Making progress towards “finishing” my collection
Creating something that is unique to me
You goonballs
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This is it. Every card is unique to an extent. Im fascinated by where they come from
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I love looking at my cards and talking about them with people 
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It’s difficult for me to nail down just one thing I love about collecting, because I really do love all of it. The top ones for me would likely be researching cards and finding new prints, as well as organizing, spending time with my collection, and talking about it with others. I’ve loved knolling ever since I was a small child, and my binders and spreadsheets are an extension of that.
The history as you flip through the binder pages, little stories about unassuming but extremely rare cards, and the personal anecdotes about where and how I acquired each card make my collection mine, and I love revisiting those memories and making new ones.
I recently made a new species collector friend locally through another mutual friend who went “hang on, you both like that Pokemon stuff, you two should meet.” Going through each others binders and talking about different cards, prints, memories, and goals was a near magical experience that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. We’ve become fast friends and have gone to several shows and hangouts with each other since, and that connection is so refreshing in a sea of scalpers and get-rich-quick schemes.
TL:DR; all of it. I like all of it
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I’ve said it before, but my favorite part about collecting Pokémon stuff is this community. Although I’ve collected loads of stuff from age 5 over my entire life, sharing collection interests, information, new additions, and just joy in general with other like-minded people is what truly makes collecting enjoyable.
Greetz,
Quuador
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My favorite part of collecting atm is sharing the hobby with my partner. I love hunting for new stock all over town, visiting the card shop together, deliberating on what we will trade in to further more prestigious goals in our collections, ripping packs together and everything else.
It’s brought us closer together and been such a fun way to share our time together.
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Even to other collectors is a stretch
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Designing and curating the items in my collection, including updating the binder displays from time to time. I personally don’t mind removing cards or replacing cards that I’ve outgrown, have been outdone, or didn’t really fit for various reasons. (foil instead of non-foil or rev, for example). It’s OK, IMO to outgrow parts of your collection. But don’t just get rid of it. 
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Completing a binder is my happy place. I love sitting down with a show on while I sleeve my cards for their respective set binder. I have a WIP shelf where I keep tabs on what cards I need for each set. Seeing the pages slowly fill up brings me pure happiness and truly takes me back to being a kid again.
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Trading! While looking up the “market value” of a card for sale at a convention and then putting together a trade package (with the 80% market value discount applied) for said card is not exactly the experience I had on the playground as a child, it’s the next closest thing.
I recently traded some of my duplicates (palkia vstar sr and a nessa sr) for a tag team Exeggutor and Rowlett. That feeling brought me back to a time where acquiring cards I wanted was more complicated for me than clicking “buy it now” on eBay.
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Developing a collection that is uniquely mine
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trading is very fun, though what you described gives me the skeevs personally. Some of my fondest memories come from even trades with friends for things I never would have been able to get otherwise. A lot of the people I met on e4 too!
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This is going to sound cliché, but I have found a really satisfying part of collecting for me is the journey.
The term ‘journey’ includes several important things for me. Of course, some of the most fun are when you finally obtain a card you have been seeking and getting your eyes and hands on it - that feeling is truly fantastic. But what I didn’t expect from getting into Pokemon collecting is all of the other stuff that has inadvertently come with it. As a result of collecting, I have gotten better at prioritizing, budgeting, and learning patience (this is a tough one). Funny enough, I have also learned a lot about me; I thought I knew what cards I would be most interested in, and as my time collecting has gone on I’ve realized there are all sorts of cards and other merchandise I never even expected to want to collect, which has been a fun discovery, and for my own personal enjoyment of Pokemon as a hobby has been life-giving in and of itself. And while collecting is ultimately personal and tailored towards your interests, it’s been a great pleasure of mine to meet so many cool people along the way. Going to regionals, worlds, the E4 meet up, and all kinds of individual messages and calls to people I have met as a result has been rewarding beyond what I would have predicted. I am excited to finally participate in the Christmas exchange this year as these kinds of things are what actually build community and bring such a fun hobby to life.
Sorry, kind of went to therapy there. I just really like Pokemon 
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Opening the package
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The feeling of forgetting everything else in the world and just being excited about a new arrival, new release, cool binder page, my display cabinet or anything similar