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.
Inside of a dusty photo album (remember when people used photo albums because digital photos didn’t exist?), there is a picture of me holding a sealed Pokemon Blue and a sealed yellow Game Boy Color in my Superman pajamas. Some part of that kid comes alive each time I hold a Pokemon card or start up a game.
I remember watching the 2014 VGC when it was live streamed, and Se Jun Park’s Pachirisu really made me happy that he decided on such a fun pick that year. Crazy to think that happened 12 years ago!
One saturday I went to play pokemon cards at the wizards of the coast store, as I always did. This was before the release of the gym heroes set. The one that has misty’s seadra as a prerelease stamped promo. This teenager who worked there goes into the back near the end of the time for play, and comes back out with just disgusting stacks and stacks of these seadras. Just unbelieveable amounts. He hops up on the table like a barbarian. Says something like “free for all!” and he just starts flinging the things all over the play area. There are seadras on the tables. there are seadras on the floor. There are seadras all over everyone’s stuff. its just everywhere and he is having a blast. hundreds probably. It was awesome. We were all scrambling to grab them all up. some grabbed an absolute greedy amount. I think I ended up with around 6-10 in the end. I didn’t feel like I was taking too many. I know. I know. I just didn’t want to feel like I was going to end up fighting over it. So I took a fair amount and didn’t get all frantic. But man it was awesome. The dude probably got in trouble for doing that. But I hope not because he created one of those memories you never forget. crazy wotc employee guy, I hope you are out there thriving. You were cool.
A relatively recent one is when I found my old Gameboy Color - a little beat-up and missing a battery cover haha - but otherwise completely functional. Was pretty magical to see and hear Pokemon Blue boot-up after so long. Still on my list to replace my cartridge battery which is now very though lol
I love hearing my mom tell me how Pokemon helped me learn how to read. One story specifically is how I would look at this poster hung up in my room and then run back to my little tikes table and write the Pokemon’s name in my notebook.
I’ve told this many times because it was just great so I’ll tell it again.
Our local laser quest was the WOTC tcg hub. The guy running it was more of a magic player so after a while he just approached me and said he was looking to pass it off to me and in return I’d get a pack a week or something like that.
It was great fun. Stamping the booklets, running the gym (still consider myself a gym leader). The community was young as you’d expect but people liked having someone closer in age to them running it, we had a laugh. It was wholesome giving away commons to help people with their decks and it blowing their mind that someone would just give them cards. It was a little bit of a creche since the parents would dump their kids for the hour or so it was on but it was all very well behaved.
Except the negative where I had my deck stolen by someone I loaned it to while I was on holiday which killed my fun (I got it back but it had been pulled apart for cards and I didn’t have a deck list). That was a slow pull away because it actually hurt a lot that people would do that after all I’d tried to run.
But that year or so was just the best. 26/27 years on and it’s still one of my favourite hobby eras out of all of my hobbies.
I have mainly very good memories with Pokémon. Although I started with Pokémon Blue as a kid and already loved the games but I still remember the time when I first played Pokémon Gold and got completely hooked. I think for the next 2 years I did not touch any other video game on the Game Boy, even though some of my friends during that time moved to other games (we all know how hard peer pressure can be as a kid). I just could not put it away. Actually even when Ruby & Sapphire released I was reluctant at first to leave that magic place that Pokémon Gold was for me (I still got Ruby at release though). HGSS are great and I mainly play those when I revisit the Johto games, but especially the nighttime visuals of GSC will forever be the most magical and nostalgic thing to me, ever.
I don’t collect errors but it’s always a fun experience to find some weird error digging through bulk boxes at random LGS. It’s been a while since I’ve done so, but prior to 2023 I was able to find almost every major WOTC error card this way
Only ones I never found were the d.efend beedrill and the non Holo dark Dragonite
Every day when I was at school, my grandma would always tape the 2 episodes that played on Cartoon Network for me. I’d come home, go to the basement, and there’d be a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, some chips, and some milk for me in front of the tv.
Finding a Sandstorm Cradily at collect-a-con last year with my gf. Immediately got me thinking about collecting as an adult after a decade of being in denial about even liking pokemon. No regrets, only financial burden.
Back in December 2005 we were visiting my grandparents in New Jersey for Christmas, and we took the train into NYC for a day. There we visited a new store they’d heard about, Nintendo World. They had these really big plush of Cyndaquil, Totodile, and Chikorita plush behind the counter on the first floor, and we asked if they were selling them. And they said no, just display. I was so sad! So I started looking at something else to ask for. I apparently was torn between a pre constructed deck box and a Murkrow figure. According to my parents, I told them “we can get this on the Internet” to the deck box and so I got the figure. My Pa then picked one up for himself too. He always was trying to stay interested in what his grandkids were interested in. He then put that unopened figure on the Christmas tree every year until they moved to Colorado with my uncle so it would be easier to take care of my Pa. He wasn’t doing well health wise anymore. When we were cleaning out the house, I took the Murkrow figure with me. I still have it, along with the one I had myself. (I opened mine of course!) It is definitely one of my most sentimental items I have in my collection. I also ended up buying each and every one of those plush they had the behind the counter. I needed to satiate kid me’s hunger for those plush!
This is my starter pack in Pokémon. I didn’t have a GB to play, so I always played with a good friend who had his Game Boy and his Blue Version. That’s where I had “my own Pokémon,” but I could only play when I visited him. When Stadium came out, I could finally get my own version. And well, what I did have from the beginning were the Tomy brand toys, which came to Mexico through Hasbro.
Pokemon does so much for all of us!
though lol
