Cool to see the evolution of your profile pic. I always thought it was a standout
Oh man, I love that style. Any idea if commissions with him are closed indefinitely, or if he usually has an on-off cycle? Would love to get one done as well.
@trainerjack, thank you! I feel pretty attached to it myself. 
@davie, I asked Dalton if he does commissions a few months back and he told me he does them randomly but has more fun just experimenting. He typically will announce when he has open commissions though. I check his page regularly for that reason. Haha. I love how he combines the right amount of creepy, cool, quirky, and cute all in one.
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Going to pin his page and check then – thanks for the tip! There are loads of people doing art online, but man – this guy’s style is super unique.
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@davie, it really is. Reminds me of some of the old Digimon designs too or Toon Monsters from Yugioh.
I agree wholeheartedly - I imagine it’d be something like this:
The non-TCG stuff alone would make it worthwhile!
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I reached out and it looks like he’s willing to open up a custom/commission spot if you were interested. I can’t afford his rate at the moment, but thought I’d let you know 
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@davie , thanks for that! Sent you a PM.
The past two years have really helped me focus on my non-TCG goals. When I first started collecting non-TCG items, it was very willy-nilly seeing as I was a child. It had never been my goal to collect EVERYTHING Gyarados (I’d have to build a roof over my head of my collection materials if I did that), but it never had any structure. Over the years, however, I started focusing more on Japanese non-TCG items since I found the English side of things lackluster, and then included some exclusive stuff, but a lot of it still felt willy-nilly.
Unlike Magikarp, the grand majority of Gyarados’ stuff has duplicated artwork, usually centering around these images:
I decided that, because of this, one of my new goals would be to get items that either featured art I didn’t have - or hard to get and rare items. Ideally it would be both. That way I didn’t just keep spending money on things that brought me no joy.
Fast forward to about a month and a half ago.
Some older members might remember Tyler AKA @hapycakeoven . We’ve managed to keep in touch after my 2 year break a while back and I had reached out to him regarding some Tamamushi stuff. We came to a deal while I slowly gathered the funds over the last few months. In conversation, however, I found out he was going to be in my neck of the woods and so we planned to meetup for brunch. I had known him to be a kind soul and he was as genuine as I had known him to be. Prior to meeting up he had talked about how he was considering a Japanese card Pokemon Index but didn’t have any of the most recent generations and so when we sat down at the local diner, I surprised him with a small gathering of Japanese cards for his Index and a 4-Frame Gag Theatre comic since he likes to collect non-TCG stuff from the early era of Pokemon. We talked a great ton and had a good time overall.
And finally last week, his package arrived.
There have been a number of times where I’ve sat down in reflection over the generosity of folks and felt grateful not just for what I’ve received, but more so for the people I’ve met throughout my years of collecting.
And this was one of them.
On top of the Tamamushi stuff, he accidentally revealed a surprise he had for me:
A 1998 Televi-Kun Telephone Card.
I’ve only seen these less than a handful of times and had been scoping out for one for about two years. Some members like @weekendwolf gave me some resources in hopes one popped up so I was over the moon when I had this in hand (thanks again for that).
But there was something that made me tear up as I revealed the layers of cardboard - another “surprise” he hadn’t mentioned:
A closeup:
Tyler has been in the recent habit of making parody cards of particular trophies or widely popular/rare cards in his own zany art style:
He knew that one of my biggest goals from last year was once again obtaining a New Year Present card which took about a year of selling bits and pieces to finally acquire one. Komiya being one of my favorite arts and this card being a high grail after I made the mistake of selling mine a few years back, this card hit on a lot of emotive levels.
I have a few favorite pages from my TCG collection, but now I have a favorite for my non-TCG collection:
Least to say, I was speechless when I saw this. And least more to say, I’m looking forward to the next time we meet.
Cheers!
- Azul
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I always enjoy seeing your collection update, Devin! Always cool reading about your collection story, the people you met, and the new items you’ve acquired.
Smart! I’ve recently been starting to collect all the non-TCG stuff I can find for Seviper, and some artworks are indeed repeated a lot over all the different items. A lot of the figures are also in a similar pose. Luckily, being a not too popular gen 3 Pokémon, I wouldn’t be able to get a roof over my head with all different non-TCG stuff. What I’ve found thus far is actually fairly limited (although I did update my (non-Pikachu) wanted list with all the stuff I’ve seen pictures of and haven’t been able to find yet, though. 
A popular gen 1 Pokémon like Gyarados is indeed a completely different story, so I can understand and appreciate your method of reduction by focusing on unique artworks for non-TCG items only.
