Only sale I could find for the piplup was 700 from 4 years ago. Im just curious if you’re aware of any recent sales for this card?
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I haven’t seen any more recent than the Piplup from 4 years ago, unfortunately. I’ve heard of private sales through the grapevine, but I’m not sure how much water the rumors hold.
There are allegedly only 5 copies in existence, so even if one was to surface now, the price after the Pokémon Covid boom would be way, way out of my range.
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A tough pill that I recently swallowed was that the older I get, the less I will feel comfortable spending on the hobby. I have a young family and find myself increasingly uncomfortable looking at the prices of high end cards missing from my collection when considering making a purchase. The thought that often pops up is “it would be better for me to put this money towards my family instead of buying another card”. That feeling is magnified as the price goes up
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There is nothing wrong with driving 1995 Honda civic and having nice cards.
There is no need to spend 30-70k on a new car, even with new additions to the family. Right?
I’m starting to enjoy Pokémon cards more than Luxury cars so I have no idea why people try so hard to not drive a $300 civic when that’s a massive savings for some folks.
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I feel this. I have single cards that are more expensive than my car. Im not the guy that wants to impress people i dont even know with my nice car, yet im flexing my pokemon cards in the purchase thread…
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I had a manager at work talking to me about this, he’s got several properties and other investments and is older than myself as well as a parent.
He said, put in preparations for your kids and give them the best start you can in life but be prepared for the fact they might be a knob head when they’re older.
Sage advice from the boss, haha.
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I actually read “give them the best starter”. I need to take a break…
As for putting money aside for the family, I feel that. I manage my stuff way better than I used to because I’m quite easily-addicted/ obsessed and impulsive character. It’s not just money, but in terms of time and health, it’s good for me personally to sometimes take a step back and …well, touch grass.
I got everything on track, still enjoying the hobby and plan on keep doing so.
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A full set was exchanged very recently. I dream of obtaining the Munchax if the new owner ever decides to sell!
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TPCI has no motivation to improve the quality of English card production for as long as people care this highly about conditional rarity. In fact, they are almost incentivized to continue to degrade at the rate they are producing.
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OK, what are these? San Diego, New York 07?
There’s also a Munchlax as well!
These are distributor promos from their respective years, never meant to be released to the public. These were the only 3 times
they did these promos (apparently). Very little is known about them, but a few have popped up for sale over the years. Allegedly there are 5-6 copies of each in existence.
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Having had to collect the same card you are referring to and for the same purpose, I strongly advise against being a defeatist. You have your whole life ahead of you. Always better to think optimistic even if delusional than to tell yourself the card is impossible to obtain. I know I mention this a lot, but my journey to Snap Chansey took a full decade!
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The cards I buy now just don’t have the effect / level of enjoyment on me as those which I bought when I first got into collecting or grading cards. Although my purchasing power has rapidly increased with age, nothing can rival the feeling of working for 3 weeks at a minimum wage retail job in high school to spend on a single gold star.
Collecting is 80% about the chase, journey and community, only 20% about ownership.
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Dang, I was gonna write something on this thread, but this hit so deep I literally forgot what pill I was going to swallow 
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That’s exactly what i was doing for the last 3 years. and keep on doing untill I have 25% of my collection left over.
Asking my boys (both almost age 30) what they wanted from my collection (and part of their own history in playing the TCG) ended up in the knowledge they preferred the money over the cards.
I posted a picture somewere on this boards with 2 displays I made with cards of their choice to keep, but overall they don’t care.
But I am a collector and I sure keep a part of it. Sorting out what to keep is difficult and tough.
Hoping I get enough time to go through everyting, Sell what can go and appreciate a part for as long as I want.
So the tough pill is knowing you’re getting old and your beloved collection is actually a very very very very large bunch of shiny cardboard.
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A lot of nice and generous acts in this space often are forgotten, unnoticed, and dont get paid forward. And, people will take advantage of your kindness.
I slightly get depressed thinking about how naive i was being when i donated nearly ten thousand dollars of my collection including slabs, promos, and sealed product/promos to parents, people in the community, and to content creators (both big and small) in the past 12 months. I dont do it for the recognition or praise or whatever, i think it inherently feels good to do a nice thing. But i think a lot of what i donated ended up in the wrong hands. I wont focus too much on that though because there are some that ended in the right hands, and that i would do it again and again, every single time.
