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.
Well, its not really any one card per se. But over time, I have been told by many people I’ve bought cards from the history behind them. These were cards, loved and cherished by their original owners. Not cards from a full time card flipper or from a card shop. Just this week, I had someone I bought a card from say they were sad to see it go, but that they were relieved it was going to someone who was excited for it. The first time I realized there was heart behind things, I had bought, on a “why not” whim years ago, on a pair of Ho-Oh legend cards labeled “damaged” from TCG player. It came with a note telling about how it was a childhood set of cards his friend opened in packs and gave to him. he kept them in his backpack every day. I thought about that a lot. Ever since then, I’ve tried to hold onto any special notes, doodles etc. that people send to me when I buy or trade with them. I’m in the middle of shuffling the house around. But I’ll get a photo of my hoard of stuff. If I lost all the cards I have now but that stuff survived, it would remind me of the goodness that someone took the time to do a little something extra.
I’ll do my best to remember this. I think it influences me a lot on how I view things. It makes me sentimental, nostalgic and a bit somber. The era of cards I buy happens to be the time of my childhood, but after the time I stopped getting cards. Things that came out since I became a older teenager and adult doesn’t quite do it for me the same way.
Even with the recent cosmos foil fossil muk addition i think my most sentimental piece still is the topps chrome sparkle muk. I like slime, i love topps, and it was a chase card for years even when i did multiples of searches every day. Still love everything about it and the journey that it required
The most recent sentimental card I got was from the group of friends I play the TCG with. We had been banding together to get chase cards for each others birthdays as surprises and for mine they all chipped in and got me the full art Rosa from Cosmic Eclipse. I have it proudly on display with my Pokemon figures/statues and still feel over the moon when I look at it.
Another would be when I was lucky and got to order a Hidden Fates ETB on their last print run. I wasn’t gonna open it due to how much it was jumping in price but my partner convinced me to as I liked to open packs with her. We took turns opening packs and as we got down to the last few I asked her if she got anything good and she told me to go through the rest of my pack before showing me(I pulled nothing) she then turns her cards around and the shows me the Shiny Vault Charizard GX. I still can’t believe I own it and that she was the one to pull it, I still remember that feeling.
So… for the first time I publically upload this card, I attach one of my grail cards. It may not appear much, and while it is no illustrator or pre-release Raichu, to me this is a piece of history. Like most of my collection, it has sat in thE same spot for now over a decade since I purchased it back in 2012. It was a promise to take care of it as requested by it’s first and original owner Steve. This is one purchase I remember fighting super hard to get the seller to agree to sell to me for and there were multiple other buyers who tried to get it and put in their offers. Perhaps I’ll find out who they are after all these years as I’m sure they’d be on here too. All I knew was I wasn’t letting it go at any cost and had to keep upping the offer to get it over the line. What is unique is that it is both a square cut base set card and sealed in the original promo style wrappers they use to distribute movie promos in. This was the first and only time I’ve ever come across such an example and part of why I consider it a grail. I genuinely believe it is one of the first cards released as a way to get people into Pokémon and given as a handout gift to some lucky kids in store. So I call it a grail, because it is a card so rare and with history little known that dates back to the origins of Pokemon in the USA. Of course, in this day and age, legitimacy is everything. All I can say is that photo was taken well over a decade ago now and I have the original emails of the sale back when the chaos we see now didn’t exist. He probably doesn’t remember but I even checked with @TCAGaming back in the day to see his take on it. I’m from Australia so it was much harder to get stuff here even back then. Still envious of you guys getting uncut base sheets from the WOTC reps to this day haha. That was my final goal to become a ‘master’ but they never came up at auction back then and I sure never had hope of brokering a deal many miles away! Anyway getting sentimental, but if anyone has any further knowledge please do share! To me it also suggests that this was one of very few ways square cuts came into the scene via authentic, pokemon intended means. Pretty cool I think! I know the toploader isn’t ideal, but I never liked handling the card and it was the best I could do back all those years ago.
Outside of my childhood cards (which I don’t really consider part of my collection; though I’m obviously very sentimental about them): definitely these two. Pulled both of these in 2020–the first two exs I pulled as an adult, both roughly a year after coming back to Pokemon. Growing up, exs were literally the only cards I cared about, so it was a kinda surreal feeling to pull them as an adult.