Oh, and that New Year Present card hapycakeoven made looks amazing. His parody artworks are really well done!
Greetz,
Quuador
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DUUUUUUDE. Devin! This is the best update I’ve ever seen from you, and one of the best since I joined E4! I’m amazed! First of, that phone card is one of the coolest I’ve ever had the fortune of laying my eyes on. That Gyarados in it is hilarious and awesome, genuinely one of the most original pieces around. How 'bout that pipe organ Venusaur, holy cow! Rainbow Oddish… this is exactly the potential for joy that collection threads provide. A unique piece, a sight seen, something that you would never have discovered or appreciated in a certain way. The best my man!
And for the main event. @hapycakeoven’s work is astounding! Can I express enough how overjoyed I am? The play on Komiya’s gift card, those other parody cards, insane! Dying at the Snap Gary 
What a special gift, what a great story. This gets me so excited for my own illustrated Gym collection page. Hapycakeoven, if you see this, I love your illustrations dearly. This is what I’m all about in Pokemon.
Thanks for making my day, Devin!
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Always a pleasure to read these updates, I really like all those commissions those artists are very talented.
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Godly custom card for the Gyarados Godfather 
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That new year present is epic what a ledge!
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Awesome update, love the illustration on the new year present
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Amazing work, I have a collection building called ‘1 of everything’. In a way it’s trying to be like this but more of a showcase to the different items rather than a specific Pokemon (trying to catalogue with dates and companies etc). Will definitely have to go through this thread and glean any info I can! Do you upload pics anywhere or just in here? Specifically (hopefully) with pics of backs of things too 
.
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Thanks all! I didn’t realize this update in particular would get as much reception as some of the others but I’m overjoyed with your words. Thank you!
To touch on some responses though:
@quuador - I know my posts likely don’t get the full length read by probably the majority of viewers, but it’s refreshing to know when people indulge in the stories - I just like sharing stories and have enjoyed writing more and more over the years (something I’m sure we both relate to). I don’t mind if people glimpse over my walls of texts in that regard as I know a few people seem to enjoy them. 
Hopefully Seviper gets more unique artwork on the non-TCG side in the future.
@brendantheclayboy haha thank you! XD I’ve been extremely lucky this year and it’s thanks to a lot of incredible people from E4 and IG. I wasn’t aware of the Phone Card until I saw someone share it on IG and went immediately on the search. It’s so rare to see Gyarados artwork that doesn’t highlight his ferocity or usual demeanor. The closest thing the non-TCG has to offer of non-traditional merch is probably the Toyo Carp Gyarados sticker:
@kingboo64, thanks man! Tyler is awesome and a talented artist. There’s always a sense of nervousness when you meet people for the first time but as someone once told me, everyone becomes a lot more down to earth when you meet them in person versus how we build people up in our head.
If anyone wants to check out more of Tyler’s stuff, I highly recommend checking out his IG: www.instagram.com/hapycakeoven/
@papafrankgod @gyarados416 @shizzlemetimbers - I know we’ve already gushed about a ton of things before and sometimes in chat but appreciate you guys especially. You three especially continue to motivate me on my collecting journey via what you do and some of the conversations we share.
@kryptonnn Thank you! While you’re going through the posts, feel free to hit me in DMs if you ever have any questions as I’m happy to answer. As for your question, I USED to be in the habit of posting front/back pictures of everything but at some point I stopped caring all that much unless it had some interesting graphics on the back. However, I tend to be more particular now about sharing the origins or rightful names of things - in the past I think it was like 50/50 chance of me sharing information about the non-TCG sides of things while focusing on particular information regarding the TCG stuff.
That’s a long way to say I just post what I like and try to stay informative - I have an IG but you’ll find full details in this collection thread more so. Good luck on your 1 of Everything collection!
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I assume you’re already aware of this unique phone card with rainbow Oddish, @danthedoozy ?
Greetz,
Quuador
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Not necessarily a collection update but something a little different.
I’ve been very grateful for a lot of things as of late, especially in comparison to the hardships from last year. I’ve come across many incredible things this year - I completed Unlimited Rage of the Broken Heavens - a feat that took over 3 years to complete, I got the Himeno Signature, the Lake Biwa Poke Lid replica after stalking twitter and IG in hopes it would come out, the Singapore EZ-Link cards, my Jumbo New Year Present card back, the Tamamushi set, the 1998 Televi-Kun Telephone card, and received some incredible stuff from incredible friends and like-minded people - the custom New Year present card from Tyler, the surprise poster from Vinda Chhenn, the Christmas gift from Pokegasm, some magazines, stamps, stickers, and postcards from Taran, Diz, Dominic, Steve, and more amongst others.
