 USD for nostalgia sake, so here is a picture of those cards:

The next two packs we received about a month later, probably because we had good grades on school or something like that (our parents usually gave use Pokémon boosters as rewards, or as birthday/Sint Nicholas/Christmas presents), were two (English unlimited edition) Jungle packs. Not sure why my local toy shop only sold English boosters, since both Base Set and Jungle were also available in Dutch…

Anyway, those two packs contained a holo Snorlax and a holo Jolteon. I traded the Snorlax for a much cooler Mewtwo promo, but I still have the Jolteon, which is also my favorite artwork of the Jungle set. As a kid I used to reorganize my collection ALL THE TIME. Sometimes sorting them by index, sometimes by type, sometimes by evolutions, etc. Being unsleeved and moved in and out of the binders all the time, the condition is obviously pretty bad. But it’s still nice that I have these original cards from back then, and being played give them some charm for what they are imo.

After that I think I got some Decks, like the (English unlimited edition) Fossil Lapras and Base Set 2 Poliwrath Decks. I also still have both of those cards. I also started collecting Yu-Gi-Oh, and at the time both were about equally exciting to collect/play with. Unlike Pokémon I played Yu-Gi-Oh pretty often with my little brother and friends, and had our mom sometimes translate certain parts of the card we didn’t understand, lol… :grin:

Then a few years forward, we were walking on a market, and I came across a stand where they sold Pokémon booster packs. So, I bought one myself. When I opened it I thought they were fake… It was a Legendary Collection pack, and it contained cards I already had (but with the different set symbol); it contained this very weird looking holo Moltres, which almost looked like a sticker; and to top it off, it contained two of the exact same Slowpokes… I was kinda disappointed, because I already had most of these artworks, and it contained two of the exact same card in one pack…

So later I traded the Reverse Foil Moltres for an Ancient Mew; which in turn I traded for a Japanese Neo Genesis Steelix. And fairly quickly I was able to get the Ancient Mew in another trade again, no idea anymore how. (The Reverse Foil Moltres pictured below I bought only a few months ago, for nostalgia sake.)

Fast forward a few years, I remember pulling my very first error card myself. It was a Reverse Holo EX Team Rocket Returns Delibird, with yellow ink smudge on the card and artwork. I was actually pretty excited about pulling an error myself, and I still have it:

One other error I had as a kid, although I didn’t pull it myself (my little brother did), was the EX Sandstorm Maril. Not sure how I discovered it anymore, but one day I noticed my little brother’s Maril had no retreat cost, while mine did. So I traded a card of mine for this Maril, and had both versions. Something which I thought was always cool to have: an error AND a corrected version of the same card:

After that I hadn’t collected in years. Until it was 2014, and I was starting to collect Yu-Gi-Oh again, and played the game online and with my little brother again. We both created a lot of Decks. On the webshop we bought our Yu-Gi-Oh cards (gametimecc.com), there were also a select few Pokémon cards for sale (barely any, probably only about 100 different ones, of which only about 15 actually in stock). I remember having 149 out of the first generations 151 Pokémon as a kid, from opening boosters/decks, trading, gifts, etc. The only two I was missing were Hitmonlee and Venusaur. So, when I came across the webshop trollandtoad.com, where they not only had loads of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, but also Pokémon, I had to get those two. So I bought some Yu-Gi-Oh cards that were out of stock for ages on GameTimeCC, and also bought the missing Venusaur and Hitmonlee simultaneously. So here is a picture of those two, which completed the first gen of 151 Pokémon for me. Both were the cheapest ones available at the time. :laughing:

And yeah, that’s basically some noteworthy cards from my youth. I now have over 5000 unique cards including my Pikachus, and another 1000+ duplicates, but these above are some of the cards that really give me a nostalgic feeling. :blush:

Greetz,
Quuador

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“Very lightly played, possible PSA 8”

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Here’s my first card. Given to me by a guy in the year above me in elementary school. It’s not up for sale so don’t send me any offers :blush:

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One of my first sealed products I put in my collection, didnt open and have kept to this day. 28 aud (normally 38) on special at Toys R us.

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I collected the cards back when they were released. I was primarily a MTG player but found myself branching out a lot into other new CCGs. When Pokemon was released I looked all over for packs and was able to buy some base 1st packs. I was lucky enough to pull a Blastoise and Nidoking! I even picked up a 1st edition Charizard from a local game store for around $60 in trade ins.

Years later I wound up grading the Blastoise (PSA 9) and Charizard (PSA 8) and selling them off. I always kept the Nidoking though!

I was able to buy a couple boxes of Shadowless cards once the inventory restocks were happening. I think it cost me around $110 or so from the local comic shop. I always hung onto the boxes and pack wrappers as seen in the photos below! Still have the Base 1st wrappers tucked away somewhere too!

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I left most of my childhood cardboard at my parents’ house so I wouldn’t be tempted to sell/trade them away. I did, however, take this guy with me when I moved out:

Was with my dad at the Tokyo airport in 2000 about to board a connected flight to Shanghai. I refused leave the shop without this mouser. I later made him a special throne in my room. Too bad he still doesn’t love me enough to evolve :stuck_out_tongue:

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