Welcome to Will’s collection thread. I’ve procrastinated long enough in making one of these. My pictures aren’t great, what I collect is a bit all over the board, and that’s ok! I’ve included some background on how I got into Pokemon for anyone interested.
Will's Background
I got into Pokemon when I received Pokemon Red and a purple gameboy for Christmas in 1998. My parents didn’t like Pokemon, and were annoyed when my aunt got it for me. I spent so much time on that game, can’t tell you how many times I played it through. Spent a lot of time leveling up one particular Pokemon (more on that later), but enjoyed all aspects of it.
As far as cards, the combo of my parents not liking Pokemon, and us not having a lot of money, I only opened 2 or 3 packs that I can remember. One of them though, in the Zany Brainy parking lot, was base set Charizard. That thing was my pride and joy, until of course I traded it for a gold Mewtwo card from Burger King to an older kid 
I got out of Pokemon after gen 2, and didn’t really come back to it until the tail end of college in 2015. One of roommates and I would love buying lots of English and Japanese holos, and we had some binders going. When I graduated and got my first real job, I bought us 60 packs of Team Rocket to open. I went a little overboard, it was a good deal, ok?
When I started working more though, my interest waned and I didn’t get involved again until 2017. I had purposefully resisted the Pokemon Go craze, as I knew I probably would have gotten too into it, and didn’t want to spend the time, at the time, playing.
In 2017, got back into buying and selling collections a bit, and was having a good time. Unfortunately, I had a lot of pressures from family and friends telling me that spending time/effort/money on Pokemon cards was selfish and irresponsible, and I felt a lot of shame. I had heard of E4 at this point from either Scott or Rusty videos, but didn’t think to join. I wish I would have, having a positive group of people to interact with would have been good for me!
The stress of collecting and the feedback from others led me to sell everything I had in 2017/2018 timeframe. I sold things for pennies to some low-baller on FB because I couldn’t bear to look at the things anymore. I had no idea what I was doing with shipping, sent them to Australia (where the buyer was), and the buyer charged back the order saying that things were missing/damaged. I was so done with everything at that point, I didn’t bother fighting it.
Fast forward a couple more years into 2019, and I saw some shining legends on clearance at Walmart. I was in a better place mentally than I was before, and went ahead and bought some. It was so much fun opening the packs, no idea what I pulled. Nothing good 
I then started collecting some assorted cards, but mostly elite trainer boxes. I liked the artwork on the boxes, and they were pretty cheap compared to booster boxes. I casually collected for a bit until COVID hit, which ramped me into things more seriously. I spent a lot of time watching PokeRev’s booster box breaks, SMPratte videos, and finally joined E4.
I’ve been here since then, and have been enjoying it! I still feel overwhelmed from time to time, and still have family who isn’t very supportive of my collecting, but overall am in a positive place with it all. I hope to stick around for a long time now! With that, onto the pictures…
Since getting back into things more seriously, I’ve realized that I want to collect everything. It’s a daunting task, but I’ve reconciled some of that by buying little bits of things from the areas I’m interested in. That ranges from English, to Japanese, from promos, to set cards, and soon species collecting! I’ll add to this as I make progress, and thank you for looking!
First is Autographs, something I’ve really enjoyed collecting this past year. As of now, all I have are from the regional events in Orlando (with Ms. Harada), and Charlotte (with Ms. Himeno).
Next up are Black and White era Full Arts (and a couple XY). I have some English and some Japanese, but plan to focus on Japanese going forward!
I also enjoy original ex era, so put together a set of power keepers exs to enjoy. In the future, I’d like to come back to ex, but it’s a bit down on the priority list for now.
I’ve got some miscellaneous cards I’ve picked up as well from sets/formats I really like, like gold star and crystal cards. Don’t have a lot, but enjoy the ones I do have. Eventually I’d like to complete crystal and gold star sets, but that’s a long way away. Once I make more progress, I’ll divide these out into their own sections.
I mentioned I’m planning to get into species collecting, so nothing to share yet, but will be starting my metapod collection this year.
Wait... Metapod?
A quick interlude back to my background. When I playing the original games, Metapod was always that Pokemon nobody liked. It was helpful for leveling up early on because it was a stage 1 that couldn’t even attack you, but nobody really liked it. As a 6 year old who wasn’t exactly the coolest kid, I felt bad for Metapod. I identified with it. Why is it always overlooked? Surely it could do great things. So I leveled up one of those things to level 99 and used it to fight through the Elite 4. Sure it really only knew tackle, and wasn’t at all helpful against Agatha, but damnit that little cocoon made it into the Hall of Fame. And I’ve liked Metapod ever since.
Last section I’ll share are my promos. I only have a few, but there are some of my favorites. This is an area I hope to develop more into over time. You may notice one card in there that is very special to me, the English TMB Will’s Girafarig. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the group buy for Mindy Meldrum’s 2002 deck, and you could imagine that the Will’s Girafarig was one I was most interested in (in my budget, at least ).
Prize cards and other promos are my focus for the next chunk of time, in addition to Metapod, so hope to have process to share here throughout the year(s) here as well.
Thank you all for taking the time to read through, hope you enjoyed! I’ll post updates here as I make new acquisitions.
