I agree with @smpratte about negative experiences. Just seeing people trample everyone at a museum for a card isn’t okay and everyone is just buying to resell. But I think the good of Pokémon outweighs the bad.
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Ive been a student since i got back into collecting and my biggest challenge has been money. There are so many things i wanna buy that i could just never afford in my current situation. I started scheming up ways i could flip certain cards to try and generate more money so i could buy more cards, but even then money is just too tight to make it work and the constant risk and grind kinda stressed me out. I try to work as much as i can but even then, its a small amount of money im able to spend on cards. Not to mention, it kinda burns me out a bit.
Its created a weird relationship between money and cards for me and i worry with the way things move so fast in this hobby that by the time im out of university and start working full time again, many of the cards i watched will be unavailable due to price increases.
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I went through the exact same situation. I started looking at stuff way back in 2014 or so and only bought a small amount while I was in school at that time. If I only knew how much things were going to go up I would have bought so much more 
. I also greatly underestimated Pokemon compared to things like vintage MTG cards or Sports cards and other collectibles.
Maybe we’re past the days of crazy exponential growth on the prices of cards/collectibles like in the past few years, so you might still have a good amount of time to buy stuff once you start making more, at least that’s what it feels like to me now. It seems like anyone’s best guess at this point though.
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Yea ive already had the displeasure of watching cards i wanted to buy for a few months while in school and then right before summer they take off and are now too expensive.
Its unfortunate but i do feel like hopefully i have a bit more time. Modern JP has become too crazy for me now so im trying to focus on WotC. I really want some 1st edition base holos so im praying they stay at the mildly affordable place theyre at 
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me with like 4 different binder page ideas and randomly slowly completing them though i got those ideas off targent 
I have an entire binder I dubbed “Freestyle”. All eras styles mixed into one because I don’t have the full set or I bought something one off.
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I’m not a big collector, but I concider myself, from MY PoV, an established old-timer. I mean, my first cards were Gen 1 JP from JP, and I never really lost interst, so… But I echo what you said. Media man… WEe have to be careful that we’re not living in “disneyland” where everything is perfect and we can’t imagine there being any problems. Similarly, this echoes Scott:
Aint THAT the damn truth! Haha! Between this, imposter syndrome, comparing one’s self to others… Gotta keep your wits about ya’!
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Biggest challenge I’m facing is what to cut from my collection.
I’m not really adding things anymore to my collection, I’m grading the cards I want to keep and selling what is left over.
But still I can’t let go all of my Ho-oh and when I see a full set of graded holo’s I don’t want to torn it apart.
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Fate with the right seller, right timing and right location.
- Right seller : Some seller don’t practice fairness or first come first serve basis. And would favour his friend if there are 2 buyers, me and another buyer who is his friend.
One seller even msg me, after we confirmed deal + meetup details, on day of meetup that he brought the card to office and his colleague saw it and wants it. So if I could offer a higher price to outbid his colleague…
-
Right timing : When I wanted to buy a big ticket card I wanted, another more desired different card pops up in the search results…
-
Right location : Unable to confirm venue with seller due to our conflicting schedule…
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Being from Latin America (some countries more than others) is one hell of a challenge.
We got all the problems: expensive shipping, crazy taxing (up to 60% the total cost and more) and customs issues Europe might have but on top of that you gotta add the lower income (even if you have a great job) and barely any local marketplace for rare cards.
That’s why you gotta be pretty spot on about which cards are you buying and do all the proper investigation.
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currently, my biggest hurdle is finding reliably good condition single cards. while tcgplayer as a platform is great, it’s a big tossup on if the “near mint” card i get is actually near mint or light played. sometimes the card is even damaged.
another struggle is that there’s just so many highly desirable cards in modern sets. the illustrations are always bangin and as a result, high demand and relatively high price for just one card.
my workaround on the condition issue on tcgplayer has been to save specific sellers that have generally delivered the right condition. if that fails then i’ll fall back to tcg direct or some other verified shop.
for the price issue, well, sadly not much to do there but wait and see where price trends go. with modern sets you can generally rely on a 2-3 month wait period after release for singles to drop to lows, but it varies. i suspect SV151 will be a set that i wait a bit longer due to the harder pull rates.
The good news is that graded supply is higher than ever! Many Mid-high graded cards are selling close or the same as raw. It something to look into if you haven’t already!
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Waking up for auctions I’ve been watching.
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yep i have been! it’s been nice for the cards i really want already graded. but for raw singles, that’s the primary struggle.
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You can crack them out! Many of my binders are full of previously graded cards I cracked!
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Agreed with @smpratte, I have binders full of cracked slabs. It’s the way to go when you can’t trust sellers’ appraisals of raw cards.
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I can relate to this. Being Swiss is even harder, have to add in customs when purchasing. On the flip side, when selling locally I can often get a bit higher price than cardmarket which factors in the buyer gets the cards customs-free.
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