Title speaks for itself, but, was it something like oh, this would be cool, then boom, a boom? I do not have goals, but, would love to hear some stories.
Scraggy and Swinub master sets. Mid era unlimited Japanese commons are so hard to find.
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Collecting ex era. More or less given up and shifted my goals a bit. This was before the current craze too by the way.
Its a beast
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Japanese unlimited Legend series. You need extreme dedication to look through the most generic search terms daily.
Luckily I got what I needed before unlimited caught on and became cool
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Not being familiar, why so? Is it something similar to like 1st ed stamp not being 1st ed in e series or something like that?
Everything after high school 
Mid era unlimited Japanese commons are so hard to find
@implode I know right. I am still missing a few Japanese unlimited cards and they just nowhere to be found. Not on eBay, not on Yahoo Auctions, not on Mercari. Even when clearly state in the title often the photo is just another 1st Edition. And I am done gambling for them just due to the rising cost of shipments and the guaranteed import charges.
Oddly enough, sometimes I do have a Bulbasaur in both prints, missing either print on Ivysaur and Venusaur just having both again. Or in any of that combination. And I damn well know theyāre out thereā¦ just the time investment and the insane luck you need to stumble upon them is crazy.
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Legend series 1st edition stamp is really small, so itās hard to tell from photos if the stamp is missing, especially on a type that has a darker color (looking at you, Dark type).
In general, there is something like a 95%/5% split for 1st ed/unlimited in mid era Japanese, so you just donāt come across it too often.
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All english decks. Easy right? How many can there be right? Between $10-75/deck shouldnt be too bad.
Wrong.
100+ sets at 2 decks per set. Variant boxes that had never been noticed or tracked. Battle decks, league decks, giftboxes, trainer kits, 4x world championship decks every year, etc. that doesnt even touch on price increases and hype pushing the $75 decks to $600.
Pretty sure its around 500-550 decks currently if you include everything, with some decks rarely ever showing up and multiple selling for over $1k 
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EN DP Shinies in PSA 9.
Was chill at first but quickly got rough when some of these cards only appeared once or twice a year due to how difficult they were to grade. The last few I needed to complete the subset also soared in price this year, so that added to the difficulty.
Attempting to collect the JP DP shinies in PSA 9 Unlimited has also proved to be an impossible task. Theyāre even rarer than their EN counterparts and damage far more easily on the front corners due to the brittle star foil.
But thatās part of the fun, as it feels a lot like āshiny huntingā a regular species in the TCG.
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they have all been hard, even back in the day when everything was cheaper you couldnt sell stuff easily to get the $$$ for the cheaper items
If it was easy itād be a lame goal
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To achieve the innate personal ability to resist great profits for the sake of extraordinary profits
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Ohhh yes. Itās brutal out there. Iāve been searching for some for years now and have never seen a single copy, regardless of condition.
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Although I have a lot of goals, for most I knew beforehand how hard it would be (looking at you: āall Pikachu in all languagesā 
), or it was actually much easier than I originally thought (looking at you: āall English and Japanese-exclusive FA Supporter cardsā which I started and completed within a few months at the time, or when I decided to also add all Pikachu Jumbo cards - which I completed in just 2-3 days, plus a couple weeks of waiting for arrivals).
The only one that comes to mind for this question is my Moltres WotC #21 artwork collection. I collect that artwork, my personal favorite of the entire TCG, in all raw, all sealed, and all graded variants. Since itās just a single artwork, with a single card per language (and two in Japanese), how hard can it be, right?
Well, the sealed variants especially proved to be rather difficult. Iirc I started the collection in 2017 or so. I added the Australian sealed variant in mid-2020; the unlimited Japanese PokĆ©mon Web booster pack with Moltres in late-2020; its 1st edition counterpart in late-2021; the sealed Swedish one in late-2022, and Iām currently still missing the Danish sealed one (for which I still have yet to even see a picture for any of the three Legendary Birds) to complete the sealed part of the collection.
Iām also still looking for an Italian GRAAD-9+; German Platin-9+; English corrected (Australian) CGA or ARK 9+; and Japanese ARS-9+ for the graded portion of the collection, although these are not the highest priority tbch.
Greetz,
Quuador
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I got to the point that I will pick up even a Heavy Played card if it is one of the missing Unlimitedsā¦
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Vintage and semi modern japanese unlimited mews
Japanese goldstar mews
In a 10 that is, took alot of patience (and money)
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Indonesian Mudkip Evo Line. I thought it would be an easy journey. After all, there are only 15 cards. But the SCC deck has been haunting me ever since. I asked sellers on Tokopedia, and I almost got the Swampert SCC, only for the seller to cancel on me. I even asked my friendās little brother who collects Indonesian cards, just in case. But no luck.
Cheers,
Adhi
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I made an attempt a few years ago, of collecting every ETB (non-PokĆ©mon Center). I obviously didnāt think it through enough.. The amount of space needed is crazy, especially since I wanted them as display-pieces.
Also the high price on some of the older ETBs like Team-Up, Unified Minds, Cosmic, Celestial Storm and so on, made me rethink this goal. Iām happy I quit before sinking too much smpace, time and money into it.
Iāve kept a few of the ETBs, but I sold/ripped a major amount of them.
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Which ones did you keep? Was is for visual reasons? I know some are pretty cool. To me, Vivid Voltage was cool with that bright orange
Maybe to do a complete Pokedex with regular cards. It seems simple at first, but if you donāt open many packs, itās a bigger challenge than I expected.
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So far, are there a few that stick out as āI didnāt thikn itād be that difficult to get this?ā