Starting again 20 years later with the memories

Hi!

Its 20 years since I was absolutely obsessed with Pokemon cards. I still remember seeing them at school and meeting up with my younger brother as we lined up for the bus talking to him about them. This thread is going to be dedicated to me recollecting (my originals are either gone or equivalent lol) and actually finishing the unlimited base set that I started as a 9-10 yr old. I am going to post a pic of each card as I get it, with a story of how I got it when I was a child or a memory I have of this card.

Basically I want this to be a memoir of 20 years ago, that I can share with my newborn son, when he is 10, of the toys that his dad was into when he was 10. It seems fitting really.

Also, to start with a memory, I only want to collect “unlimited” because when I was a kid, that is all I had and (for the main) all that was around. Funnily enough, at my school, anything that was what you guys consider “shadowless” was considered a fake and it would just be against anything I ever believed to start collecting those now! Unpopular opinion on here also, but I think unlimited with the 3D border looks 10x better!

Thanks! I look forward to showing you my finds/purchases and sharing some memories!

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The interesting thing is your 10 year old son will probably be into the Pokémon of 2029.
Looking forward to your stories:)

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Love to see you climb the ladder. Don’t be surprised if you want more after you finish the unlimited set and go after jungle or fossil next!

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Machamp-ing at the bit

The 1st holographic I ever owned. After a couple of weeks of begging and excitement, my mum decided that my brother and I could give up our pocket money for the next couple of weeks and she would go out and buy the 2-player starter set. To prevent any arguments, Mum decided that she would split up the cards evenly (which is impossible) and somehow I managed to convince everyone that I should have the Machamp, leaving my brother with both Chameleons lol. Against our wishes, she also wrote (with permanent marker) our initials on the back of cards (on the white part of the pokeball), that we weren’t allowed to trade. Poor Machamp was one of these cards :slightly_frowning_face:

The next day we took our new cards (the ones we were allowed too) to school, ready to do some wheeling and dealing. Unfortunately, due to the new craze, by that afternoon, the school banned all pokemon cards from being on the school grounds! This had no effect on my new found obsession however, as I couldn’t wait to get home and see my Machamp again!


I actually picked this one up in a starter set that someone had opened. So I have the entire starter set again!

I always thought the artwork was so majestic, with the whirlwind of Machamp’s fists creating that blue, red and yellow vortex in the background. Plus it was shiny and none of the other cards in the set were. Honestly, I would just sit there twinkling it in the light, entranced and not worried about any damage I was causing to the card. Of course this was in between the (one-sided) battles that my brother and I had, that had no resemblance to the rules that accompanied our new cards!

As a final side note for this entry, I always thought the 1st edition symbol was because the card was meant to be the 1st card you got before starting to collect the other Holographics in the theme decks and booster packs. This was probably because I never saw any 1st edition cards and they used to market the starter deck as starter level, theme decks as advanced level and boosters as expert level.

Thanks again everyone!

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Nice memories… I’m in a similar situation except I’ve got a 6 year old nephew who collects. He couldn’t care less about my new base set, the numbers are lower than the GX cards and that’s all he cares about… fair enough

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This is awesome. Looking forward to watching your collection grow!

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The Legendary Bird’s the Word (and reward)
This is the first holographic that was ever pulled from a booster pack in my family! Unfortunately, my brother got to Zapdos before me!

Where I come from, it was very common for the father of the family to go work in the mines, particularly in the late 90s and 2000s. This is because if you were a tradesmen, you could earn a better salary out in the mines compared to working in the general community. Like my Dad, usually you would have to fly out for a week, work, then fly back for your week off. This meant that there was no father in our house every 2nd week which would bring behaviour problems for our Mum!

One week, as a reward for our (my brother and I) good behaviour (while Dad was away), Mum decided to buy one booster pack! She made us stand on the other side of the kitchen bench as she opened the pack and proceeded to fan out the cards in her hand so we could only see the back of the cards. Now from hearing at school, my brother and I had a good idea that if there was a holographic it would be in the middle of the pack (I now know this to be wrong). One by one we had to choose a card to keep, I had a turn then my brother had a turn, until they were all gone. I can’t even remember what I pulled but my brother pulled the Zapdos! I was devastated!


When I saw the 100 damage that Thunderbolt did, I was so jealous!

I really loved the artwork of Zapdos and would always pinch my brothers binder to have a look! Zapdos was so menacing how it’s looking down on its victim with the bolts of lighting coming out of it and I always envisaged the dark background as being dark storm clouds. Furthermore it was the 1st legendary bird to be printed which gave it an awe factor.

I don’t remember battling my brother after he got this card as it could just destroy any of my cards in one go (we never played with energy cards or read the text that came with it!), so we became collectors from this point on. Now that we had some new cards we started to check off the checklist that came in one of the rule books in the starter set and see if we could collect all of the cards!

As a side note of this entry, I was always really blown away by cards where the attack damage is more than it’s own HP!

Cheers!

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Awesome story! reminds me back in 1999, my Mother and 6 year old me went to the shops together, as we passed a store I saw some Base Set boosters, somehow I convinced her to purchase one for myself and my Brother - who was at home. As all good siblings do, I opened my Brothers pack for him while I was still at the shops :stuck_out_tongue: I pulled a Zapdos! I was so happy that I decided to keep his pack lol. Not entirely satifised… I made a small hole in the other pack to see what it contained, it also contained a Zapdos! So we both ended up with Zapdos’s - The end :blush:

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I remember when I was kid walking along my quiet residential street and on the grass just in front of me a noticed a glimmer of plastic. Strange? I moved closer to look. On inspection it was none other than a psa 10 1st edition charizard! Just lying there in the grass!

I quickly snapped it out of the case (no idea how) and ate the card. I worked purely of instinct and couldn’t stop myself. I knew a card of such quality didn’t belong in the hands of a child.

That’s my storey, far fetched I know. My (erm) friend at the time only ever manager a holo Machamp, looser.

@professorsiccama
Your description of why Zappos was such a mesmerizing card from your child perspective is perfect. It’s so fun to read what elements of a cards drew someone in. It’s like getting a peek into a child’s mind, and for those of us into Pokémon as kids, we all have variations on that same experience of wonder/awe. Thanks so much for sharing!

Also your mom’s system was genius :joy: Kudos to her cleverness!

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Collecting was such a Blast-oise

I remember everyone at school wanting a Charizard and don’t get me wrong I really wanted one to, but I kind of always wanted Blastoise more because his pack art was a lot cooler than Charizard’s (and I always thought Charizard was so rare and unobtainable). Blastoise looked so overpowering with his hydro-cannons and I loved that such a monstrous creature could evolve (via Wartortle) from Squirtle. I was never able to get my hands on Blastoise but I managed to get glimpses of him at markets on Saturdays. Back then sellers would display all their cards in glass cases as if they were pieces of jewellery (they kind of were/are) and I would just be in awe of all the holographics from base set lined up. Mum and Dad always thought it was too expensive to just buy one card, so I never got anything from the market.

So this is my 1st ever copy of Blastoise!

Sugimori did an amazing job with the Illustration, he is ready to attack and such a beast! I love the ripple effect in the holo as it looks like Blastoise has taken his last step as he has just arrived to battle in a shallow lake. The blue of his body balances really well with the blue on the rest of the card.

As a side note, I never played the game but I had the TCG Gameboy game. I just love how Blastoise’s legendary Pokemon Power “Raindance” had a deck named after it!

Thanks again everyone!

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Love the stories. :blush:

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Love it.

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