Pics I posted on the pack weight thread when I originally opened them:
I’m not totally sure what the psychology is behind it, but I just get very attached to anything I open myself. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way.
I believe there was some information on the forum about how TPC would send out square cut cards like this as replacement for damaged cards (I think it was how @KingPokemon got some of them? maybe Im misremembering).
Thank you! I remember Gary having square cuts and selling them, but from what I recall they were never sealed? I believe he will be at one our first major collector events in Sydney this month so may have to show it to him in person!
Thanks for the kind words. I was so worried about the corners as they were often sent without any protection. So coming literally half way across the world was a concern in itself. Even toploaders were hard to come by over here back then. I’ll have to get a shot of the back with the seal and wrapper.
My Aquapolis Espeon was traded to me by my babysitter as a kid. My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think originally she was just trying to show me her cool card. When she saw how excited I was to learn about the Eeveelutions, she traded it to me. I keep this story in mind when interacting with kids and Pokemon, I always try to give them cool stuff and explain why it’s special.
My Dark Charizard was bought for me by my parents on eBay. They never really bought me any specific cards I wanted, I mostly ripped packs with my dad to play the TCG. But I wanted a Charizard SO BADLY, and they bought me this Dark Charizard on eBay along with a regular base set Charizard. I gave the base set Zard to my dad for his 50th birthday, he kept it in his wallet for years and now it’s quite beat up. But I held onto this dark Zard.
Many people on this forum know the story behind this card: the card I hunted for months and ultimately traded for a painting. A great reminder of the kindness that exists in the world and that magical things can happen!
This next card is special to me because some friends offered to get this signed for me pretty much as soon as I met them. I joined the species collector Discord and two people I had never met before were talking about the Matthew Sussman voice actor card signing (the Slowking voice actor, as well as Meowth). I mentioned that I really wanted to get a Slowking signed by him, and these two people I didn’t even know yet offered to get me one. Now they’re good internet friends! I will never forget that kindness and welcoming spirit, thanks to @Animedogcollector (and other friend who’s not on E4)
Finally I’d like to share my “original 5” – these are the 5 Slowpokes from my childhood that kickstarted the whole collection. I was rearranging my childhood cards and noticed I had these 5 Slowpokes. thought to myself “What if I had a page of all Slowpokes?” and then “Wow Slowpoke is really cool. What if I got a few more?” and well… the rest is history.
Out of every card in my collection this one means the most to me. After 9 months of grinding I still hadn’t pulled what I coveted most. Charizard.
On my 11th birthday my father took me to a game shop he found called “The Gathering Ground” to buy booster packs (or so I thought).
He walked up to the counter, pointed at this Charizard and said “we’ll take that”.
I can’t even describe the feeling. I had no idea you could purchase cards as singles and even if I had I would have never expected him to pay the amount they were asking.
At this point in time my father had been battling cancer for years and his health was deteriorating quickly.
He passed away about two years after this.
This is one of the last memories I have of him being in good enough health to go out and about and do things we enjoyed together.
I’d happily trade every other card in my collection for this one if it came down to it.
I was at a family friend’s house. Their kids were also into collecting Pokémon.
The youngest had this card. I knew it was special because I recognised it from an article in Pokémon World magazine.
I only had with me at the time this awful, plastic, silver “Spy Recorder”. It would record like 4 seconds of noise and then play it back. It came as part of a kit that had other things in it, like awful headphones, a pair of sunglasses with a torch, a disappearing ink pen… etc.
I somehow managed to pull off the trade. My mother was furious at the time, ranting that I’d traded electronics for a card and so on. I bring that up from time to time. It’s possibly the only card I have that I’d be devastated to lose.
I’ve kept it as nicely as I knew to throughout the years. 21 years. Crazy.
I remember being really excited at one point to find out it was worth £40. LOL.
Not much too it. The way that I enjoy interacting with my (collectable) hobbies is not how it is in the broader Pokemon card collecting landscape anymore. The antithesis to how I enjoy things is so prevalent that it is impossible to get away from it if you want to interact with the community on a broader scale.
I am content in the little pocket of E4 forums and Discord where I am active, and I am at peace with the knowledge that most of the enjoyment I can get from collecting Pokemon cards is behind me.
