Share a Card Memory

[Dyl]

Cards carry memories. For most of us, that’s one reason why we continue to collect as adults. Share a card memory!

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I’ll go first.

Fossil Articuno was the first vintage Pokemon card that I bought as an adult. When it arrived, I must have stared at it for an hour. All of the memories that I had from opening and playing with Pokemon cards as a child were flooded back. It really kickstarted my vintage binder collection.

Fossil is one of my favorite sets - it contains many of the best Gen 1 Pokemon: Dragonite, Gengar, Articuno, Moltres, Zapdos, Lapras, Magmar, Golem, Psyduck, and the artwork is dominated by my second favorite illustrator, Kagemaru Himeno.

Articuno was my favorite of the three Legendary Birds as a child, both in-game (Pokemon Blue, Pokemon Yellow) and in Pokemon the Movie 2000. I distinctly remember seeing Articuno (and Slowking!) for the first time in Pokemon the Movie 2000, feeling awestruck from its beauty and power. To this day, when I stare at this card, I feel deep, unrelenting feelings of nostalgia, and as though I am holding something sacred.

[crindy]

it’s embarassing to admit but my strongest single card memory is of stealing one growing up, my sisters and i were friends with another family of kids roughly our ages. we’d spend one or two afternoons a week at each others houses every school year so our parents could save on afterschool-care-related headaches. we saw them CONSTANTLY. one of the boys (it was three boys, of course) liked to show off his pokemon cards and he was kind of a snot about it. not that it excuses my behavior lol, but he was!! so one day i snuck upstairs while everyone else was eating a snack, went into his room, and grabbed the first pokemon card i saw. i hadn’t stolen anything before and it was honestly electric, but as soon as we left their house i started to feel guilty.

the days went by and he never mentioned it, and i kept wanting to confess but couldn’t quite muster up the courage. i didn’t rlly look at it, i didn’t play with it, i didn’t keep it with the rest of my cards. it lived in a back page of my diary, i was very furtive about it, and wouldn’t let myself enjoy it. just felt ashamed but also too scared to tell him or my sisters or my parents or anyone at all. after a few years i figured it was okay to add to my card shoebox but i haven’t stolen anything since lol.

we (and our families) are actually still friends (in a detached adult kind of way) and i still haven’t told him. i don’t know if it’s a “he doesn’t even remember having that card” kind of situation OR a “this was a defining moment of his childhood and he joined this fourum six years ago to complain about me specifically” kind of situation. it could go either way with him lol, i’m hoping for the former. Luke G if you’re reading this, sorry!!

my shame talisman

[milhouse]

In primary school whilst I was in 4th grade, I made friends with a kid the grade below me. I only ever got 1 pack of Pokemon cards as a kid and I was always super jealous of kids at school who had any cards, let alone holo cards. This kid had a base holo Zapdos and Nidoking.

He would carry them around in his pocket and I’d always be asking to see them. I asked if I could take them home for a night just so I could keep admiring them and looking at them, he was a sweet and innocent kid and in hindsight probably thought that an older kid hanging out with him meant he was cool.

I took them home and pretended he never leant them to me. At school the next day I tried to gaslight(not knowing what this was at the time) him into thinking I gave them back to him before school finished. We argued about it for a few days, and I guess at this point he told his mum, who told the school, and then contacted my mum. My mum asked me about it and I lied to her face saying that I gave them back to him. I thought that would be the end of it, his word vs mine type deal.

My mum asked me again the next day and was super serious about it. Telling me that if I did steal them and gave them back now then it’d be the end of it and I wouldn’t be in trouble. Problem for my mum was that she had said stuff like this to me before, and still given me a punishment, so even at this age I had already learnt that your parents can just straight up lie to you and get away with it, which might just be the reason that I lied about this whole situation at all. Funny that.

Anyway, my mum went down to the school and had a meeting with the school principal and the kids mum. My mum defended me with all her heart and swore that I had not stolen them and I had given them back and the other kid must have lost them or given them to someone else, and the ‘case’ was dropped. I think the kid even ended up moving school, but I am not sure if I am remembering it right.

In my adult years I revealed to my mum that I did indeed steal them, and when I found out that she was to have a meeting with the school+the kids mum I realised I was in too deep and made a conscious decision to keep it a secret no matter what happened. She was genuinely very hurt and said she had truly believed all this time that I was being wrongfully accused.

And that children is a great story about how kids can learn to be really good liars from a really young age if their parents create an environment in which lying is safer than telling the truth.

Epilogue: I don’t even remember what I did with the cards.

[SolemnStar]

but can I share a memory card?

[crindy]

my hands aren’t clean (obviously) so i can’t rlly talk, but ooof this hurt to read lol. just a difficult situation all around!!

[Quuador]

One I’ll always remember, was my first trade.

I was 7 years old when me and my little brother were just zapping through channels on TV when we were intrigued by a boy throwing a red-white ball at a caterpillar (end of episode 2), and we were hooked on Pokémon since.
About 1-2 weeks later our parents bought us both our first Pokémon booster pack, unlimited edition English Base Set. Both of us pulled a holo, my little brother an Alakazam and I a Chansey.

