I have been collecting Pokemon since the Red and Blue days. Like hardcore. But unfortunately EVERY DAMN BIT of it was stolen when I moved 6 years ago. Store it somewhere… come back and it’s all gone…And I mean EVERYTHING and I had a HELL of a lot of stuff. And buddy am I STILL pissed! But anyway.
I am rebuilding my old collection as well as adding new additions. Like graded cards, I never owned one in my old collection and was just wondering, where did you start your grade card collection?
I have a few cards I am looking to get to start off with before I start grading my own, but I’m just curious to see where you started.
I started off by buying a few PSA graded cards for the set I was after which at the time was 1st edition base set. I enjoyed the cards so much that I decided to get my own membership and start grading myself. I decided that the cards I wanted to grade were the cards that I enjoyed the most. In the end it’s your collection so you need to grade the ones you want to preserve long term. I also submitted cards that I knew would get high grades with the intention of selling and had less attachment to for my own collection.
First off I am very sorry to hear your cards were stolen. That would be so depressing and hard for me to get back into collecting knowing I had to restart all over after all this work so I’m glad you decided to get back into it!
As for my graded card collection I just started buying cards that I thought were reasonably priced. After awhile a few sets started to appeal to me and I started to pursue those sets trying to aquire a full PSA set. If I can’t find any cards from the main sets I am collecting after awhile I will pick up a few other random cards if I find good deals, and eventually hope to complete some sets and move onto the next! But my favorites always come first and I make sure to leave some funds available just incase something I really want pops up.
It WAS EXTREMELY HARD! But my best friend bought me a whole sealed set of the Golden Burger King cards last November and that started it up. I always talked about Pokemon with such passion even when I wasn’t collecting and he told me that I should really start back up. And I did and I’m so glad I did when I did… JUST in time for the 20th anniversary. I have 2 complete sets of sealed product (plushes, figures, card collections, everything) and another set of all the Card collection boxes. I wish I would have tried for another complete set though.
That’s exactly what I plan to do… go for anything at a reasonable price then work into sets. But I DO know I want to start off with the Base, Jungle or Fossil sets.
I want to eventually grade cards to sell too, but my thing is I have to have one of everything! UGH. But I am going to try to not be such a hoarder. lol
I may eventually start going after full sets, but for now I just want to grab anything that’s for a decent price but still a good product!
I am in the same boat as you! My goal is also to get the complete base, fossil and jungle sets. I think it’s a good idea to have doubles of everything, like you said grab anything at a decent price to have the full collections of my own for nostalgic reasons, ones that I would never sell,and then work on getting the graded cards for value/investment reasons.