The Question of the Day is a way to facilitate community discussion to help members ponder the unanswered questions of the world that are somehow relating to the hobby. Questionsj are many times open ended and up to interpretation. Feel free to post your thoughts in as much or as little detail as you’d like.
Helpful Considerations may or may not help some people focus their answer, these are blurred to not bother those who have their own ideas.
I think it was only ever purely a hobby for me when the cards had no real value. So childhood. Trades were never about money, just what looked cool or what could improve my deck since I played the game too.
2016 - Returned as an adult. The market was already established, albeit small by today’s standards. I had no choice but to think about money in order to grow a collection. I quickly “leveled up” and learned how to navigate that new environment by watching Gemmintpokemon and Smpratte on YouTube.
2020 - The money aspect became completely unavoidable. I took apart my binders and graded everything of value. That was another big step away from simple hobby status for me…
2025 - Now I’m increasingly participating more like a business (and I even registered as one). Now the lines have really blurred. I still have a personal collection but it’s hard to see them the same way. Is it really a collection, or are they “assets”? So many are out of reach, locked away in vaults…
I still enjoy it all but each “level up” is different, and feels increasingly removed from “a hobby” for me.
I’m hopeful it’ll always be a casual hobby for me. I think hobbies that are fulfilling long term can be hard to find and generally you have to work a lot harder in a passion dominated industry to find the same returns. I have a pile of cards ready to list for sale and it’s nice to be able to ignore it until I feel like doing it or there’s a card I really want to buy with the money from them.
When a card I owned surpassed the value of my car, which is >$20k
I still approach it in a fairly casual way – especially with buying. I just have to consider things more seriously when selling or obtaining higher-valued items is the focus. I’ve always had to allocate funds due to the age I entered the hobby
Hard to state an exact moment where I’d consider the transit from merely a collecting hobby to something more. To give a little bit of a background of when I came back collecting, which was mid-2015: I started by putting all English Pikachu cards below 50 USD each they had in stock on TrollAndToad in my cart on impulse, and that was basically how I started. Near the end of 2015, after I had also bought a few English cards above that 50 USD threshold, I decided to delve into all languages, since it would keep me busy for a while. In my research to create a checklist, I came across justinator’s collection here on the forum, whom had ~550 out of (at the time) 650 existing Pikachu cards, and it really inspired me. I join the forum myself in February 2016.
But I think the moment I bought my first Art Academy card for 300 USD (the Japanese red raincoat one from the father of the winner, whom was active on E4 at the time) was probably a defining moment. 300 USD barely gets you anything today, but 10 years ago, it was pretty substantial for a single card (for me at least). This was in September 2016.
Another defining moment was buying my last English Pikachu card (another Art Academy one) to 100% complete that language, which just like @festa coincidentally mentioned in the comment above mine, exceeded what I had paid for my car a few months prior (~11k euros for my car; ~14k USD [~12.5k] euros for the card).
Although tbh, I was already way past ‘a casual hobby’ at that point, especially with the minor stress it even gave me in 2019 when 233 Pikachu cards were released in a single year, which is the opposite of what a hobby is supposed to give. To emphasize how crazy that year was, as I mentioned earlier, in 1996-2016 - twenty years total - there were ‘just’ 650 total Pikachu cards; yet right now, we’re at 2200+ (I stopped collecting all languages after February 27th, 2021 - the 25th Pokémon Day - since I couldn’t keep up both financially and time-wise, so I honestly don’t know the actual amount. I did continue with all English cards though, and it’s still 100% complete.)
More than a casual hobby around 2020/2021 when I started to really deep dive into the history and international releases of the TCG and opening more older and International products than before as well as starting to contribute to some articles involving the TCG in PokéWiki. However it is still a hobby and will probably always stay that way for me, as I’m not looking to make any sort of career or business out of it.
I feel like when I became a member on E4 that would be the starting point for me. Definitely started learning and taking in a lot more info as I worked on my collecting goals day by day, year by year. Even though the financial side wasn’t my end goal with Pokemon or collecting in general, it’s made the collecting process both much more cost effective & profitable by how much I’ve learned and engaged on E4 over time.
I’m definitely grateful for taking things up a notch with collecting and taking Pokemon more serious, the time and effort spent has been more than worth it. It’s been one of the more enjoyable things I’ve done over the past few years and hope to continue doing into the future for as long as I can.
To give a little bit of a background of when I came back collecting, which was mid-2015: I started by putting all English Pikachu cards below 50 USD each they had in stock on TrollAndToad in my cart on impulse, and that was basically how I started. Near the end of 2015, after I had also bought a few English cards above that 50 USD threshold, I decided to delve into all languages, since it would keep me busy for a while. In my research to create a checklist, I came across justinator’s collection here on the forum, whom had ~550 out of (at the time) 650 existing Pikachu cards, and it really inspired me. I join the forum myself in February 2016.