I remember being a lurker of the forums roughly since 2012/2013 before I eventually joined, excited by the notion that there were serious collectors since most of my friends fell out of Pokemon years prior. I haven’t looked back on some of my original uploads in quite some time, made around the time I joined E4 so many years ago, but it’s funny looking back on them now:
I thought I knew so much back then. I think we likely all did at some point. I still hope to one day meet Ebirdman in person, since I know he sometimes attends events though I’m not sure if he’d recall my username. Back in my early days, many of my old school non-TCG stuff came from him. At that time I only really had a knowledge of TCA Gaming, Ebirdman, and Jimmy (rest his soul) before I fell on E4, but when I came across E4 it was like peering into a new world.
I’ve noticed in reflection that some of my hardest collection goals and my success in them is due in large part to the connections I’ve made. It’s because of them that I’ve either been connected to the right seller, person, place, or information that I’ve made it this far in the last… Well since 2014 really. It’s funny to think that since the late 90’s when I started collecting, I did it primarily by myself with the exception of some trades here and there. I thought I had so much to start with.
But when I joined E4, my collection quite literally exploded.
This year I found my drawer starting to overflow, the first time ever, and after seeing people like Dominic’s, Dizzle’s, and a guy named Luke’s (a Gyarados collector from Australia) displays, I felt the need to get my own. A buddy helped me out and at first I hated it as it felt over the top and grandiose and literally ignored it for over 2 months. I quite literally kept a bed sheet over it and left it empty. At some point, after a drunken game night with some friends, I returned to it and started just having fun with all of my extras and bits and pieces here and there, figuring out how I wanted it to look, how each shelf would tell a story, etc. Least to say, I love what it is now - a testament to my first 5 Gyarados cards and my collection at large and my journey collecting this wonderful dragon of a Pokemon. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to take consistent non-blurry pictures.
I haven’t really seen any members since the Hartford convention in… 2019? Geez, it feels like it’s already been several years ago, but over Covid I made some closer friendships with some incredible people. Some of the people who got me through covid were some incredible souls here from E4 like @reinasierpe , @lasbrisas , @trainofthought , @dizzle24 , @mads , @danis04 , @queendrifloon , @goigoi , @xzini , @pokenastic to name a few. Either through endless conversation, letters, random check-ins, or hell playing a random game every once in a while:
Having people like that really did a lot for me and though I don’t always talk to everyone as much since covid’s gotten a bit easier in my neck of the woods, it still left a heavy impact on me.
As those who have read my last update yesterday, I got to meet Tyler - a long ago E4 member and good friend. However, a few weeks after that, I got to meet some wonderful people that I just wanted to give a shout out to.
In an impromptu meetup that just fell into people’s laps, I was able to meet @dizzle24 , @danis04 , their friend John, and Ethan who I’ve been lucky enough to have met a couple of times before (thank you as always for the endless rides, man). Least to say I was excited because I hadn’t met Diz or Dani before.
Ethan swung by to pick me up for the journey ahead and we met with Diz’s crew who had just finished a charity event. Since the area looked nice and there was an aquarium, we took to the town to see what it had to offer. Around the area we also got to look at rocks, knives, fudge, a few little cool themed shops, and even grabbed some grub. It was funny because most of the conversation was mostly about stuff that WASN’T Pokemon which was a relief in a sense.
Just people being people.
As to why I’m saying all of this. Long story short, these last few years have been jam packed. This year and last especially so. I took a break from posting on IG this past month to see if giving myself space from that part of the Pokemon scene would alleviate some of the stress that’s slowly been accumulating. Unfortunately, I realized it wasn’t just IG that was getting to me and I recognize now that, with my life outside of collecting becoming more in tune and in focus, priorities have changed. And so, for the indefinite future, I need to take a break from E4. I’ve been thinking about it for some time especially with this past year’s noise. It might be easy for some members to parse through all of the endless threads and find things they enjoy discussing, but in real life, I’m the kind of guy who would much rather listen to the wind in the woods and find some time for quiet contemplation. Despite the Gyarados crazed persona and endless gif reactions, I try to balance the loudness of my own inner monologues with that of a quieter and more simplified life and I’ve found that harder and harder to do.
