the impatience of collecting, how does it effect u?

Hi guys, I just wanted to start a fun discussion and see how your character traits are lol :wink:

I can describe myself as a very patient man, 1 execption tho wich relates to collecting.
Wenn im collecting something and i got my mind set on a card, i need it ASAP.
The money is here, the card aint :slightly_frowning_face:

example 1

The last months im looking for a PSA 9 reverse leg collection challenge! PSA 9
it has a low POP and none are on the market currently or have been since im looking for oneā€¦
Out of impacience i ordered the oly one available on ebay wich was a PSA 8 bacause it was driving me nuts :confused:
Then again, my hidden OCD kicks in , ok i have an 8ā€¦ i need a friggin 9!! I wont be ā€œsatisfiedā€ until i have that 9

example 2

i need 5 more cards for getting my team rocket 1st ed PSA 9 complete and i cant find em anywhere!
5 rares and again it drives me bananas! out of frustration ordered 1 in PSA 10, but yet again my OCD comes peeking around the corner.
Lurking in a dark alley it whispers, pssstt it aint a 9 boy! Arghgh!!

Do u guys have any same expercience? how long did it take to get those cards u wanted? etcā€¦ SHARE!! XD

Hmmmā€¦I guess I should thank God I donā€™t have that problem. Sounds hard to handle. Maybe Iā€™ve just been so overwhelmed that I canā€™t recognize that feeling cause, after all, I probably have a hundred unfinished sets from Star Wars to Pokemon. I still have single card alerts set up on eBay for sets I donā€™t even remember owning lol.

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The cards I want only come up a couple times a year and I almost never win the auctions. Its frustrating because I know prices are rising so I want to get them before theyā€™re to high and cant afford them :S

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I sometimes have the same. As you may or may not know, I collect Pikachus and currently have the largest Pikachu collection in the world with over 800 unique cards.

When I started collecting Pikachus I was only going for ungraded cards (doesnā€™t matter if they were heavy played or mint; although mint was obviously preferred). I had almost all English regular and foreign Base Pikachus: English 1st edition Shadowless Red Cheeks; non-1st Shadowless Red Cheeks; 1st Shadowless Yellow Cheeks; non-1st Shadowless Yellow Cheeks; unlimited edition Ā©1999; unlimited edition Ā©1999-2000; Japanese no rarity and with rarity symbol; Dutch 1st and UED; German 1st and UED; French 1st and UED; Italian 1st and UED; Spanish Ā©1999 1st and UED; Spanish Ā©1999-2000 1st and UED; Portuguese 1st and UED; and a Chinese UED. (PS / off-topic: If anyone is interested, I made an article in the past about ALL Base Pikachu Artwork variations that exist.)

But no matter where I looked, I couldnā€™t find any ungraded Chinese 1st edition, or Korean 1st and UED. Korean UED is very hard to find even if graded, but ungraded is really hard.

Every time I searched for them however, all three smiled at me from the same seller in PSA-9. Their price-tag was therefore also a lot higher than ungraded would be. After little over a month, with the three PSA-9 cards still unsold; I couldnā€™t take it anymore. And now I look for both graded or ungraded, PSA1 or 10, heavy played or mint. :grin: As long as I donā€™t have them yet.


Another example: Somewhere at the start of this year a PokĆ©mon with YOU Pikachu card emerged on YJ. The card was released in 2015, and I hadnā€™t seen a single one for sale ever. So obviously I was pretty siked. Placed a bid, got outbid so raised, and raised, and raised, andā€¦ Still lost :sob: It ended at 135,000 Japanese Yen (~1,2k USD). Bummed I lost such an amazing card (I mean, just look at that artwork:
),
I went on with my life. Less than a week later another one popped up for 95,000 buy-out. It was gone within an hour, before I even noticed it. Then another one popped up, so I placed a bid. But then another one popped up, and another, and before you know it more than 10 were available for bid/buy-out. Some even with a cheaper buy-out price than the bid I had placed on that third oneā€¦ But since I used the middleman service Noppin, I couldnā€™t cancel my bid anymoreā€¦ :slightly_frowning_face:

My max bid was 77,777 and I ended up winning it for 77,000 (~700 USD). This was excluding shipping costs, middleman service, and import fees on arrival, which upped it to little over 1k USD.

Now you can still find them on YJ and eBay for around 200-300 USDā€¦ If only I was a bit more patient, for just 1 to 1.5 months, then I could have saved more than 650 USDā€¦

Ah well, we can only learn from our mistakes I guess. And I havenā€™t regret buying it. The artwork is great, and itā€™s a great addition to my collection. And it could have been much worse if I had won that first one. :wink: And what if I had lost this third one, and it would have been the last one put up for sale in years? Then I would have been so pissed on myself for not going a tiny bit higher to secure it.
So no, itā€™s a bit annoying they are now widely available for 200-300 USD while I have paid 3 to 5 times that amount, but I donā€™t regret it.

