Booster boxes were not available when I was a child. Packs were always purchased from big box retail stores like Toys 'R Us, Walmart, and Target from hangers at the end of aisles. Sometimes there would be a small but dedicated area with starter decks and player guides as well.
If I remember correctly, I never saw a booster box of trading cards until 2009-2010 when I visited an LGS. It was a foreign concept to me. Even in the early 2010s when I visited an LGS more frequently, it was uncommon to see customers buy sealed booster boxes or cases. More often, people would buy individual packs from various modern sets or crack a box for drafting in-house among several people.
Stores made a lot of money by selling “high-end” individual cards, which were a few dozen dollars or maybe $100 at the top end, buying and selling collections, and hosting booster box draft nights. Nowadays, people buy multiple cases of modern product and store the cases in their closet. The consumption of modern product is simply unprecedented.
I remember seeing an open base set booster box with loose packs inside at an LGS in 1999 or 2000. My pop bought me a nidoking holo while we were there.
After I heard about Pokemon cards for the first time I definitely checked magazine sections in nearby stores/kiosks during the next shopping trip. We had Base booster boxes and theme deck displays pretty much everywhere.
Funniest memory regarding boxes is how massive they looked in the eyes of a child vs. now when each one fits in the palm of a hand. Back then they felt like a massive pot of gold which gave reward everytime you pulled couple packs out.
In the UK, we used to see open booster boxes sitting on the checkout shelves with loose packs available to buy. I can’t remember far enough back to recall seeing Base Set there, but some of my fondest memories are grabbing packs of Team Rocket, Fossil, and Jungle from Woolworths.
I don’t ever remember seeing a sealed one available to buy though. I don’t think I could even comprehend that being a thing back then.
If we’d include opened booster boxes, the first time I saw them was also the first time I saw and received a booster pack from my parents at the local Intertoys toys store. Since unlike what you mentioned “from hangers at the end of aisles”, they had simply opened a booster box, folded the top lid into a display as you’d usually do, and sold the loose booster packs from those.
Bu looking back in my collection thread, it wasn’t until 2016 when I bought my first sealed booster box:
No surprise that it was a Korean one, since those used to be 15-18 USD for a sealed booster packs of 30 packs of 5 cards each at the time, for almost any Korean set. It happened more than once I simply bought one or two Korean booster boxes to try and pull the Pikachu I wanted myself, instead of looking for the single, since that was more fun and usually not that much more expensive anyway.
The closest place to me that sold packs as a kid was a Toys R Us an hour away, and they used to have the booster displays set up next to the counter. During the e-series era there must have been very few people still buying packs because they used to give me the box toppers for free.
First time seeing a booster box was at a store back in the 90’s for base set as many others have posted that they were set up near the counters as buying one or two boosters at once at the time was more common.
The first and only booster box that I have ever bought was in 2003 for EX Sandstorm and it is not a really nice memory, but a memory that hold a lesson. So a pack of cards cost 5€ already back then around here and I spent time on some of the many forums that existed back then and I saw someone saying they are selling booster boxes from the US for 80$ + 20$ for shipping and of course as a younger fellow back then that sounded like a sweet deal compared to the prices I had to pay here.
So I sent the money for a box in an envelope as they only wanted cash (extremely stupid thing to do even back then), they got the money and send the box. Everything seemed ok, the box was real the boosters were real so I started happily ripping them up. Around after 12 packs I started to get suspicious, hadn’t hit a single regular holo so far and you can probably guess that that continued to the very last pack. So I went around the forums and asked is this normal and that’s when I learned about resealed booster boxes and booster weighting.
Well at least this story now has a silver lining thanks to this thread. I went to take a look if I kept that damn cursed box and apparently I did and it appears they are worth quite a bit even empty these days.
I’ve looked everywhere for a picture of the Ringo toystore that used to be in this location but to no avail. Structurally the building hasn’t changed. The toy store lost its 7th horcrux and 9th life in 2018 after 26 years in business as the towns only toy store and became a Norli bookstore. Norli is a bookstore chain that has been forced to become one of those combo chains so you get everything from pots and pans to an increasingly narrowed selection of trinket-grade toys there. Right smack in the middle of this picture and then ever so slightly to the right of that the counter used to be. And that is where, in the early October days of 1999, I saw my first ever Base Set booster box when I bought my third round of boosters, having received the first two from my mother. The holo pull was a Zapdos which I was really satisfied with.
I don’t think I ever saw a booster box in my childhood. I only collected up until 3rd grade then I started focusing on playing sports and that’s where my collection died until Dec 2023 when it was rediscovered. I fondly remember Toys R Us as my main supplier of Pokémon packs. At the time it was booster hanger packs and some team rocket theme decks!
My parents said they mainly would buy my brother and I packs at checkout, assuming that’s where we got most of our cards. Returning to Pokémon, I bought 2 vivid voltage booster boxes in 2024 planning to keep them, RIPPED EM ALL! This is when I thought pulling an Ampharos V was legendary and I was so hyped. The joys of ignorance at the time .
With that being said, it’s mainly ETB’s now (prefer buying singles) and I lucked out with a pre-order of perfect order on PM Center that my daughters opened together.
I saw a base unlimited booster box in 1999. A friend got it for Christmas. His mom was high up the food chain at Walmart and got ahold of it. Our minds were blown. He ended up pulling two Charizards from that box. What a legend.
It was an old Red Wing boot store, standalone tpe brick building here in Ohio, near the Polaris Fashion Mall. Small shop. Sold boots (duh), and due to the mania, much like today, had some Jungle and Fossil open boxes right on the counter.
At the local mall inside EB Games was my first time actually seeing a booster box. I bought a few packs that day, desperately still trying to pull a Charizard. I remember walking through the mall after that and seeing another kid about half my age sitting on a bench near a fountain with his father after just opening a pack and he was holding an unlimited Charizard…with very little regard for preserving its condition. I learned a life lesson that day!
I cant remember seeing them as a kid, but they may have been at the stores I was going to. When I got back into it around 2015-2016 I saw them on youtube but never bought one myself until 2020
When I was a kid, around the time when Legendary Treasures was released, I asked my uncle to buy me pokemon cards for christmas, he let me pick one out and for some reason I picked a box of Clash of The Summit. It was my first exposure to Japanese cards, and I’m lucky to have the foresight to keep some of the pack wrappers with me throughout the years.
Will never forget walking into my LGS, Mr Cards n Comics, and seeing a base set unlimited box in the front display case. It’s those memories and feelings that are hard to describe but feel so vivid that sometimes I can reach out and touch it. It’s the whole reason why I became a collector - that longing for the feeling I used to have as a kid that was existing in simpler times.
.