Truth be told, I love that we have so many new members here and I love the plethora of different collections we’ve seen come out of this. There’s a lot that I love about E4 and a lot that I also think needs changing. I wish there were more active mods who also got some kind of compensation for the work they do - that work is often thankless and almost quasi-political, it’s a miracle that so much has been done by Ethan’s hand alone. I wish some of the threads had a bit more cleanup, maybe a separation of new topics, forums dedicated to different types of collections - graded, high end, low end, binder, etc - something to fight against common feelings of FOMO instead of just saying “get over it” - not to create separation, but to create better “boxes” for conversation instead of the flurry that it currently feels like - once again, not without trying. I also think we shouldn’t shy away from harder to discuss topics, perhaps creating a different subforum for that as well - where people talk about the ethics of collecting, hardships, ideas for change that people can take into consideration. I will not fool myself into thinking that hoarding shiny cardboard doesn’t have it’s negatives on the rest of the world - there is a reason why STOCK and INVESTMENT ads get blown up in our faces, something that was relatively unheard of until the recent boom - Pokemon has now allowed people to infiltrate that world of people who are either very well off or live even a rich and privileged life, and I think when we’re dealing with money of that degree, we, as people, have a responsibility to others to give more consideration for our consumption - everything we own or have is due in large part because of other people. In the end, this is a community, and I feel that, unfortunately and not without trying, sometimes the powers that be have either ignored certain aspects of the community or they’re overworked and unable to attend to those needs. Admittedly, I can’t imagine all the things that go on behind the scenes so I recognize that these criticisms might mean very little in the grand scheme of things.
I digress.
E4 has shown itself, at it’s core, to be a place for collectors, people with a love and a fixation for some great characters, history, and some cute/cool/weird looking creatures. Whether you came into it because you like the look of the characters, the art, whether you grew up with the games both TCG and otherwise, or just love the historical and cross-cultural references Pokemon has permeated, this place is a nexus for anyone with even the slightest of interest. I’ve seen people grow to start and be a part of charities, do work on the sidelines to help other collectors both big name and small, people have connected over deaths, loss, relationships and friendships alike kindled. Even though there’s room for a lot of change, there’s a lot that I hope continues to grow and develop. I still remember the time when I was still in school and lost my job, unable to attend one of our annual Christmas events, and people pitched in without a word to help me celebrate it. I’ve tried to pay that kindness forward, and in return, I’ve only seen more people do the same and I think that’s what speaks to me at the end of the day about this community - there are some incredibly kind and generous people who just want to see other people happy, to share in something. To me, Pokemon isn’t really about the money as much as I know I care about it a bit more now than previous years, it’s the people that I’ve met at events, the conversations I’ve shared, and the memories created that I think has kept me in E4. I know now that I’ll still have those connections even without E4, and it’s not like I might never return. I just want to make an effort to separate it from my current life, get some space.
At the end of the day, I just wanted to say that, despite my criticisms, I’m grateful for the people I’ve met, the connections I’ve built along the way. And if there were ever a time where E4 was no longer a central hub for collectors, I’d still be able to connect with friends I’ve come to know.
Thanks everyone for having followed me this far, helped, spoken to me, been there for the roughest times and the best of times. My collection could go up in flames but I’d still have the friends I’d made here at the end of the day. I’ll still be active on IG and one day I’ll try to get a website running and share it here - the Snap Dragon Hunt especially will be active on IG when I recollect my thoughts and priorities and attack it at a different angle.
And if you’ve read this far till now, know that you have my deepest appreciation. I do not expect most to give this wall of a text a thorough read, but if you have, it means a lot. And if you’ve skimmed even the slightest bit, to pick out the major morsels of this post, you still have my thanks.
My collection would mean so little in comparison if not for people like these guys and others. It’s not about the destination at the end of the day, it’s the journey and the people you share it with. Pokemon has always been about “trading” and "collecting’ since it’s inception - it always had one other person in mind.
So thank you. This came about being a bit more dramatic than I originally intended, and then again, I cannot deny that part of me - I’ve always been a theatre kid at heart. Symbols and attachments have always felt more powerful to me than my peers and I know for myself where that mindset comes from. I think certain people here can relate to that as well.
Thank you.
Much heart and fire to you all.
Devin
Azul
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So sad to hear you leave but i hope the break isn’t permanent and you indeed return one day, I do understand the reasons behind it though and there’s a lot of same that i’ve been thinking about too. This hobby, at least for me, is kind of a safety haven from all the stress but sometimes it feels like it occupies too much of my capacity to think and focus and instead of releaving stress it even increases it. But in the end for me i feel that this all still gives more than it takes, even though the last year has affected the balance more than i hope it would have.
I hope the break gives you energy and joy to continue with this hobby and all things in it, as well as energy with everything else in life!
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