I remember here in the uk when I was kid was really good card shop run by some man, he had all packs/booster boxes pretty much everything, yu gi oh aswell Man the amount of money I spent in their back then, sadly he got ill I believe then closed few years ago ,in some way it’s a shame, although my wallet would disagree
Isn’t it a shame? I always loved the old Comic and Card hobby shops. You could find just about anything there: MTG, Yu-Gi-Oh, Pokemon, Marvel, and all sorts of sports and comics. My best memories are of the shops that would have individually priced (and usually overpriced) Pokemon cards under a glass case. To this day I only know a single store that does this and the I can’t imagine the guy makes much with his physical retail space. I definitely miss those days.
Yea the shop I was talking about had the same like ultra rares (yu gi oh) and all holos 1st editions etc behind the counter ,doubt I’ll see another one round here ever like it haha
I too miss comic and card shops. During the pokemon craze they sprung up everywhere, even in those temporary store spaces in the mall. Now their few and far between.
I consider myself fortunate to have two card shops, a comic shop, and a toys/collectibles shop. Three of the four are directly beside each other on a sidestreet downtown and all four are walking distance from my apartment. Woops.
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Oh that’s awesome! Lucky you! Although do they have any old cards or probably just new eh?
Wow! I’m impressed and extremely jealous. 
wish you had one in the Uk
A lot of people come through the shop that I go to. So there’s always old stuff getting picked up here and there. I’ve nearly always got first dibs at anything of interest that goes through. Generally, I help them sell the stuff online anyway. I just know a lot more about pricing than they do, so it’s a win-win.
It’s certainly an enjoyable thing to have.
Start your own one day. 
it’s a possibility ,if I did it ,it would be a joint venture with a good friend though , however I know that’s not always smart but He’s not the type of guy to screw it up or me over, you’ve made me wanna talk to him about it now, haha thing is loads of possible locations are available at the moment aswell 
but no funds to do it currently, haha
It’s not worth it to start a store if you don’t have at least $20-30,000 for intial inventory and the likes.
defo will look to do it when I do though ;D
Agreed. Gary and Rusty need to get on that.
Just a reminder if anyone hasn’t shared their story and wants to we’d all love to hear from you 
First off: this thread is AMAZING!! So much nostalgia and similar (yet so different!) stories.
My story isn’t that amazing really. The Pokémon anime started airing in Sweden in early 2000, and that’s when the big pokémon boom came to Sweden. There wasn’t a single kid who didn’t collect cards or played the game or watched the anime in some way. I had always loved drawing and all I drew was Pokémon during that time. I drew a lot of Pikachu before the anime finally aired, but it’s design was sort of off, and I always spelled it’s name wrong since all I had to go off from was the commerical and it’s “cry”. (Every old pikachu drawing was tagged with “pikatsu” haha. 
)
I was probably the biggest geek in my school. Everyone came to me if they wondered something about the games red/blue/yellow - gold/silver/crystal. I was also super lucky because these three dudes liked me a lot and they competed in giving me pokémon cards haha! One of those kids had a mom who owned a store, so he got lots of really cool pokémon cards. They didn’t take care of their cards much so most was pretty scratched etc, but I’m still sad that most of those cards were thrown away by my parents during my “POKÉMON AND GAMES ARE FOR KIDS”-phase which I had when I was 10-13 years old or something. (Before realizing there’s nothing wrong with enjoying things that’s targeted to a younger audience!)
I love Pokémon because there’s a lot of underrated creativity in it. People’s main argument against Pokémon is that it’s just there to make money, but really, what’s better than making money off something that’s actually also bringing SO MUCH JOY to people. I am really grateful for having growing up when Pokémon were at it’s biggest in the west; Pokémon being everywhere, toy stores overrun with pokémon merch etc… It really enriched my childhood. Now it’s just a really small shelf with half sad selection of toys and very pricey boosters. They’re like 49 kronor here right now, that’s like…7-8 dollars a booster. Idk but back in the days they were like 30-35 kronor.
Also, has anyone ever had this following experience?; Age 7-9 everyone is CRAZY about pokémon. Age 10-12 some people still play, but are considered geeks and childish by fellow kids in school. Age 13-15 “WHAT you like POKÉMON??? EW” Age 16+ “OMG POKÉMON IS SO COOL”
Like I was so shocked when I got up into upper secondary school because we were all these supposedly growing into adult people, and tons of people were running around with their ds lites, challenging people to pokémon battles haha! At least at my school.
Though I did go to an art/music/theatre class and we were all pretty accepting there.
awesome story guppy, yea my friend is like 18 still goes to college he recently got his whole college back into pokemon
Guppy I really enjoyed your story! That’s awesome you drew a lot of pokemon. Is your Raichu avatar your own work? I like it a lot! Looks like it could have been a vending series card, which is one of my favorite card series for the artwork.
Its too bad your folks tossed your childhood cards, but it seems to be a common theme here. My mom is pretty sentimental like I am fortunately so we were never forced to toss ours. But the good news for you is you can go back and collect the sets or even just the single cards that were significant to you as a kid.
I totally agree with you that when you reached a certain age people acted like you were at the bottom of the social pyramid in school if you even mentioned pokemon in a positive way. Its silly really how kids do that. And adults aren’t much better. My experience is a little different from yours. I’ve found a few people in college that got back into it but most still don’t consider it cool. I kind of keep my card collecting a secret to a lot of my friends sadly. I have one friend though that thinks my collection is like the coolest thing ever and wants to collect the same cards pretty bad but doesn’t have the cash. Anywho thanks for sharing! I enjoyed your unique perspective!
Oh and let me say how cool it is that we have people all over the world on here together!
