Hypothetical:
You wake up the next morning and you find that your entire collection has mysteriously disappeared. After going through the 7 stages of grief you decide to start collecting again, what do you start with?
Personally, I don’t have much of a collection now since I just started collecting recently but if I had to start over I’d begin by collecting the WOTC black star promos. A majority of them are still affordable and I always get a good dose of nostalgia when I look at them.
If every card I owned was destroyed in a combination of fire, floods, tidal wave, volcano eruptions, etc. at multiple locations, I’d have more pressing immediate concerns; presumably my apartment is destroyed as well in this scenario lol. So first I’d have to deal with insurance claims.
Then when I got back into collecting I don’t think I’d ever feel comfortable owning something irreplaceable or expensive again, and don’t think I could fully put my heart back into it, especially with all my childhood/sentimental cards gone. Maybe I’d do a binder set of un/commons with my favorite arts with a few holos sprinkled in.
I don’t think I would get back into at all. I would feel so sad that my cards are gone and I don’t have the money to buy back many of the cards I own.
I would probably just do the first 5 Gyarados cards that inspired my collection: English Base Unlimited Gyarados, Japanese Misty’s Gyarados, English Unlimited Dark Gyarados, Japanese Giovanni’s Gyarados, and English Unlimited Neo Revelations Shining Gyarados.
After that? I don’t think I’d want to keep going. It’s taken me almost 20 years to amass my small collection, I don’t want to put in that kind of effort again, especially knowing the prices for some of them now.
I’d start with what I remember from my childhood. Why did I fall in love with these Pocket Monsters? I think your feelings of nostalgia will be similar to most.
Base Set, Jungle and Fossil favorites, maybe throw in Ancient Mew to round off the originals. After picking up a copy of Pokemon 2000, perhaps head into my favorite Neo and E-Series Pokemon. Then a Southern Islands collection to round it off. I like your Black Star promo shout.
Maybe I should have just asked what everyone started off by collecting, I realize now with members having these huge collections it would be extremely hard to get back into it especially after putting years and years of effort into collecting and like @azulryu, mentioned the price points now would make it even harder to get back what you lost. @pkmnflyingmaster, I’m assuming your empty response means that you’re on the same boat and wouldn’t want to collect anything lol.
I think I’d like to pick up some Neo favorites since I remember seeing cards from that set a lot as a kid but never owning it.
After depositing the insurance check.
I would take a nap.
It’s not empty, for some reason the image only loads like 25% of the time. It should be fixed now. Also I like the interpretation of what was thought to be a blank post lol
Still empty for me, and lol, here I thought you were dropping some zen gem
I feel like I’m being gaslit. I will try one more time
It’s a picture of the collector guy from Pokemon 2000 picking up the ancient mew from the rubble of his lost collection. I feel like it’s the natural restarting point for any collector
@pkmnflyingmaster, I can see it now alright
The first big thing I got for my collection was 1st Ed. rocket and gym sets. In hind sight it was a perfectly good move. Though Base would’ve saved me more money long run!
If I dont kill myself first I would start again for the most valuable staff, cos it’s what will grow the most (Unless a new low pop crap is found and hyped to death again by square minded label collectors)
Probably would grab some cheap nostalgic toys and then switch to other affordable Pokemon merch like 90s figures/post cards etc for that great nostalgic feel
Just like the others, I was first cry, worry about the house itself and deal with insurance, etc. etc.
But if we’d ignore that, I’d probably would try to collect all FA Supporters again, since it’s among my favorite sub-collections right now, and apart from some Japanese promos, they aren’t too difficult to find (prices is a different story, though).
I’d probably collect Seviper as well again, since it’s my favorite Pokémon. Although since I’m currently just one card short of 100% completing it, I don’t even want to imagine what I would feel like if my entire collection would be completely gone just before the finish line (theoretically, since it might still take years before I get my hands on this final pesky card…).
One thing I can say for sure however: I wouldn’t collect Pikachu cards again. If I knew six years ago what I know now I probably wouldn’t even have started it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m insanely proud of my Pikachu collection, I love it and love collecting it further, but due to the 100-200 new Pikachu cards being released every year, including at least a couple of cards of multiple hundreds of USD, and given a lot of almost irreplaceable cards I currently own, I wouldn’t want to start all over again for sure.
Greetz,
Quuador
Buy a crystal lugia(the only card I still really really want that’s eluding my collection) and never let it leave my side so it doesn’t disappear like the rest of my collection
So, in this highly unlikely situation lol, id go straight for all the gen 2 things I have today and love. In starting i got very into the hype items over listing to my real wants and desires, so that was a little road bump i had to stumble over before getting what i wanted all along. Id be a struggle if were talking todays prices, but id find a way to in the long term make it work somehow.
Id just go for raw cards without caring about condition if i lost it all. Back to basics.raw goldstars look amazing together in binders.