Thought this might be a kind of fun topic. I know when I was younger I thought japanese cards were more valuable and elusive. I remember really wanting a Your name Chansey, Imakuni’s doduo, and Shining Gyarados. What about you?
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1st Edition Base Set Charizard for me, easy 
I didn’t know anything about Japanese cards, and in small town Canada I thought that 1st Edition Base Set Cards were a myth. I would have been stoked enough to get an Unlimited Charizard, but I knew from Beckett Magazines that 1st Edition copies existed, and were skyrocketing in price.
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I remember buying a magazine in the early beginnings of the trading card game and it had an article about a very rare and precious Japanese promo card - the Japanese Birthday Pikachu. The artwork was stunning and I never thought that actually one day I would hold a copy in my hands. After I had started collecting again I picked up English, German and Italian reprints of the card and finally got hold of the Japanese version too, which has been graded PSA 9 and is now one of my favourite (though not most expensive) items in my collection
Great idea for a topic by the way, I’m curious to read everybody else’s story!
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For some reason I was really into Fossil Holographic Ditto. I had one, but my most desired card was just more of them. I can’t explain that desire with logic.
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I really wanted a Holo Pidgeot from Jungle, but I was never able to get one. I also liked Base Beedrill a lot.
Did anyone else not understand the numbering system of cards when they were little? I thought that 1/64 or 1/102 was the rarest card in that set, and that each card thereafter became easier to get in a pack. Embarrassingly I didn’t know it was alphabetical until I was a teenager.
Therefore as a kid I always also dreamed of a holo Clefable and holo Alakazam because I’d never seen one in person, and thought they were the rarest cards in those sets.
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Charizard, Charizard and again Charizard ever since I opened my first pack of italian base set (year 2000) and found just one!
I was too excited in having found it and since then it’s my favorite Pokémon.
Unfortunately, the euphoria lasted only a couple of hours because at that time I attended elementary school and I had lent the card to a “friend” then I had lost the card forever… 
Nintedo error spelled Japanese ancient mew promo. I always wanted this…only took 12 years or so to obtain it, but finally did a few years ago. It is beautiful, so unique and full of glitter - and i got it for a steal at under $15!
I was always interested in the movie promos and VS cards.
Gym Series was one of my more favourite sets as I always liked the gym leaders.
At the time of being a kid however, I always wanted whatever card would fill up my “national dex” binder.
I had at one time all 493 pokemon in that binder (it’s since been disassembled as the cards weren’t all mint, I will reassemble someday soon! 
)
The rotom forms were some of the hardest to acquire and they are the reason why I am into pokemon so much nowadays.
I needed the forms and that’s how I discovered pokegym. From their my collection and views on pokemon blossomed!
However if we are talking EARLY on, I always wanted a charizard. When I pulled my Shining Charizard I was euphoric! My dad bought me 2 packs of cards from a card store in our mall (it’s since closed). In the second pack I got Shining Tyranitar.
Quick starter set Articuno Holo, I used to watch this card as a kid back in the 90’s on TNCuniverse.com and drooled all over the screen. They used to sell it for about $145 which at the time thought would be an impossible card to obtain, lol.
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Oh and then I’m really happy to get my Arceus, Pichu and Zorua promos
I remember the JR Lily pad Mew was extremely desired here in the US. A price tag of $500 made this card seem impossible to obtain. It feels weird to own one now all these years later haha I think I paid $30 for a PSA 8 copy a couple months ago.
Also, another big one was the Fossil set Mew! It was so mysterious back then to us kids.
Ahhhh sweet nostalgia! I remember i traded a Blaines charizard to this kid from japan for a vending venomoth, kogas secret gym, and giovanni’s nidoking way back when, just because I was so intrigued by these japanese cards I had never seen before!
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CD Promo Blastoise!
In middle-school I had a Blastoise deck that no-one could beat and then I met a few Japanese kids and saw the CD Promo Japanese Blastoise that one kid had. The art was sooooo cool with the gold and the pose; I just had to have it. I finally convinced him to trade it to me…and then like a week later my deck was stolen from me.
Now that I’m an adult, and can do what I want, I bought nine PSA 10 versions of the card just because I can. Take that society!
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Back in the big 1999 craze (I was about 8), my school banned the cards. They pretty much held witch trials (that’s London for you) and made kids who had been seen trading line up in front of the whole school. These public confiscations was terrifying but made collecting/trading much more exciting.
Anyway, one of those poor kids had an impressive stack of cards with a shiny, lovely, richly purpled Alakazam at the front. I lost sleep over that, never having seen one before. I did pull it later though *Sigh.of.infinite.pleasure*
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That reminds me, back when I was a kid I thought the numbering system was based on rarity. Which would have made Alakazam the rarest card in the set. I remember I traded a Charizard for an Alakazam back then for that very reason. Alakazam has always been my favorite card from Base set.
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As a kid, my goal was to have one card of every single Pokemon to make my binder into a Pokedex. It didn’t matter which card it was, as long as I had ONE. Until I got back into the TCG in 2009, I was missing only ten Pokemon from the original 151: Pidgeot, Nidoking, Clefable, Poliwrath, Alakazam, Chansey, Scyther, Ditto, Snorlax and Moltres. Back then they had only ever appeared as holo rares, so it kind of blew my mind to get back into the TCG and see common and uncommon versions of most of these Pokemon floating around by that point.