Alternate pill:
To others you will only ever be what you can give.
To yourself you will only ever be what you can get.
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I don’t think @c0ll3ct0r’s point had as much to do with the art as it had to do with the feeling. While I don’t think many would disagree that today’s art blows vintage art out of the water, it’s the feeling that isn’t the same. Pokemon could make a new set with the same exact template as original WOTC and it wouldn’t feel the same (Light Toxtricity is a good example of this, even if it’s just one individual card).
And all of that has more to do with the fact that none of us can just go back in time and be nine years old again. Pokemon is in a phenomenal space and is the largest media franchise in the world, but things will never feel like the initial boom in 1999. You can’t recapture that magic.
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That’s part of it. I definitely prefer vintage layout, the vintage cardstock.
The vintage art? Well, that depends completely. I don’t see the artwork as their own entities, I see them in the context of the card, and I don’t like the anime style. It certainly wasn’t worse before, neither the good art or the percentage of “good art” (of course this is based on me entertaining the notion that Sugimori’s are somehow “less” which I don’t really agree with, at least not to the extent of others.) And when it comes to modern, what are we talking about?
Are we talking about Teeziro Dreepy? A modern classic worthy of Base set Charmander. Certainly not better, but certainly not worse. A worthy continuation, like Sowsow, Hasuno, or any of the other 20-30 artists that carry on the illustration legacy of their predecessors.
Or are we talking about some furry Saitou manga blob with low fat borders and full art oilspill holo on leaflet grade cardboard? That is somehow a step up because it is “dynamically” and “expressively” holding a pitchfork or a coffee cup, as some would say? No, if you show me that and LM Walrein EX next to each other then I wouldn’t even consider them to be from the same hobby. To my tastes, it’s like comparing a Loutherbourg protégé to someone who got fired from illustrating Donald Duck.
And diversity? That only means something in the context of quality (and doesn’t always mean or entail the same thing), and my opinions on that have been made clear.
Of course, all this to say, everyone is entitled to their own sensibilities and preferences. But I certainly do not agree with the idea of modern supremacy. That is my general response to the modern vs vintage debate.
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i guess i was just being contrarian in the sense that collector’s “tough pill to swallow” would be easy to swallow for me bc something feeling “vintage” isn’t appealing to me atm. the original WotC layout/aesthetic is archaic and while it was perfect for its time and has an extremely appealing novelty to it, in my eyes, that is all it has…novelty.
this is something i have a hard time agreeing with. While yes, there was a mania where most of my friends in school also liked pokemon, we were all kids.
now, its the same. all of the kids in school either collect pokemon cards or have their favorite mons/some sort of sentimental investment in the world of pokemon.
as for adults, I constantly find out more and more of my friends also have some varying degree of obsession with pokemon and are active collectors to the point where it truly does feel like it did back then.
I’d argue back then it felt like a fad similar to something like beanie babies. Now it feels more like an actual pop culture staple and i’m having a hard time coming up with something comparable that is as widely engaged with. Sports is probably the closest thing I can think of atm.
So, I guess my contrarian “tough pill to swallow” would be that Pokemon is a bigger deal today than it was in the 90s/early 2000s.
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It’s bigger now because it’s grown over 25 years, but there’s just no way you can compare that original boom to today. It was lightning in a bottle, it’s why Pokémon continue to hark back to that era
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This is a fact. Think the last chance for under the radar promos or such was like 2017-2018. Since then nothing goes under the radar.
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I bought a 1st ed base magneton for 7$ at a card shop in 2022, and several other incorrectly priced things last year. Mostly store owners who think they know what they’re doing or 0 feedback ebay sellers.
Stuff can still be found
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There will always be chance, like any market but from what i understood he meant to do it in a relatively “common” fashion.
Even myself i snagged a rayquaza poncho for like $90 some months ago.
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True and in person also is way easier. I swear half these LGS owners dont know anything (that same guy was swearing to me that he had some 1st ed base english shadowed holos in stock “in the back” next to his case of neo destiny boxes, while literally quoting me unlimited prices on his only base 1st ed holo).
But there are other ways to look at it more positively, like with a market this big, there will always be swings in demand to and from certain eras. Last year towards the end of the year many 1st ed base holo raws in 7-8 condition were all over ebay at 200-400$ which just felt stupid to me. They were not “under the radar”, it was just that all the influencers were losing their mind over the next stupid modern fad card which was an amazing opportunity to buy.
There is so much opportunity still it is crazy, and I dont understand why a lot of people seem to think easy money has been made. Its still fairly easy imo if you take emotion out and just objectively think
The other thing that makes the 1999 thing unique to me is the world itself was fundamentally different in so many ways. Back then, most of us we’re lucky to have a PC at home (since they were so expensive) and then you might have had dial-up internet or some entry level broadband at best. So only really seasoned collectors and people with knowledge/information could even begin to speculate and make bets on where Pokemon was headed in the longer term or to find out more information on it. Very few I would say were really thinking about artwork, rarity, supply/demand, all this stuff we talk about now on a daily basis with the newer and more modern cards.
Now the way we get information is right at our fingertips all the time, and we can find everything out within minutes or hours at most. I never would have imagined Pokemon would get this big back then, but here we are.
This I guess harks back to what I made in my post above, it’s unlikely we’ll see another “organic” Pokemon boom that is at all similar to the past that happened with vintage cards. It’s all these little things that make the vintage cards what they are today. It’s not apples to apples, it’s apples to pineapples. Everything was simply different across the board in so many ways. So you’re right, that magic will never be (fully) replicated again.
