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Tons of popular species like Umbreon, Gengar, Lugia, Mew, Suicune, Dragonite, etc. Gold Stars, Crystal cards, Shining cards, design contest and art academy cards, etc.
Although one reason was the increasing quantity being released every year (2019 had 232 Pikachu card released), the main reason was that I couldn’t keep up financially anymore. Especially when even simple McDonald’s Pikachu that have been 2-5 bucks every year they’ve released were suddenly 35-50 USD during the pandemic.
Sure, the market today is way, way worse, since I feel like it’s even hard to keep up with just the English and unique non-English artworks today, even though only 25-35 Pikachu cards were released for these past few years (ignoring the current ~50 of the 30th Celebrations set as exception).
But it was the craze during the pandemic that made me reconsider my collection goal, and deciding to stop at the 25th Pokémon Day (February 27th, 2021). I’m honestly still happy with that decision, even though the prices of the Japanese Art Academy cards and SNAP of course make it impossible to ever truly finish this collection goal, even with this adjustment, but that’s ok.
As for this market: I haven’t stopped collecting anything else yet, so I guess that’s a positive. Although in the past I usually bought cards almost right away (within a month after releasing), and right now I’m more than a year behind on some of my collection goals (e.g. English full art Supporter/CHR cards and Yu-Gi-Oh rarities).
Nonetheless, apart from some still incoming cards, my Seviper collection is back to 100% after everything has arrived; right now I’m working on the 30th Celebrations for Pikachu, but after that, it should also be back to 99.5% (a.k.a. 100% minus the illusive 8 missing cards). And I hope to make a decent dent before the end of the year in my full art Supporter/CHR collection. After that, it’s just my Yu-Gi-Oh rarity collection I have yet to get back on track for, which I’ll try to do in the first halve year of 2027 (while keeping up with the other mentioned collection goals simultaneously of course), and then I’d be back at ‘keeping up with new releases’ as usual.
I guess I’m collecting a lot more laid-back these days then before.
I’m now pretty much completely priced out of finishing my set of Crystals unfortunately.
I also used to collect decks for older formats which were relatively cheap for a while, but has become really hard to justify with the price booms on certain cards, especially when you need a playset or more across multiple decks.
I’m still able to finish some other goals which are smaller in scope, so grateful for that at least!
Recent price creep has certainly made it less feasible than ever for me to ever truly complete my Yuka Morii collection. The Tropical Mega Battle English Bruno’s Hitmonchan, five 10th Anniversary Pikachu cards, and three convention Delta Species Ditto promos were already out of my range before, and now the other remaining gaps in my binder are getting pricier by the moment as well.
This also further delays my goal of collecting all English EX-era Yuka Morii reverse holo and code variant prints - a feat which I would have employed to petition @fourthstartcg into granting me their token, completing my mod token collection and granting me infinite power.
Multiple Southern Island sealed binders, SI Japanese sleeves, and the PSA 10 + PSA 9 sets. I also have my first raw binder I bought in 17’ sitting in my closet that I actually looked at last night
