I had a 45 min drive ahead of me this morning so I decided to kick up Patreon and listen to @smpratte latest Q and A. One of the questions that I found intriguing was:
“Where would you be right now in life if Pokémon never existed?”
I went down a rabbit hole:
• e4 wouldn’t exist
• friendships from this hobby wouldn’t exist
• I would be even deeper at the production studio pumping out more movies instead of being in hiatus
• more productive at the office
• depression would be harder to battle
• an extension of collecting would probably not exist
It’s hard to imagine, but an alternate reality that crossed my mind this morning.
I would have a totally different career, since Pokemon TCG trading got me introduced to Excel, then finance, then -bam- two degrees later I have found a job I love. I also have meet some great friends over the past 15 years (oof, I’m getting old). Pokemon also started my love of art, which is something I definitely would have never explored if PKMN didn’t exist.
Game Boy collecting is my other passion, so I’d be doing that. But most of my Game Boy memories and nostalgia come from Pokémon games. So it is a fun thought experiment if I would still feel the same way!
I would have filled the void and my emotional requisites with some other collecting hobby. Probably gunpla or more lego. Both of which require more space and thus thetic and creative energies.
However, and this is important to me, I would have much less confidence in my intellectual abilities. I’d probably have more social confidence, as I saw PkMn as a kind of guilty pleasure for a LONG time… Still, Pokemon collecting WITH investment really showed me that I CAN INTENTIONALLY make successful investment decisions, even if I didn’t plan to sell much. In the past, I chose specific collecting targets that I genuinely thought would be difficult and more expensive to complete later. I learned to investigate fundamentals and determine growth potential in investments without emotional attachment.
The unique combination of investing and collecting here, really has taught me about myself and my abilities, in a way, I doubt anything else would have. Born of a passion, I’ve never had for really any other tangible thing.
I have no idea where I’d be. It really feels like a coin flip of being in a “better” place or a “worse” place.
Pokemon has been something that has always undermined my self confidence to some extent, and has caused me to second guess myself. I didn’t know about the forum back when I dabbled in collecting in college, so would only share my goals and purchases with my immediate friends. Not generally supportive responses lol. Without that experience, maybe I would have spent my time in a way that would have built my confidence more quickly.
On the other hand, Pokemon has gotten me through some of my deepest struggles with depression. It’s something controllable and safe to fall back on. So without it, may be in a worse place.
So, would probably either be living in my parents apartment with them, or playing for the Chicago Bulls. Hard to say.
Waiting eagerly for someone to come in and say “Dead” and then to regale us with a story of how opening “just one more pack” meant they missed a hostage situation at a bank or something.
I would have 0 savings right noe if I didn’t start collecting 7 years ago. I absolutely suck at saving money, so putting it into pokemon cards for the purposes of collecting turned out to be the best financial decision I ever made
I can’t tell the story in its entirety, but in my younger and more vulnerable years I was able to quickly offload some Pokémon cards to get a few thousand dollars really quickly which saved me and an acquaintance from almost certainly being charged with felonies.
Cannot imagine what the trajectory of my life would have been like had I not been able to pull that emergency parachute and walk away from that situation. Took it as the second chance it was and reinvented myself into someone who would never make those bad choices again.
Pokemon was so impactful on my childhood that my life would probably be completely different. Better in some ways, worse in others. Overall, who could say?
As others have touched on, I would maybe be less financially conscious. When you’re talking about something as volatile as cards, you have be able to mitigate for drastic price swings (relative to something like stocks).
In all likelihood, that energy/focus on Pokemon would have had to go somewhere else. Video game wise there’s maybe something, but I don’t think it would have been any other card game; the only other thing I’ve collected in the past is Yu-gi-oh, which just doesn’t hit anywhere near as hard from a collecting point of view.
So it is a fun thought experiment if I would still feel the same way!
