Damn Taylor, hitting me with that high compliment. I appreciate it man!!
It comes standard/free with all psa subscriptions. If you don’t have a psa membership you can buy it on ebay usually for under $10.
You asking me out on a date? 
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Great job 
something to read after the night shifts finished.
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I have come to realise that its time for me to explore new seasons.
I have not had much suceess with normal human.
but you never know whats around the corner. 
‘explained the 29 year old Pratte’.
Won’t this be an error print magazine come to release…just saying
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makes sense if a Pratte is a mythical creature
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Haha I still have 48 hours left before the big 30! 
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We talked about this on Skype but I will post it here too.
I find the idea that someone can be a card collecting ‘prodigy’ very ridiculous. Whoever wrote the article needs to settle down when throwing words like that around, it’s kinda embarrassing really.
That’s not your fault, though. And good work on the feature.
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Well done @smpratte
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It is to my understanding, that you can be really good at honing the skills of honing in on like rare stuff and it can take years of dedication and planning ect, and hard work. This is a great achievment and not many can say they have earnt this, to this level and no money can buy these efforts/achievements. People who work towards something and spend all there time doing it are going to get to the top, and marking it as a skill and not hardwork is cheesy for sure, but that word gets thrown around loosely and its meaning isnt understood to much… I dont think i understood it that well untill i actually watched this video below
The thing is millhouserb, what your saying is truency because the word prodigie if you look up or watch this video, you will find it is a different thing… It says the person has to be young to be prodidgy and to do exceptional/adult skill level things. if smprattican was like 19 when he started this then, prodigee is not the word for these achievements.
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@pokemonsyndicate - Yeah I just feel like the article is more grandiose than it needed to be. But that’s really just nit picking on my part, it really doesn’t mean anything.
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The author is extremely nice! He told me multiple times he couldn’t believe how young I was, considering most people he interviews are probably 40 minimum. Perhaps this was his choice of phrasing, who knows. But the guy couldn’t be any nicer!
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who cares about how old
look at that picture. I couldn’t believe how sexy you are. Don’t tell your wife.
Last year we had that star wars SMR that covered Pokemon and MTG. Now we get a full cover. It’s great to see them showcasing the other hobbies more.
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Will there be an smpratte centerfold to hang on my bedroom wall?
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It looks like @jjnoriega has hacked hisoka’s account. 
I will be signing all centerfolds at Worlds this year! 
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Well, to me Scott is young so I deem him a prodigy;)
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I’ve been pushing hard for smr space for 15 years and nothing. So why now? ITS ALL MONEY! PSA is profiting big time now from Pokemon so it’s “earned” it’s space.
Putting Charizard on the cover now is akin to when Hefner put Marilyn Monroe on Playboys #1 cover in the 1950s. Charizard is sexier though:)
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Lmaooooooooo @smpratte I was reading this while driving and I couldn’t reply. I was about to say: “I was in line first!” @hisoka107 and @pokemonsyndicate better get to the back of the line!!! LoL!
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Way to go Scott, nice one 
I will keep my copy of July issue with the other one that featured a Pokemon article and read them again in 20 years time
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It makes sense that the standard interview would be with someone older given the standard interview is with a sports collector. Sports has never been an overnight money maker the way Pokemon is. Anyone buying into niche stuff 5-10 years ago in Pokemon is sitting on 10-20 times in value what they paid back then. I couldn’t afford to buy my collection in today’s market like I did in the past. We’re all making more decisions about what we want to buy now than we were back in the day. Likewise, I would wager that Scott couldn’t afford to buy his own collection outright in today’s market.
Sports people mostly never got this chance. By and large, the mega collections did buy them outright in a market similar to today. There are some exceptions where there has been phenomenal growth in sports but in Pokemon literally everything is several times more valuable. If I bought only bulk commons and uncommons ten years ago, my money more than tripled. Accounting for inflation, Pokemon has been insane for an investment relative to sports. It also scaled super well so these principles are true no matter how much money I spent.
Makes me think of people who are pokemon “investing” today that have maybe $100 to work with. It’s hard not to tell them to go with Pokemon because they wouldn’t be able to afford a meaningful investing experience in any other medium. If you’ve got a million dollars to invest, you have access to an entirely different world of investing and Pokemon becomes a relatively bad option except as a small, experimental portion of a portfolio.
As for the magazine as a whole, it’s nice to see PSA give more attention to Pokemon. The craze made it hard for them not to. It certainly won’t hurt my investments either. My only critical opinion of SMR as a whole is that they badly need different writers. Kevin is a great writer but all of his articles feel identical. They could use some different voices and styles. Some different writing would greatly improve how I feel about the issue as a whole.
Very insightful critique here. Too many of smr’s articles have a cookie cutter redundant feel in a boring format. Instead of a new voice, let’s start with multiple voices…variety.
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