A few days later I showed them to friends and other kids on the school playground. One of the older kids asked if I would want to trade his Vulpix, Pidgey, and Pidgeotto for my Chansey. As a kid I only cared about more cards, and didn’t care about holos much at all, so a 1 for 3 trade was a no-brainer for me, and I immediately accepted.

Later that same week I was downstairs when my parents were watching the 8 o’clock news, and they also mentioned how the Pokémon craze took the country by storm. They also mentioned how some cards were worth about 100 Gulden (old Dutch currency) adult collectors were willing to pay, and they showed a Charizard, and.. you guessed it, a Chansey.
At the time, I had no idea there even were different versions like 1st editions or Shadowlesss, and I doubt the news reporter did either, but because of that news message showing the Chansey, I still remember that first trade I did to this day.
After that I’ve been more careful and thoughtful about trades, for a kid at least. I’ve also bought that Chansey for like 3 bucks 5-6 years ago (as well as a Reverse Foil Legendary Collection Moltres, another card I once traded away), for nostalgia sake.

Greetz,
Quuador

[PlentyCoup]

I have a few stories from when I was a kid. First off it has to be know that I knew absolutely nothing about pokemon. I didn’t know there were different sets, I didn’t know there were games (I didn’t play any of the games fully until I finally got the first Nintendo DS). All I knew was that there was this new trading card game with the coolest creatures ever.

I can’t even remember or actually trust my memory on what sets were out at the same time. I would swear up and down that the first Holo card I ever pulled was the Ninetales with the flame background but the nineteles I have is from the championship set but I know I was opening packs before that, but that card still sticks in my head as thinking it was the absolute coolest thing I had ever seen.

I think Jolteon from Leaf might be the first first Holo I pulled.

Same as when I stuffed a bunch of cards in my pocket to take to school cause I wanted to show em off. They got left in my pocket and went through the washing machine. I was devastated especially since I didn’t gat packs often. I still have evey single one of those cards.

Another memory is when I was visiting my cousins in Grand rapids and my parents actually let me get a pack at there Meijers down there. So I grabbed a random pack and somehow managed to get a foreign language pack… Was so upset again cause I had managed to pull the Holo Vaporeon from it.

[camrok37]

Posted this a few years ago and it seems relevant to this thread:

@camrok37

It’s gotta be the Primeape from Jungle for me. I remember being so happy I had just gotten a bunch of base set cards from some packs my parents bought me, and I ran down the street to my buddy’s house, only for him to show off some new Jungle stuff. He showed me his Primeape and I thought it was such a cool card, I think I traded like 3 non-holo rares for it (yes, probably not my best negotiation one was a Dugtrio, don’t remember the other two). It was also the first card I ever actually traded for, and I still have it in my personal collection binder

[rapidash]

Not a single card but a set/pokemon: crystal guardians and Cubone! My boyfriend in college had a pokemon collection, and it was the motivation for me to get back into the hobby. He gave me a bunch of cards from his childhood, some of which were delta species from the CG set. His favorite ‘mon was cubone so I’d set those aside during pack openings for him to keep.

We had different directions in life and ended up parting ways amicably, and he died suddenly not long after. Now, any time I see a cubone I’m reminded of him, and I completed my CG set in his memory. This card specifically reminds me of him the most!

[xara]

My Story with Mew

When I was little, I had an almost complete WOTC collection from #1 to #251. The only missing card was the Mew Black Star Promo, which I never got. It was always so elusive and out of reach. I only managed to buy a copy off eBay much later, around the time I finished high school, roughly 6 years after I had already stopped collecting.

Unfortunately, during home renovations in 2018 at my parents’ house, the entire collection was accidentally thrown away.

In 2021–2022, nostalgia hit hard and I started collecting again. This time, I decided to focus on PSA 9 graded cards, since I wanted to avoid the headaches of chasing raw mint cards.

The very first card I bought was the Mew Black Star Promo. I won it in an eBay auction for about 2/3 of the market value at the time. That card was still extremely special to me: the Pokémon that was always out of reach when I was a child.

A while later, after finishing my PhD and starting my first job, I desperately needed money for furnishing my first proper flat. Before that, I had only lived in fully furnished student rooms. I also needed money to get my first car. Therefore, I sold my PSA 9 collection, including that Mew.

Recently, I started collecting again and still regret that I let that specific PSA 9 Mew go. I remembered someone from this forum telling me back in 2021/2022, when I got that first slab: “Your first PSA card, you’ll never forget it.”

I wanted that specific Mew back. I didn’t have any contact details for the person I sold it to, but I still had his name and found him on social media. I contacted him, and he was incredibly friendly. I bought another copy of Mew PSA 9 online, and he was happy to trade it with me, asking nothing in return for the inconvenience. Still, I gave him modern Pokemon boosters and some chocolate as a small Christmas thank-you.

Now I have that original first card again, and it feels awesome.