What has been the hardest to obtain card/cards for you, and to what great lengths did you have to go through in order to get it/them during your Poke career?
Definitely my 1998 Pikachu Trophy and my 1999 Tropical Mega Battle. Not because of the seller but because at the time we were buying a house and I couldn’t have the purchase registering as I was doing the mortgage stuff (usually they even question the stupidest purchases ever). Thankfully, the seller accepted a deposit while I could pay him discreetly a week or two later without the bank bitching about it.
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PSA 10 copies of the EXs from Japanese Dragon Frontiers.
I graded the first PSA 10 ex from the set back in early 2015 and once I solidified my collection goals of getting all set-based Japanese ex cards in PSA 10 I went after the others.
The set suffers from all of the factors that make mint Japanese ex cards hard to find (low point of Pokemon = fewer product printed, product that was printed primarily used for play, cards are 8-10 years old, not a well-recognized collectible) in addition to several unique ones like terrible centering and printing lines. Over the next 3 years I went on to personally grade every ex from the set in a PSA 10. Its become easier to find mint copies as time has gone on and the Japanese ex era has become more popular, but I still remember the difficulty of getting them all.
It wasn’t a question of money as the ungraded cards were not very expensive. The most expensive ones were probably Rayquaza and Salamence and even those you could find for $10 in NM or better condition if you did some digging. The difficulty was in finding a mint copy, difficult enough to begin with, but then that mint copy had to be well centered. I’d say 85% of the copies I saw or bought had bad (non PSA 10) centering. The centering problem was lesser with unlimited cards, so most of my collection is unlimited. I do have a Flygon and Rayquaza 1st ed. in PSA 10 though. That being said, there weren’t any out there to buy so I couldn’t just throw money at the problem and have it go away. I had to do the digging, years of searching through eBay, Japanese sites, Pokecen, middleman services, etc in order to get them.
I was really proud to finally finish the set. I think it was a perfect challenge for my style of collecting, I don’t have a ton of capital to go spend but I do have the time and dedication to search out these cards. And boy was it a challenge.
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My answer is pretty boring, nothing has really been very hard to acquire so far in regards to what I’ve been after in pokemon, availability is still really good for the vast majority of cards, the number of exceptions I feel are pretty small.
A lesson for everyone though, if you’re after something hard to find don’t hesitate when you find it. I’d been searching for an MTG card for over 8 months, I had 4-5 vendor friends looking for it at events weekly worldwide. I found one finally but didn’t like that the centering subgrade was 9 not 9.5 (BGS card) … so I umm’d and ahhh’d for a while but decided to get it anyway.
I contacted the vendor but in that time it was already sold, I missed out after looking for so long. I was pretty annoyed at myself because I was stupid and hesitated, got picky when it came to something that only had 18 copies in the world. The card in question was a basic++ (9/9.5/10/10 subgrades) and I luckily ended up finding another copy of the card months later via a friend in Germany … but had to pay almost a thousand dollars more for a basic 9.5 (9.5/9.5/9.5/9 subgrades).
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Those 2 Japanese BW Promos that never got released because of the earthquake in Japan.
Technically exist but most likely destroyed purposefully. Who knows though?
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That one guy on here offering his left kidney for a 1st ed PSA 10 neo typhlosion.
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My champion DCE, just because of how rare they are and how little people know (and probably care lol) about them. I looked for just about a year before someone out of the blue posted two copies for sale on Virbank. Coming into Pokemon from the muscle car hobby where mostly everything is at least 40 years old though I was already well groomed in the reality that sometimes things you want arnt always avaible, or cheap.
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Haven’t got it yet as only gemmintpokemon owns it 
but dark magneton psa 10 unlimited is pop 1 
hopefully the one I sent of gets a 10 
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Still trying to finish my Jamboree set. The holos seem impossible to find. It’s like they don’t even exist.
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Thats what can make it either fun or frustrating lol… Good luck friend!
God damn natta wake hoppip. I have been having so much trouble getting one. When it surfaces, I forget to bid and last time I lost because the internet did not connect in the final seconds. Pain in the arse!
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Dios mĂo… so jealous!
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PSA 10 Gold Star Torchic…I waited over 2 years for one to hit the market organically and still only got lucky because someone reached out to me on IG and wanted to help me complete my PSA 10 Gold Star set (it was the last PSA 10 GS I needed). I kept advertising how badly I wanted/needed that card, and it paid off!
I can’t stress enough how grateful I was because the seller never let the card hit the open market…I made a high initial offer that now seems low by comparison as there were a few others gunning for that Torchic and willing to pay at least double…and now it’s worth at least triple what I paid! Crazy how expensive that card is now compared to just 6 months ago.
That said, I see that 2 of the 11 PSA 10 GS Torchics are getting listed on eBay these days for like $12-18k, and while those are certainly outrageous prices…I wouldn’t be surprised if someone got desperate enough to pay into the 5-figures for this card soon enough just because it’s impossible to complete the GS set without it.
I know people are still “questioning” the staying power of Gold Star cards, but as someone who’s been closely tracking them for about 6 years now and has one of the only two (maybe three?) complete PSA 10 English sets out there…these cards simply aren’t going to sink like the Titanic as some people think they’ll do (I honestly have no idea where that notion is coming from). Interest levels remain high for GS PSA 10s, and while i’ve been mostly only lurking on E4 the last few months I get a ton of offers for my cards constantly.
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1999 tropical mega battle was such a pain to grab as the price sky rocketed so fast that it felt like the card was always overpriced on the market. It honestly felt like I was paying a serious premium to own the card.
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English VS.
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This is a great topic thanks @valence1electron I would say i have a few, I recently got a couple trophy cards I feel very lucky to have just seen them at the right time, but was very hard to obtain also due to the price point for me personally it was a lot of money to justify on a single card specially when i started to think of all the other goals i could complete with that money. In saying that I don’t regret it for a moment, getting my first trophy card was one of my goals for the year.
the other two which im still chasing and finding hard to find. is completing the series 2 Tomy scratch set! I even bought a couple booster packs recently in the hope of finding the last card i need the riachu! If anyone has this card please let me know. these cards are very old and hard to find specially in good condition.
The other set I really want to complete and is a huge challenge is the Nissui series 1 & 2. I have searched far and wide for these cards even looked everywhere in japan where i was lucky enough to find a 3rd of the series 1 set hiding in box in a display case. if anyone has nissui cards they are happy to trade or sell please let me know 
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A no symbol Mr Mime that had a chance to get a 10.
A prerelease Clefable Of 10 quality,
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JR Meowth
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Mine isn’t even that rare but it’s a Shadowless Raichu PSA 9. I had a chance to buy one for I think $225 from collectorscache on ebay. I offered them $200, left for work and it was gone when I got home. They actually had it on their website for $200 but for some reason they charge $40 shipping there and $10-15 on ebay…
I bid on every other auction I saw, it was always ending higher and higher. I finally caved in and bought it from a efour member for $350. What’s ironic is that it’s back to a $200 card now that the handful of collectors like me that needed it to complete a set got theirs.
From now on, I know I’m going to click that buy now button and not be greedy trying to save 10% next time I really want a card. lol
Youch… 350? I saw it was expensive as a 9, but I settled on an 8.5 for 100+20 shipped. I guess I’m happy with that.
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