Pokemon feels solved for me. I remember my first year playing Minecraft felt very similar to my first year on E4.
New things I’d never seen before. New lore. New arts. New things in the mail every few weeks.
It doesn’t feel like that anymore. I wish I could do that again. I love finding new hobbies.
Pm sent
May I interest you in the wonderful world of Pokémon coins.
If you branch outside of the TCG you’ll find that other kinds of merch are extremely lacking when it comes to documentation. I see new toys/figures/postcards/etc all the time. Maybe those will help keep you interested 
Agree with @JoshsOddCollection. Non-TCG is a separate beast altogether and has tons of neat things to discover and document, if you’d like to reignite that spark with Pokemon collecting in particular.
Plus a lot of non-tcg is cheap! I’ve often wondered if my experience collecting non-tcg over the last handful of years was what it felt like for people collecting tcg cards before the market took off. “That’s all it costs? I’ll take it all.”
I would recommend trying another TCG. It’ll keep things fresh, allowing you to cycle back and forth between hobbies as your interests wane.
Here are some popular ones these days:
Find something new. Learn a language or something. The world is full of wonder, and its a big world.
It’s the price of overconsumption and immediate knowledge access I feel. New Pokémon content that takes years to develop can be digested in hours, and even less via leaks
Any time something has felt solved for me I’ve learned to take a break and come back with fresh mind.
Every time I’ve done that it’s been good for me.
FWIW I’ve never solved anything.
It’s always been more enjoyable though.
Definitely not solved. Some decent progress has been made in the last year, but now it is a race against extinction to solve some of the earliest remaining mysteries. It’s now prohibitively expensive to solve some mysteries.
Some progress was made to differentiate Korean VS Chinese energy cards, 1999-2000 USA vs Belgium foreign language cards, and 1999-2000 English prints.
There is quite a bit more to document but it’s costing at least $2,000 each time to discover new information.
Totally agree. I’ve been taking a break from pokemon for most of this year and started collecting the new digimon cards. It’s been a great decision since I loved the show as a kid and there were so many things to learn and discover in the new tcg for a fraction of the cost.
I echo dyl’s sentiment. Explore other TCGs or collectible categories if you can find a base level interest to get started. Otherwise, just take a break and/or find a hobby to alternate your time with. I also find specialising in one category to be more rewarding, personally. It allows me to still see things outside of that category that makes me stop and appreciate things. I don’t deal in modern a whole lot, so when I see the art of cards now I can appreciate them and it feels fresh still, despite my passion being for vintage products
Contrary to other responses I wouldn’t look at other similar avenues like TCGs or collectables, because more likely than not you’ll find yourself soon coming up against the same brick wall. Try looking to real life ventures. Buy a second-hand camera (e-M10 Mark ii, iii or iv offer tremendous value on the 2nd hand market) and schedule some local/regional/foreign trips for yourself and put it to use. Download Duolingo and start learning a new language. Set yourself some real-life goals like personal fitness or learning a combat sport. Go to a local tailor and ask them about fashion and style. Grab some books on a topic you’d like to deep-dive on, or download audible. Takes a bit of effort but real life fulfilment beats any collection hands-down.
Exactly that, spend as much time as possible in nature without any electronics.
For me camping and going to saunas really opened a new world to me.
To echo this to OP, I have been feeling a similar frustration with Pokémon collecting and I’ve started to look elsewhere. There’s no need to completely dip from it, but look to something else creative, or fitness related, or just generally productive. My last fight was nearly 8 years ago, but I am going back into boxing now - it’s never too late and it’s never too early.
Read, draw, walk, sit by the river. Stack rocks on rocks in nature, look for bugs.
Detach from social media. Get the fuck off of YouTube and Instagram and Tiktok. I’m not even going to elaborate, just get the fuck away from them in general.
There are so many outlets for a happy life and consumption isn’t one of them. You’re feeling like you’ve consumed it all because you’re likely consuming 24/7.
Creativity is verdant life. Consumption is a slow death.
2nd this. You don’t have to derive your happiness from the Pokémon TCG. Find other things in life, and for the sake of your mental health, log off social media for a while. I no longer have Facebook, but I do have an Instagram, which I use only to send friends memes and buy/sell cards. Comparison is the thief of joy as they say, and I do believe that.
Some people will simply have more money than you or will have had way more time in this market, dating back to years when PSA graded holos were $50 a pop. There’s nothing you can do to change it and you have to find your own ways to be content with Pokémon’s offerings today.
As some people have already said in here, its cool to collect what you love and give it time and money, but always, and i mean ALWAYS, keep your priorities in place. At the end of the day this is just a hobby, or an investment for others, but there are things much more important than this. Your mental health, your family, friends, social life, love life, income, exercise, etc. I would say to you @casual to maybe take a break, focus on other things, maybe explore the pokemon-non-tcg, the one piece game, or other collectible markets. Or maybe nothing related to collecting who knows.
And since we are talking about other tcg´s i wanted to ask you guys what are your thoughs on the one piece card game. Do you guys think it has long-term future or is it being overprinted in terms of sets and overvalued with many cards costing thousands of dollars? especially considering how it has only been for about 3 years. And what about Magic the Gathering Universes Beyond? I´ve never liked MTG, but I gotta be honest, the idea of many different characters from series, movies, video games,… all under the same format and brand, especially a known and established one like MTG, is actually pretty cool. I dont understand how it doesnt have a big collector following. Maybe in the future they go up, who knows, but its really cool in my opinion to be able to have same format and brand cards of galdalf, kratos, ezio (assasins creed), spider man, rick grimes, optimus prime, eleven, deadpool and more… all from so different stories and worlds
Go fishing!
Forgot to add Gardening.
