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. Questions 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.
Biggest thing for me starting as a collector was to chase the hottest cards. Over time I became influenced to look for low pop, other languages, and other niche cards.
When I first got back in to collecting I had a rough outline of what I wanted to do but I met people who added to the “all English Raichu” list and it grew. Initially it was all graded minimum mint.
Then I met people also trying to do it either in graded versions or binders and we shared a few cards around. The Raichu graded collector numbers are pretty low and it was good fun to share grading results or finds. And commiserate the crap grades from cards that were surely mint worthy.
It expanded to chatting to random species collectors and we still chat about how it’s all going, I signed up here.
Then I found the PSA set list through a collector and started aiming for that and climbed to the top of the pile.
And from there it’s grown to knowing more of you guys through here and hopefully being a relatively known Raichu fan since people have found me and sent me “have you got this?” type messages which is always welcome.
Without others I might still be where I am with my collection but I doubt it would be as fun. I enjoy the chase and the mission and I enjoy chatting to other collectors. I like to see everyone doing well with their own missions as it spurs me on to keep plugging away.
I’ve learned a lot from the many people who have contributed to this forum over the years and have been truly inspired by several of them. Finding smpratte’s YouTube channel, and subsequently this forum, enlightened me to cards and areas of Pokémon that I likely would have never known about otherwise.
I would’ve become a proper collector instead of just a reseller in 2010-2012 if I’d put a bit more effort into finding the core communities online. Hahbee felt so empty back then.
Joining e4 increased my appreciation for the Japanese side 10-fold. It’s not made me any less of a filthy casual relaxed curator, though.
E4 and others really changed my perspective mainly on Japanese cards. Returning to the hobby I knew very little about them, and on here, I’ve learned a lot and became more interested in them more over time.
In addition, I would say E4 made me appreciate both graded & raw/binder cards more. Seeing people’s binder sets and other collection pics made me realize that you can enjoy this hobby at a wide range of price points and that the hype around graded cards wasn’t all quite what I thought it was.
While I have done my own research on things I find interesting, there is always someone in this hobby that has a card or piece of information that I don’t have. Learning from what others have shared on this forum and elsewhere has absolutely helped me gain more understanding of what exists, what may interest me, and deepened my appreciation of the hobby overall.
I actually think that other people is what made me continue collecting for so long, but in the bad way, let me explain.
I’ve collecting since like 2006 trying to complet sets, but with middle school and mean kids I kind of got “challenged” in my goal, being a kid I just thought that continuing despite what people said made me cool, so i continued.
I never had real life friends or even communities to share my collecting journey with, that likely made me more stable, i just stayed steadfast on my goal. Not risking my self esteem being hurt by other people collections being better than mine when I was kind of sensible to that.
Now that I started playing I also tried to get to know the community but wow it can be bad (hello r/) but also very good (here )
@zorloth, @wisewailmer and @Dyl have introduced to me and I now appreciate Ex Sandstorm, Dragon, R&S and TMTA. They really are such lovely sets and I am able to enjoy them since they are more affordable than the preceding e series.
@eeveeteam has scared me from ever collecting Japanese HGSS
I know we all sound like a broken record but @smpratte YT introduced me to the depth of Japanese promos
UPCCC/E4 and the collection threads back then introduced world of graded cards to me. Who knows maybe in some alternate universe I’d be totally happy with just binder collections and booster boxes.
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