Like I know someone’s mom who is a single mom who buys her grown son very expensive pokemon products for his bday and christmas every year, and I know she works in the service or restaurant industry, and while sustainable, i dont think its very lucrative. She contacted me with the intent to buy some product, but to give some context, the year prior, the son had told me the about how his mom bought him a $500 shining legends collection box for his birthday, and i just silently vowed to make sure she wouldnt have to spend so much on pokemon products again because this was a something that happened twice a year every year.
Im friendly with the son, who is in his 20s, so i was able to know more about his personal home and life situation, and just told him hes very lucky to have a loving mom like that, and that she should contact me next time she buys something, and ill try and help out. So, when she finally reached out to me the following year (so last december and also this past feb), she gave me a list of items she was looking to purchase for christmas, and while i didnt have all the things she was looking for, i had most of them, and sent them to her and didnt let her pay. She insisted, and I said its completely okay, and to please take these as a gift and enjoy the holidays. Spend the money on bills or a rainy day fund or something.
She contacted me again around a month after to plan purchasing something for the son’s birthday. She was absolutely insistent on paying this time, wouldnt take no for an answer, but I eventually convinced her that i wont put her in that uncomfortable situation again, and next time she will have to pay, and to take advantage of my generosity while she still can because maybe i wont be so generous the next time. She eventaully accepted my offer on the condition that I accept payment from her which i agreed to. But my plan is to give her an absurdly good friends and family discount anyway 
On the other end, lets just say there are a lot of less genuine people, and people/parents who have interacted with me (they may have seen me donate a bunch of stuff to a content creator) and im not so naive that i dont know what theye doing. But some will put on a pretty convincing act, and just engage with me for so long that eventually I just give in and send some of my vintage cards (most not particulary expensive, but not particularly cheap either). It makes me especially a little sick when parents use their child or children for their own selfish needs under the guise of “this is what my son really likes or wants”. Your son is like 5 years old, he doesnt even know he wants for dinner yet let alone what pokemon cards he likes. One was insistent that his sons favorite pokemon was pikachu, charizard, rayquaza, umbreon, gengar (lol very convenient) and i literally said does it matter what i give to your son? You and him literally cant possibly know if he’ll even like pokemon in a few years. I know when I was entering middle school and high school, i lost all interest in pokemon for quite some time. And, unsurprisingly, after months of the person contacting me to make small talk and subtle nudges about me doing any giveaways, i sent him a few cards and a few booster packs, and never heard from the guy again. Thats just one of many personal examples of people who will take advantage of your kindness.
Ive learned that maybe generosity and kindness is not as infectious as i was hoping it’d be. For someone that’s an optimist or possibly an idealist, that was definitely a hard pill to swallow.
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That’s a sad start to my day. I suppose being more guarded is the only solution but when it pays off with the right person it must be a lovely feeling.
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I think that’s the same everywhere but perhaps especially in this space. I’m surprised you relented and still sent cards to people who you suspected were taking advantage of you.
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I think it would be pretty easy to tell who’s genuine and who isn’t when you spend time with people. Random acts of kindness unfortunately is not sustainable plus why make it random instead of targeted?
I can’t attest to the truth of the statement, but I did read that people with less/homeless were more generous because they knew what it meant to have nothing. Obviously it can’t be applied across the board, but it made sense.
I don’t know why people would expect someone to reciprocate kindness if you bought the next person in line a coffee. Set up a monthly charitable deduction for an orphanage or an NGO instead.
I might be cynical compared to @naxy but sending stuff to content creators and helicopter parents is a surefire way to get taken advantage of. Any parent willing to whore out their kid to social media is already a red flag.
If people don’t want to just sell their cards/belongings and donate or keep the proceeds, then being generous still takes effort. You need to be part of the community to assess who would really appreciate it.
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But just curious if you don’t mind answering and explaining, how is getting something you wanted very much a “tragedy”?
I mean, my feelings when finally I got it would be like, “Oh my life is complete!”