The future is what matters, not the past. We can only learn from it, to make the present and future better for ourselves.

Greetz,
Quuador

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Riveting story Q;)

This is key. This is what I learned early on when I was collecting Sega Megadrive games. It was more important to own the game, than own the complete game. Having a nice shelf with plastic cases is super to look at, and really nice show piece. But in the end, all you do is take the cartridge out and play it. The box, the booklet, the commercial inlay all do not matter. You play the game, you enjoy it.

And I carried this along with me to current day collecting. Yes, having mint cards in your binder is awesome, but if your budget doesnā€™t allow to you either have to settle with less or increase the budget. And sometimes you just have to pull the trigger, spend the extra money.

Years ago, I really wanted this last Sonic game I didnā€™t own yet. A complete version was hard to find and loose carts had tendency to have major damage. I pulled the trigger, overpaid on the complete box but I never regretted doing so.

Settling with lower quality cards adds something else nice; you can start a side collection. Because once you start replacing the lower quality you can either dump the EX-PL-NM cards (by selling, throwing them away, ritual sacrifice) or do something crazy like Gav and go for PSA1-10 graded set for that one card.

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Rofl :laughing:

Greetz,
Quuador

Maybe sacrificing that Heavy Played copy you own to the PokƩgods will help you on the quest to that one last card you need. You never know in what way luck is on your side.

Well, I prefer to sacrifice my HP cards, AFTER I found a mint replacement for them. :wink: But if you mean sacrificing another heavy played card, to find a certain card, then Iā€™d so go for it. :blush: Or just give them to me, that way you also ā€˜sacrificeā€™ them to a ā€˜PokĆ©godā€™. :grin:

Greetz,
Quuador

I collect DP-BW blisters and Iā€™ve had similar experiences of going dry with them never appearing on the market. Some of the things I did, that could help you.
-Find people that collect the same things you do (mainly on instagram, and was the main reason I started one). Message them if they have something in particular you seek or if one of their posts has something you want, then inquire about its saleability . In your case youā€™re looking for people that collect PSA legendary collection reverses
-If someone on ebay is selling something related, in your case PSA legendary collection reverses, inquire if they have your said item.

Ultimately the PSA 9 Challenge does exist with it having a pop of 6 and I can guarantee people on this forum do own a copy of it. However as you say, since these donā€™t appear in the market, youā€™re are unfortunately going to have to offer a really outstanding and alluring offer to fish them out if you want it now. Otherwise you will just have to wait a while until one of those owners decides to list one on the market.

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Thatā€™s deepā€¦ :blush: I feel like it should be a quote from some sort of super hero movie

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Or book, since thatā€™s what I got it from. Terry Goodkindā€™s Laws of the Magic series. Although it was slightly different, but kinda meant the same. :blush:

Greetz,
Quuador

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I did all the above and no such luck, i have knowlidge of 1 copy but it sits in here:
www.ebay.com/itm/COMPLETE-110-110-CARDS-PSA-9-Legendary-Collection-Reverse-Holos-Pokemon/171716567225?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649

the price is really tempting but i prolly cant afford the customs that will shoot it up over 10K :confused:

I canā€™t lie sometimes I am very impatient. My motto is ā€œItā€™s better to get it now before the price spikes up and I can no longer afford it.ā€ Sometimes it hard for me to decide what to spend my money on that month and I end up going for something that I feel might be obscure like the Pikachuā€™s Easter set and the Summer 2017 Festa set that just came out. Of course it does take restrain to not go and buy everything else I wanted before those sets came out but sometimes itā€™s hard to keep up. Iā€™ve learned that if I feel like the price is really good then I generally buy the item. For example I came across a Ponyta 1st edition shadowless Psa 9 for under 16$ and I picked it up because I know that will eventually go up in value. Things like that are what I look for. I try to leave money for the unexpected that month.

I am very impatient. But What I like to do is make a list of wants and get estimate prices of each. And plan ahead when I get them and isolate the money so I know when they do come up, I always have enough to snag them asap. Looking at the list even if I donā€™t have the cards makes me feel like I have them.
this solves my patience problem

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I am just impatience in the long run, as in I canā€™t wait to see where this industry, market, and collectors like us will be in 5, 10, or even 15 years. I can wait forever for cards that I am looking to buy (normal they only pop up once per quarter or so). Time is something that is on our side and I just hope that it will pay off in the future. :blush: