Lately I’ve been focusing on buying PSA-graded WOTC holos. Generally I buy PSA 9 unlimited and PSA 8 1st edition cards. I really enjoy collecting cards, but I do view most of them as speculative investments, too. So I try to buy cards that I think are currently undervalued relative to the rest of the market. I’m not a flipper, so most cards I buy I plan to hold for many years. Also, I’ve been moving away from binders. Preserving the cards in their current condition is more important to me, and I’m just increasingly finding that I really enjoy having cards graded, authenticated, and secured in slabs.
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churizords
I tend to focus on my favorite Pokémon and owning as many of their variants as possible, such as Lugia & Suicune. But one of the other biggest things I focus on is art. Sometimes I just see a card and I just have to own it! A good recent example is the upcoming Japanese Pokémon Center Promo Pikachu 144, I just think the card is gorgeous!
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Glad I’m not the only one, I have extreme binder ADD. WHY CAN I JUST FINISH ONE BEFORE GETTING DISTRACTED BY A DIFFERENT SET? 
Good taste 
EX Dragon Frontiers JPN✓/ENG✓/ITA/FRE/GER
EX Dragon Frontiers promo items
EX Dragon Frontiers sealed
EX Dragon Frontiers everything to be honest Love this set!
Dream League JPN binder✓ + psa UR/SR ✓ (waiting for psa return though)
All English Torterra/Togekiss/Alolan Raichu binder ✓might do Japanese for these too one day.
All English and Japanese Kartana binder ✓
EX Dragon reverse Marshtomps ✓ (got a full page and more but honestly probably won’t stop collecting this card ever)
07 worlds meta decks played a bit in 2007 and I still got my OG deck, kinda want to expand to more decks to relive memories and force other people to play outdated metas with me :3
And when new pokemon play news arrives, I might get into modern deckbuilding again to try for a WC21 qualification.
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I love Dragon Frontiers, probably my favorite set! Keep it up
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Celebi, complete shadowless holo set, gold stars, shinings, COL shinies, SH subset, packs, and whatever catches my eye
That’s awesome, binder sets or graded cards for these?
I really love the aesthetics of lamplamp’s display so I am trying to make something similar, but with all my favorite cards 
I do get side tracked a lot picking up cards from artists I love (kizuki, nishida, etc.)
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New collector here. I grew up with cards from the WOTC sets but got rid of most of my cards over the years. Recently found a load hidden away, most of which are Base and Jungle. Most of these are played condition but thought it would be cool to make complete unlimited binder WOTC sets for the nostalgia.
After reading that some people focus on collecting around a specific Pokemon it has given me an idea around collecting Mew variants. Mew was always the illusive Pokemon to me, mostly from the games, (that damned hidden truck on Red/Blue), but I also recall never managing to get an Ancient Mew card when the movie came out. Included in the cards I found were the Black star no. 8 promo and a reverse holo Expedition set Mew so this idea seems quite appealing to me. Also this allows me to dabble in the newer sets whenever they release new Mews as part of modern sets.
I’m in the middle of saving for a property so cant drop loads of money on collecting so I’ve no idea if the Mew idea is viable or not. If the PSA graded option is too expensive then maybe I just focus on another binder set. If anyone has any ideas then let me know!
Welcome to E4 and welcome back to collecting. Your goal sounds great! The best I can say is collect what you like and always be ready to adapt to the market at hand!
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Anything that catches my eye. I am probably with a smaller group who just randomly buy things that I think look cool mixed with some type of rarity.
Some cards are typical like Lugia/Mew, but I go for the cards that I think show the Pokemon how I imagined them as a kid. Neo Gen Lugia (obviously badass), but then I got the Legend Maker & S.I. Mew as it makes me think that’s how they would look.
I don’t have one complete set besides S.I., and highly doubt I’ll have one done anytime soon, haha.
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Fun fact, there are now 6 different variations of the ancient mew card! As a fellow Mew collector myself, I’d say that only a very small portion of the cards are considerably expensive, with most being $5-30 for English or Japanese copies
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That’s really good to know. I had a browse on ebay earlier and prices for some of the Mew cards don’t seem overly expensive to me. I guess the question is whether I try to just do binder copies or go down the PSA route.
The expensive ones are mostly like the delta/gold stars, corocoro, Arita sig, 7k points PLAY and some others. You might find this helpful if not a bit overwhelming/excessive for your goals
www.elitefourum.com/t/list-of-all-tcg-cards-that-exist-for-a-specific-pokemon/16709/303
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Binder sets, since a creased binder card doesn’t really bother me but a psa 3 does. Plus if I did a graded set it would just make things a lot harder, and I enjoy flipping through a binder. My shadowless set is LP+, same with my celebis, shinings and gen 4 stuff, only cards I’m more lenient on are my gold stars.
Gotcha okay. Good luck, I enjoy flipping through binders too nothing else like it 
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I tend to collect the stuff others have never even heard of - mostly Japanese cards from the 90s. Can’t beat the vintage Japanese art imo.
I collect Squirtle, Wartortle and Blastoise cards. In plastic slabs or I add them to my binder.
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