Thank you guys haha! I loved going through this thread, it’s just amazing how much pokémon has done for us.
@timewaster1700: yes it’s a little doodle i made a while back! whenever i’m stressed i still doodle a lot of pokémon, it’s a habit i’ll probably never shake off. i’m glad you like it, thanks! and as we talked on in another thread, i actually ordered a vending raichu a while back! (not glossy though.)
I wish I had a mom like that! I love my mom and we can have lots of fun together but we’ve always been so DIFFERENT. She’s never been unsupportive in any way but she’s still scoffed and shaked her head at a lot of things I did as a kids (videogames, pokémon) etc. But in a loving way. But throwing out my stuff, that’s something she sure loved doing… (She likes to keep things clean etc.)
And yeah adults are silly too. You realize just HOW silly as you grow up yourself. I’m 22 now, and I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that adults are really just young people who grew up and thought that at a certain age they’d had to start acting differently. Blegh! I think it’s ok to enjoy “childish” things as long as you remember to be adult SOMETIMES (taking responsibilites etc). Your friend seem like a real sweetie. I hope your friends lands some money soon hehe.
And you guys are all so sweet here I’m really glad I joined! c:
Ya well its a real nice drawing! Your inspiring me to get back into sketching.
Oh totally, I will never fully shake my inner child off. 
I think it will give me an edge when I have kids on day! 
Ya welcome, I agree this is a great pokemon forum to be apart of. A lot of really nice and knowledgeable people.
Well for me it’s a rather typical story. I was born in 1992 so I was pretty young during the original Pokemon wave. But here goes!
It’s all typically pretty blurry. I remember nothing of Pokemon, then all of the sudden it was everything, everywhere, all the rage. Every kid had Pokemon cards at school, there were mafia-type groups of kids in the school yard dealing Pokemon cards, stealing Pokemon cards, trading cards, showing off their binders with all the holographics on the first couple pages. Charizard was a mythical creature at that time, I had never seen a Charizard card other than one at my local card shop display case. It was unlimited and the price tag was something around $85.
What came first for me was the TV show, I would watch it at 6:30AM in French every morning (I did understand French extremely well at the time) and then watch it again in English at 4:00PM (this is when they aired the new episodes, every day Monday to Friday). It was perfect, I got off my schoolbus at 3:45PM and BAM ran straight into the basement and turned to YTV (Canada’s kids anime channel) to await Pokemon. If I was lucky my parents made Kraft Dinner and I could eat KD while watching Pokemon! haha. I watched the very first season (I was either like 7 at the time, or they reran the season a couple years later) and then Orange Island and then into the Gold and Silver era. Somewhere in there I stopped watching and then I periodically watched for the next couple years. Pokemon fizzled (for my agegroup, mind you it was still going strong with younger kids) and it was at one point no longer the cool thing to be a fan of. In fact you would be ridiculed at that point if you were my age (probably like 11?) and watched Pokemon.
Somewhere in there, I got Red version for my birthday and played the hell out of that game. It took me a week though to find out how to get out of my house. Did anyone else have that problem? I had no idea that the random dark patch at the bottom of my house signified a door and that I had to walk through that. Anyway, it was all smooth sailing from there. I eventually got Crystal version and also played the crap out of that. And I actually got every game since. It was Sapphire version that got me back into Pokemon, I got it 2 weeks ahead of its release date in Canada since I was in Florida at the time and they released the games sooner in the U.S… I played more Pokemon than I saw sun on that vacation…Kid priorities right there.
Now onto the cards… For me, my parents didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid and they didn’t believe in spending money on Pokemon cards. I did get a Brushfire Starter deck and a 2 player starter deck for my birthday one year though! And one day my dad showed up with a couple Neo Revelation packs, that was one of the best days ever and I still remember it. It was rare for me to be able to open up a pack of cards. Most of the cards I had were given to me by my generous neighbour and I slowly build up a small collection of cards and could therefore participate in the schoolyard shenanigans with everyone else. I maybe had only a few holo cards in total. Eventually my school banned Pokemon cards altogether because they were just too problematic and things would get heated in trades/battles/etc. I’m sure most schools did this haha.
Now the game changer for me, and my favourite thing about Pokemon was Pokemon Trading Card Game for Game Boy Colour. I got it for my birthday one year from my neighbour and it changed me, that’s what really got me hooked on Pokemon cards. He also bought me some sort of Nintendo Magazine which came with a promo Venusaur (the English version of GB Venusaur) and that Venusaur card pretty much set in stone my favourite pokemon. It was and is a badass card. Since I didn’t have the money for cards, I collected and learned about Pokemon cards vicariously through this game boy game. I had never seen most of the cards in the original sets, so I learned what cards were out there through this game. It is also one of the most fun games (so if you haven’t played it I highly recommend it). I played this game solidly for about a decade before beginning to pursue collecting Pokemon cards about 7 years ago. I could only look at the game-boy artwork for so long before I decided it was time to collect the real thing. And now here we are 7 years later and I have a LOT of cards.
It’s funny how things work out. I was the kid who couldn’t afford cards when I was younger, and now I collect some of the most expensive cards around. I would have never imagined.
What’s also ironic is that Pokemon was huge, then it was uncool in a flash, then just a couple short years later everyone was playing the video games. I know so many people who play Pokemon games it’s ridiculous. In grade 12 chemistry we were given a day where we could basically play Pokemon on DS instead of having class and pretty much everyone did have Pokemon and a DS. It was nuts. At that time my collection of cards was the first 150 (in a combination of Base, Jungle, and Fossil) and I brought it to school one day and I was all the rage. And these are 17 year olds I’m talking about haha.
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