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i agree with points made that current pokemon feels different than late 90s/early 2000s pokemon. I’m just claiming that it is a bigger deal now than it was then. i bought base set packs at walmart. I watched the original series when i came home from school. i was there. I still think it is crazier today than it was then. maybe its because i’m tapped in so much more than i was back then. maybe it really was just a fad for me back then, but now it is a true hobby. this could explain some of my feelings or lack thereof to the original era; but that’s kind of the point i’m trying to illustrate. Another “tough pill to swallow” hot take that i would have is that the original era of pokemon isn’t as unique/special as it is often thought to be. Ever since then, it has been there for childhoods. the generations that followed us experienced the same thing we did. The only difference is previous childhoods to ours did not (with pokemon)
maybe it boils down to the fact that it is no longer new and exciting and the novelty of the franchise is no longer there like it was when it first came out. maybe this is where the difference in perspectives comes from.
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I think all of your points are very valid. I think Pokemon seems like a bigger deal now than it was then because back then, only kids were into it. Now, people of all ages are involved. So yes; from a media franchise perspective, Pokemon unquestionably has grown.
I’m just referring more to the visceral feeling, and I think it absolutely has to do with the fact that everything feels different as a kid. I would actually compare it to Christmas. When you get older, technically, Christmas is a bigger thing because now, you have to buy gifts for a bunch of different people, potentially prepare family gatherings, etc. But as a little kid? It was so magical because all you really did was open up gifts.
That’s the “feeling” I’m talking about. Christmas doesn’t feel the same as an adult as it did when you were a kid. Not saying it feels worse; just saying it feels different. I would say the same thing applies to Pokemon. Of course, that is just my opinion.
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Oh I agree, my post wasn’t really trying to discount your points I was just adding to the 1999 factor that @Cerulean mentions with regard to the vintage cards/experience compared to the modern experience. I think today Pokemon is a very healthy spot. In fact, one could argue that Pokemon was almost on a decline after the initial boom in 1999 and through the early/mid 2000s as it declined a lot in interest/popularity during that era quite a bit it seems. We all sort of just grew out of it and moved on to other things.
Anyway, there’s no doubt that today Pokemon is looking better than ever and even bigger than ever before. I think it’s just how we experience it now compared to back then is the biggest difference. It was all new and fresh with a lot less info available and so the mentality around it is much different compared to now. Not only were we kids, but Pokemon was like a little kid back then too, and so I think now it has matured a lot and so have we (or have we? lol). I digress.
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To add on to this, for all of the reasons you mentioned, there was a level of mystery back then that just doesn’t exist today. It was magical, in a sense. You had to find out everything through magazines, guides, local card shops, etc. Remember: back then, you actually had to go to the card shops to buy your cards. They weren’t just readily available online like today.
That era is completely gone and will never return. Of course, the kids today will never know how it felt, but for people like us who have been here for a couple of decades, the memories remain.
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Even as recent as the 2010 era there was a degree of mystery that is just not there today, and something I look back at with feelings of nostalgia.
It feels weird when I see a mega streamer casually mention some factoid that used to be part of this obscure, arcane knowledge that only the true cult people knew of back in those days. 
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How many collectors are chasing nostalgia? I would argue that a large majority of them are.
But there is something to be said about Pokemon bringing in new interest too. I know plenty of adults who had no real interest in Pokemon until recently. So while they are not chasing nostalgia, they are just as invested.
I think that is the hallmark of success in a growing brand. Getting children’s attention is easy enough, but to bring aboard new adult consumers? Tough.
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I think you hit the point right on the head: the magic can’t be recaptured because information is just too easily accessible. I think this lack of information back in the olden times played a big role in generating a lot of organic interest and discussion. There was just a lot more to discuss and share with others when there were so many unknowns (where to find certain Pokemon, what new Pokemon could be found in the new game, rumors of how to get Mew?!).
These days, with the Internet, knowledge is everywhere, and once something has been discovered (maybe an obscure way to evolve a new Pokemon), with how fast information travels, it suddenly becomes common knowledge. There’s no more intrigue–and if there is, it is short lived. As a kid these days, if you pull a cool card (and somehow didn’t know that the card was in the set), you might immediately look up the market price and either become elated or deflated, but it would take no effort and almost serves to relegate the experience of pulling/enjoying the card as secondary.
Another consequence of the Information Age is that you can’t unlearn things. I haven’t played any of the Sun and Moon games or Scarlet/Violet, but I already know so much about them (i.e. new Pokemon, gym leader teams) from consuming Pokemon content that I don’t think I could bring myself to play them because there would be no excitement in discovering new things. The magic of being lost in the world of Pokemon is long gone and can’t be recovered.
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Oh man this is so spot on.
I think New Pokemon Snap is a perfect example of this. I made the mistake of watching a Let’s Play of it on YouTube, and doing so completely eradicated any desire I had to actually buy the game and play it. Whereas with the original Pokemon Snap, I couldn’t wait to pop it into my N64 and explore because there was no YouTube back then. Incredibly similar games with incredibly similar content, but in the case of the newer version, I couldn’t bring myself to play it because I had already watched someone who did.
Of course, Pokemon Snap may actually not be the best example of this because the content is so linear, but I think it still applies to the overall point.
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Pokemon is a trading card game first and foremost, not a growth stock.
Though, the tough pill to swallow for me, may be that this is the way things are now lol!
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Think about Gold and Silver. I reckon we would feel a bit different about those games today if, after seeing a classmate play them, we would just instantly whip out our iPads and read up on every mechanic and glitch in a few days. Instead we got tidbits and morsels, and little breadcrumb trails. A whole Poirot episode just to discover how the lighthouse worked!
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