I need to stop cutting onions while I read these heartwarming posts 
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After being so excited when the gen 3 spoilers showed the first whale pokemon i was so disappointed with the RS wailord. I do like the wailmer from RS a lot but the wailord looks pretty awful by any standard. Thankfully my child self did not have to wait long for the next expansion to get the best wailord to date. This one is the one i finally added to my pc recently
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lol they sold packs in the library?
My library confiscated packs.
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Lol my bad, a “false friend “ word. I meant a book store, there they used to sell them here in Spain haha
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For me, it’s gotta be Base Set Squirtle. Instant sentimental value right away. It was the starter I chose in Pokemon Blue and it’s still my favourite one.
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I was listening to a podcast the other day. They said once you look at this card, and view it as Squirtle having bubbles forced into his mouth, you’ll never look at it the same again.
And now all I can see is bubbles being forced into his mouth.
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So. many. bubbles. getting. too. full! 
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Easy:
The card was just mind-blowingly cool to me as a kid and I was pretty infatuated with it.
Like several others in this thread, I used to bring my favorite card around with me in my pocket basically everywhere. At one point, it went through the laundry and my mom bought me a replacement. I still have that replacement, although it’s in pretty abysmal condition as one might expect lol.
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I lost my fossil 1st ed kabutops to the pocket of my snow pants. Might have been one of the 1st holos I pulled so I was pretty sad
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Definitely Fossil Aerodactyl. I remember being on vacation with my family, and a store we went to had packs. I told my parents that we could “each get a pack and open it for fun” (my 9 year old brain thought I was so smart for talking them into buying three packs by saying they’re for each of us and not just me). My mom opened a Fossil 1st Edition pack and got the holo Aerodactyl, which I of course ended up getting from her.
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Since the alt art has been shown, Aerodactyl is steadily becoming one of my favorites
I first saw Japanese Neo boosters in a mall when I was visiting New Jersey, from one of those carts that you might also see selling perfumes or sunglasses. There were rows and rows of cards, plushies, and other Japanese imports, but what I first noticed was a glint of gold.
It was this pack that had three unfamiliar creatures on it. I might not even have identified it as Pokemon, but I recognized one from the second movie: Lugia.
This was back before internet access was widely available to those of all ages, and I lived somewhere that didn’t have localized versions of Gold and Silver. I had a subtitled version of the second movie on VHS, but that was the extent of my exposure. Before that day at the mall, Marill, Togepi, Slowking, Lugia, and that golden bird from episode 1 were simply unexplained anomalies.
I never looked back, and have since become almost exclusively a collector of Japanese cards.
Shown below is a pull I got from a Neo 4 Japanese pack, along with an English counterpart I pulled from a later purchase. I bought a couple Japanese Neo 4 packs online for ~$14 each, for which I felt guilty on overspending (…how times have changed). I opened one and there was this card with an unusual texture, sporting not one, not two, but three stars!
To me, I think this epitomizes the magic and discovery behind Japanese Neo: a secret rare…that truly was.
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this was the coolest card, a monstrous gyarados that did 70 damage
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for me, it’s gotta be this big guy
I had a reverse holo copy that i carried in my pocket while at camp for a week and it got ruined in the rain 
I still have that copy somewhere though not exactly sure where.
Love this art, love Aggron, love Arita. Just does it all for me. And I know this is about the art but I always thought the steal typing and the Double Lariat move doing 70 damage was just so cool Really felt unlike a lot of my WOTC cards and stood out in my mind for that reason.
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Me seeing the Salamence still in a happy home.
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Apologies if this turns into a long winded post.
When I was a kid in 2008 my parents would sometimes buy random blister packs from the store for my brother and I to open. We had the printed paper checklists and always tried completing sets, but we could NEVER pull the gold star cards. One day, from an ex Legend Maker pack we finally got our first (and only) gold star which was Regirock
All the ex and DP era cards are super sentimental to me, and my brother and I even would save artworks of packs we opened in a tin even when we were young before collecting pack art was cool, I guess it was a sign that I was gonna stay a collector growing up 
So the joy that Regirock brought us will never be forgotten
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the easy answer would be anything from team rocket returns but honestly, i feel really nostalgic for the 2020/2021 boom. and champions path, vivid voltage & shining fates were sets with so much momentum and energy, I’ll never forget those days. it was magical. 20 years from now ill remember the covid mania as much as the 90s pokemon craze.
i pulled two zards from shining fates with my gf. it was great and ill cherish those moments 4ever.
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honestly any lv.x card with the style but I remember seeing this one in my binder every day as a kid and I still have it in my main collection box now.
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