Hard to have lost money lately
Does joining the efour discord count?
I’ve lost brain cells
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You’re getting a very biased selection of people here. The people who bought Base Set back in November aren’t the sort of people who are on this forum (for the most part). It’s people who got sucked into the hype and got burned because of it. Anyone who collects EX, vintage Japanese promos, Neo, e-Series etc. likely hasn’t lost a penny (and that’s the majority of this forum).
Those are honestly the people I’m looking to post. Where are the guys that went full amateur-hour and bought 30 boxes of modern and double msrp? Or bought a bunch of wotc at ATH right after Logan Pauls first video?
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I agree lol. I’d enjoy seeing those posts as well. Most of these people probably weren’t collectors in the first place, though. Most of them were just people trying to capitalize on the Logan Paul hype and failed. So I don’t think you’ll find too many people like that on this forum.
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The only thing I can really offer to this topic has to do with sealed Southern Islands sets.
These sealed binders used to be dirt cheap. They were like $60 max for 10+ years. I bought them three times and sold them three times, plus opened one. I collect(ed) sealed promos and it made sense to have them, but they took up more space than most of my stuff and didn’t really fit with my other things so I just kept buying and selling them indecisively for years. Eventually I just thought they were cheap as hell and if I wanted one again I could just get one.
Then in early 2020 these went from $30 to $3,000, like, overnight. I still had completed listings on my watch list which were only asking $30-$40 for a sealed binder while new listings were selling (not just listing, selling) for thousands of dollars. I still have no explanation for this. Now I will probably never have one, which sucks.
Most of what constitutes losses in my experience refers more to scarcity of product (like sealed WotC promo packages) than any sort of explicit financial penalty. Southern Islands is the weird one for me because it’s both.
Sold one case for $550 and sold a PSA 10 set of the cards for $750 
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Gave family member my base set binder of only holos without knowing anything 5 years ago.
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There’s a few cards I’ve sold for pretty much the same I bought them for. But my biggest regret so far was selling troll and toad a mix of moderate played to near mint cards. I was low balled by about 1/4 their buy price. Some was warranted because not all were near mint but it was a very low price for abunch of ex’s. So this time im selling my ungraded first edition wotc holo’s myself to fund my graded collection along with my check.
Looking back the money still bought me a sick Crystal Ho-OH PSA 9 along with quite a few other PSa 9 E series holos
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They mostly frequent Youtube and Reddit comment sections where they are still reassured that their big plays will stonk one day. Joining an “elitist” forum would take too much time and energy, neither of which they have to spare - they need to save it all for when they wait outside of Target all night.
I would love to contribute something of value to this thread but so far my most exciting “loss” is that I sold all my PSA 10 Tag All Stars full arts and SR trainer cards a year ago for basically the price I paid or a few dollars more here and there. Not only did I miss out on big gains this year but in hindsight I miss owning some of them, though the reason I sold was to focus on English binder collecting, so its not too bad. Alternatively, I missed crucial details on some vintage cards I sent through PSA express a few months ago, I was looking to flip them to fund my collection goals but overestimated their condition and basically lost the $75 grading fee on the two I ended up selling (I kept the other one). Big loss, I know haha.
Would be interesting to hear if anyone lost money like that with PSA subs as well.
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If you want some triggering posts or popcorn worthy threads, there’s at least one subreddit on reddit related to pokemon investing that would give you the fix you are looking for. You can tell by the questions they ask that they are like full on amateur-hour, and the admins know very little about the topic so they always hype up modern sealed to sell memberships to users who doesn’t know how to get booster boxes at msrp.
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It is inevitable there will be a lot of selection bias here. The card I would have lost the most money on is a PSA 10 1st Ed Base Venusaur which I purchased in November 2017 for $4,500. By November 2018 it was a $3,000 card with plenty of sales closer to $2,500. I sold this card in November 2020 for $19,400. While it didn’t feel great in 2018 to have “overpaid” in hindsight, I remained confident in the card itself despite fluctuations. Plus I like Venusaur and was proud to have in my collection.
That said I happen to disagree with people who say you don’t lose money on cards that have dropped in price until you sell. This assumes a) you have the financial stability to hold, and b) the card has enough actual desirability to increase in price again. But if you make informed buying decisions you are confident in, for cards that you enjoy and are comfortable holding, it reduces the risk of panic selling.
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That’s part of the fun of a loss-porn thread. I remember people were posting insaneo losses from GME but they kept buying the dips, then GME stonked back up past $300 a share again and they made out on top. Sometimes that happens too! This is a great place to see big losses made and sometimes redemption. Very different from the great market thread in that this one is about personal decisions made, that may currently be filled with regret, or a big bet that’s currently not looking so great.
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Most of my stories are on behalf of other people. Shout out to the guy who stiffed me $7500 for a 1st Ed. Base Pack Trio w/ heavy Zard art on the Troll and Toad break. He got cold feet. I tossed it in a bin and just called it my margin for the event. Aged well.
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I can give a tiny redemption story, actually. I didn’t orginally post it because I ended up actually making money from it lol:
Back in ~2014, I bought somewhere around 250-300 copies of the card Apocalypse from Tempest for anywhere from 50 cents to $2 each. For those who don’t know, it’s a jank reserved list card but it has an interesting effect and I kind of just yolo’d it. In total, I remember spending around $600 (a lot of that must’ve been shipping costs, because it doesn’t make sense when I consider the price I paid and the number of copies I got but that’s a separate matter).
For 7 years, they sat in a deckbox and only had a buylist value of like $1 to $2 each (AKA basically what I paid). I chalked it up to a bad impulse buyout and moved on.
Then 2021 hit and reserved list speculation became rampant. Suddenly, Apocalypse became a $20 card. And so I cashed out of every single copy I owned to ABUGames, TCGPlayer buylist, Card Kingdom, and Troll & Toad for an average of ~$13 each. So what I thought was a dumb fuck-up actually ended up being profitable for me lol. I still think it was a dumb fuck-up; I think people speculating on cards like that at are making a bad mistake. No one actually wants the card; it’s all speculators. But I profited off of the greater fools.
That’s my redemption story! Nothing too dramatic, but I figured I might as well share 
.
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It’s not a big loss but I bought a shining fates ETB for $95 on release date and opened it. Does that satisfy your itch @chrisbalestra?
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Bro, leave the thread. We get you’re rad and made a big profit. Nobody cares as the majority of us did. Go flex in the mirror 
I am a dipshit and bought a PSA 10 20th Anniversary Charizard for over $1000 and sold it within the week for $600. I am an idiot. I also took out a loan to buy the PSA 10 Master’s Scroll from Scott in October. I am “That Guy” Hahaha! @chrisbalestra,
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If I wanted to brag about making a profit, I could’ve mentioned much more profitable specs than some random $13 cards I sat on for close to a decade lol. Chris B specifically requested “redemption” stories where something turned out poorly over the short term but ended up turning out well. And I felt that the story fit that request. But I’m sorry if it came off as bragging.
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I think you misinterpreted the point of this thread hahaa
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