Are you sure? If many people sought Umbreon 
ENG, it would be close to charizard 1st ed base’s price. Like $500. Not $50. (back then, pre-pandemic)
Wish I returned to this hobby earlier. At $50, I would scope up at least 10 copies.
Don’t get why so many people here are against reddit. I received quite a lot of good advice from there and from E4 too.
I don’t think it’s so much that people are against reddit and more than reddit is host to a lot of users with different priorities. An enthusiast space like E4 attracts people with certain intention that tends to produce a higher quality of discussion and documentation, something that is true for focused enthusiast forums across the net. Even in the modern world where specialty sites are bastions of an older internet, enthusiast forums still exist and function specifically because of the quality of content they provide.
With Reddit, Instagram, and social media in general, people are already there. They weren’t as conscious about gaining access and developing a presence in a closed community with specific interests and priorities. While a specialist hobby site feels like a private room, social media and reddit feel like a crowded cafeteria. You can have many great and unexpected conversations in a crowded cafeteria, but it’s a lot harder and a lot rarer than attending a private space of like-minded members all there for the same reason.
I use reddit every day. Minute for minute I use reddit more than E4. But the vibe is very different, as is the structure of conversation and the kind of content, and I think it’s normal for people who’ve successfully cultivated a specialized environment to prefer it over the noisy alternative.
My “Grail Story” is already documented here, but I will crosspost some highlights content: https://www.elitefourum.com/t/looking-for-a-corrected-kinebuchi-ivy-pikachu-promo-jp-corocoro-2-000-updated-with-story/
I got this card by trading with another E4 member where all the stars aligned and we were able to both give each other exactly what we wanted.
As to what constitutes a my next grail…
I would love a University Magikarp someday. Highly, highly unlikely I can ever afford that one. I think I will eventually get all the cards on my current list but that’s the big cap stone that maybe, somehow someday, I might get. It would probably come 20 years from now after a period where I did not buy another Pokémon card for the preceding decade.
If I had known those cards would have go that expensive I would traded for more of them, but that’s afterwards.
At that moment they were nice cards, most of all wanted by Eeveelution collectors and people collecting POP series.
They were not playable.
It’s very easy to make statements afterwards.
Because you know the price of a card now, doesn’t mean it should have been XXX (or the same as YYY like charizard) that time.
It doesn’t work that way.
You tell me, which cards are you scooping up today for $100 each because you “know” it will 10x or 20x in 10 years?
Don’t gas him up, he lives for this
I will at least show something I consider my “grail”.
Earned 4 of them ourselves, traded for the others because almost nobody got them and that specific tournament had many memories attached for me.
No I didn’t know there would be only a few a them, nobody knew at that time.
I found out about it weeks later (internet message boards like pokegym were the only way to communicate)
I traded one away to a friend for his collection (and bought back his whole collection because of this card about 5 years ago)
Stored all of them and will keep them as long as I can.
Graded them “recently” to keep them in good condition.
Now the grail I want:
It’s not yet printed.
I want to earn (so not buy or trade) a nr 1,2,3 or 4 trainer at a World Championship. Most likely never going to happen due to not playing as much anymore, but it’s a “wish”.
You do realize that the vast majority of the hobby back then were kids & teenagers? Umbreon GS wasn’t $50 because it was unwanted. Just that the market was extremely young & small. Ppl old enough to have decent jobs were an incredibly small minority & they were mainly just riding the nostalgia train for base set.
Umbreon was super hype because it was one of the hardest if not the hardest card to pull at the time. Since it was non holo you couldn’t weigh the packs. Seeing youtubers opening 50+ packs & never getting one was crazy & when they did it was like winning the lottery.
I’m sorry man, but acting like Umbreon GS was some card no one cared about is wild to me. That card today is still nowhere near 1st Ed Base Zard but still highly prize as it was then.
There’s no before for me. I was away from the hobby between 2002 to 2019. I only returned to it in early 2020.
Even if I didn’t left in 2002, I would still pick at least 1 copy for $50.
Glad you asked…
Grail I own, which I suppose some might not consider a grail since its reverse - but I love it
Grail I dont own but need
Lol. I’m not entirely sure you understand how scary it was to buy a $100 or, forbid, a $1000 card before 2020.
It’s hard to explain collecting Pokemon to someone that’s been here since 2020 only
Either that or this dude has a humiliation fetish
Quoting myself from an old topic:
Edit: I remember my first $80 card — 1st Edition Base Raichu. It made me feel sick and guilty. I didn’t want anyone to know about it.
Scary only for flippers and scalpers who only care about short-term value of the card.
When true collectors like something, they just buy it if they deem it is worthy.
Even in other hobbies (Pokemon TCG is not my only hobby), I even have bought things way above that amount simply because I adore it. (Even now I do buy vintage Pokemon and MTG slabs at current prices!)
Without a care of its future investment value or whether people will sought-after it in the future or whether it would decline in popularity and value.
Not “diseased in the soul” but YOLO and these feed my soul.
In 2010, the most amount of money I had ever spent at once on anything in my life was $1,200 for a semester at a community college. The idea of spending that kind of money on a Pokémon card had nothing to do with how much I loved Pokémon or what I thought it would be worth in the future. It was just not a realistic thing for someone like me to be spending that kind of money on at that point.
When my wife and I bought a Charizard in 2018, it was $3,500. This was the most amount of money we’d ever put down at once for anything. It was more expensive than the down payment on either of our cars. It was more expensive than the first and last month’s deposit when we moved into our apartment. It was more expensive than a semester at our state colleges. (EDIT: More expensive than her engagement ring!) The idea of spending that kind of money on a piece of cardboard, something that offered her nothing at all and had no tangible benefit on my life besides the satisfaction of owning it, was a truly unfathomable expense.
It was unjustifiable beyond the point that I loved it very much and wanted one my whole life. So you do not need to tell me the lengths people will go to in order to feed their soul.
To say that anyone will always spend what it takes to satisfy their inner child or some YOLO-centric ideal ignores the fact that we are all regular people with ordinary lives who have to make pragmatic decisions about how we live and where our money goes. I have been the person who cannot justify the expense and the person who justified the expense at all costs. All of these decisions are circumstantial and nobody’s circumstances are the same.
So consider the fact that $100, $500, $1,000, etc is a lot of money for a lot of people - which is totally independent from the boom and bust cycles of the hobby - and no amount of loving Pokémon is going to change the circumstances that dictates how they’re able to spend their money. Have some perspective.
I haven’t been able to buy a Pokémon card since September and probably won’t be able to buy one until March. It has nothing to do with whether or not I love Pokémon enough. I don’t get to spend all my money on only the things I love.
And that too.
Many regular people on payroll also spent thousands of dollar on luxury goods like Louis Vuitton bags. So what is so unfathomable?
Btw, thought you said you are 13 and a half years old?
I regret to inform you that I am in fact an adult man.
I suppose these are my grail cards. Picked them up when Pikachu was at $30. No Mimikyu though unfortunately.
A grail card I want would be the secret rare Gardevoir from Dark Rush.
