The thing is, I never got one as a kid. There was some “I’ll give you my whole binder for it” moments that got close, but nope. Fast forward almost 25 years, I finally bought one. I had heavy involvement in crypto and frankly grew a distaste for it after 4 years so I dumped everything and found the perfect solace: cardboard inside of hard plastic. Bought a CGC 10 Shadowless (non-1st).
But honestly, it didn’t make it 1999 again. It didn’t take away the complexities of adulthood. To sit on a card worth that much I’d have to REALLY love it and Charizard just isn’t even my top 10 so I sold it and went after cards that I really do love and I’m ok with that even if they don’t appreciate as much.
I remember going to this comic / collectibles shop back when I was kid named Big B Comics just visiting with my dad as I always begged to go there to look at their cards both yugioh and Pokémon.
At the time I loved yugioh , still liked pokemon but yugioh was the hype during the time and they had unlimited base booster boxes for sale at like $80 Cad so I begged my dad to help my get one as my dream was to open a base box. He laughed and actually bought it for me. I pulled the zard from that box and was so happy I brought it everywhere with me in my metal tin deck box. My dad always supported my hobbies and interests. Miss you papa.
I’m not sure anymore how many Charizard there even were in the collection of my youth. At least one, since I was only missing Venusaur, Nidoking, and Hitmonlee of the first 151, that much I know for sure.
But looking at all the Charizard currently in my collection, I think it might have been just one in total: a non-holo Team Rocket set Dark Charizard.
As for the story behind it: I guess I pulled it. I honestly have no idea. Charizard wasn’t a particularly noteworthy Pokémon for me as a kid.
Since I received my little brother’s collection some years ago, I’m pretty sure my little brother also only had the same non-holo Team Rocket Dark Charizard. With the exception of our first few Base Set and Jungle booster packs, when we’d both receive booster packs at the same time (usually after getting our period grades or perhaps with Sint Nicolas or Christmas), we’d put all pulled cards on a stack, and then we’d choose one by one the cards we wanted. Duplicated cards would just go to one each first, though. And this Dark Charizard was most likely one of those duplicates, with how little I can remember about it.
I never did pull the Charizard as a kid, and I was always really sad about that. But then when i got into pokemon later, I pulled the Charizard Vmax from darkness ablaze and I lost my mind. I was so happy. Still am. I think that card is so sick.
And even better, there was a PSA drop off at my first card show I went to and I sent that Charizard to get encapsulated because I thought it would be cool if the first Charizard I ever pulled was also the first card I sent in to get graded. And would you know it, it came back a PSA 10!
And as far as my first ‘Charizard looking’ card, one of the reasons why I liked Celebrations so much when it came out was because I felt like it finally gave me the chance to pull the Charizard that I never did growing up. And wouldn’t you know it…I pulled 5
I ended up giving a friend of mine one because he never pulled one from that set, and I traded the other one plus some other things for the Grey Felt Hat Pikachu (back when it was $200) and I still have the other 3
Summer 2002 UK, Pokémon had died down, my cousin and I were the only ones at our school who still semi-collected. Went into Woolworths to get pick ‘n mix sweets before going to the cinema, saw legendary collection booster packs at the till, bought 2 each. Pulled a holo dark Vaporeon and a holo Charizard. Cousin pulled nothing so I gave him the vaporeon, was too exasperated at the Charizard to care about the vaporeon anyway. Shame these AI camera glasses didn’t exist to capture those moments…
