Hey guys if you ever took a break from Pokémon, what brought you back? For me it was discovering MaxMoeFoe Pokémon. He made me want to start collecting with his pack opening shenanigans. Another PokéTuber that I follow is Rhymestyle his vintage pack openings and PSA collecting got me back into collecting vintage cards.
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Didn’t really got back until late 2016 after I bought my first PSA card (its a YGO card) on eBay because of how classy a card in a case looked and started picking up graded Pokemon cards because there was more Pokemon cards in the UK than YGO at the time. Surprisingly for me, it wasn’t Pokemon Go or Evolutions that brought me back to the hobby, its actually a $25 graded YGO card from syuju.
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Never heard of those two guys/girls but now that your back we have several great youtubers here on e4. In my opinion though, there’s nothing like the great info and back and forth’s you can get right here on e4. All the true experts are right here:)
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Reading an article on Eurogamer in 2016 about gen 1 Pokemon in Pokemon go, and then trying to finish the WOTC sets i collected as a kid.
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My interest in Pokemon cards started at some point when I was like 7 or 8 years old. I got a pack randomly from my mom’s friend because I liked Pokemon a lot, I never had any idea the cards existed before then but they were very fascinating to me.
After that I got like 4-5 more packs before I just never got any EX series cards anymore.
The DPPt era and that was the second “era” for me where I got most of my cards from.
I always liked them a lot, but the packs were 4 euros each and my allowance was 2.50 a week for a long time followed by 5 a week. I never could really afford them as a child.
The first time I stopped was around 2009, I simply didn’t get much pocket money and my interest in it faded highly because:
- Pokemon cards weren’t cool at school anymore.
- My friends didn’t like them anymore.
- I got a laptop which took up a lot of my interest meaning that I could get over my desire for Pokemon cards.
The thing is they never really stopped fascinating me. I had stupid dreams like everyone in the world disappearing and me being able to just go into stores and go behind the counter and grab all the Pokemon cards I wanted. I had dreams of being wealthy and having lots of money and one of the ideas of what I’d really like to buy was always just Pokemon cards.
The next time I bought Pokemon TCG packs was in 2016, and the reason was entirely that I got a part-time job for the first time in my life and I had a bit of money. I bought like 4 Steam Siege packs I think. I also bought a Magearna tin. I didn’t even get a single EX which honestly didn’t even surprise me. As a child I never got any ex cards or Lvl. X cards either.
I wanted to buy more but ended up quitting because I turned 18 and had to pay health insurance costs here and the money I got from my part-time job just wasn’t very much anymore.
The next time I picked it up again, was in 2019 this year on like April 30th. Just a few days before the Unbroken Bonds release date. I realized that I had a monthly income now and I could actually fulfil my long awaited desire to open a lot of Pokemon TCG packs in one go. I ended up ordering a booster box and an ETB and since then I’ve opened several more modern booster boxes as well as some Japanese modern booster boxes. I also started ordering single cards from Cardmarket to collect some XY era sets, and I now plan to either finish some binder sets of modern sets or to maybe start collecting EX or DPPt era cards.
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Scream promos! They were so cool looking, I got two sets, then started to think about collecting as a kid and it all kind of snowballed from there
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Hard to say, but probably a mixture of Pokemon Masters and Pokemon Rumble Rush (mobile games) and the fact that I was wasting too much disposable income on mobile games, I thought the money would be better spent on card collecting. I’ve always wanted a reason to come back and collect, so convincing the wife that I am “investing” it instead of wasting it on games has given me a free pass!!
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When I was at uni over summer in 2010 I had a night shift job at a local supermarket. Because it was a night shift I was paid quite decent money for it on a weekly basis, but it meant I had to be asleep for most of the day. As I didn’t have much to spend my money on I decided to start collecting things, including sealed Final Fantasy products and Pichu cards. The sealed Final Fantasy collecting stopped pretty quickly as it was taking up too much room (I still have 2 big boxes full of sealed product in my attic), but the Pichu collecting remained steady from then on.
In terms of collecting, I used to collect old English coins when I was a teenager but getting coins graded is complete taboo (or at least used to be). Because of that I managed to completely avoid PSA cards for long time. I think my first PSA purchase was in 2016 and I only picked it up because I’d never seen a raw copy of the card appear for sale (I think it might have been the Totodile Side Deck Pichu but I can’t remember now).
I think Pokémon GO definitely helped maintain my interest in the hobby. It was never anything serious until a few years ago, now I pick up new cards on an almost weekly basis.
Pokemongo + Evolutions, 2016 was a good year 
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the crippling nostalgia
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My friend and I each bought a leftover HGSS undaunted pack when there was a Go raid near a gamestop and I pulled an Espeon prime, which inspired back home to look through my old card collection, which was 90% Yu-Gi-Oh with all its colorful-eyed dragons and looked them up online, only to realise there were lots of reprints and the original cards were sometimes cheaper than back in the day. I only had like 50 Pokemon cards, the rarest being the new Espeon, so I didn’t bother looking up those.
Later that week, my friend gave me his rarest old Pokemon cards to sell. I didn’t expect much from a few ex-era cards, but after a few hours of ebay research, I realised how freaking huge the tcg still was. Playing the console games and Pokemon Go, combined with a different reprint policy and Pokemon being omnipresent in my life, I got hooked.
(tl,dr) I have more visceral/nostalgic feelings for certain old Yu-Gi-Oh artworks like Kuriboh, B.E.W. Dragon or the Elemental Heroes than for any old Pokemon card, but Pokemon as a franchise never really leaving my life entirely like Yu-Gi-Oh did and peaking in 2016 I think is what got me (back) into the tcg.
Also, I still own most of the Yu-Gi-Oh cards I remember from back in the day, so there are no memories to buy back (except for some cards stolen from me or bad trades 
).
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I’ve had my ups and downs with Pokemon though I’m convinced to stick it through this time (as long as they keep making Gyarados cards that is).
When it was announced that a 3D game was coming out of Pokemon (outside of the Stadium games), I got caught in the hype for X and Y. I had still been collecting Gyarados cards here and there but hearing about the game and the new Pokemon sucked me in. I had been a small-time lurker of this forum for a year or two prior but after getting into the game, I started wanting to take my collection more seriously and so I joined.
I’ve fallen out of it after, wanted to sell my entire collection once or twice, but this community is what keeps me coming back.
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Stopped collecting around 2001. Got back in around Generations 2016 with all the 20th anniversary hype.
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I left collecting some time in 2003, aquapolis cards were the newest cards I had in the binder at my moms house when I re-entered in the summer of 2017.
A random YouTube video brought me back! It randomly popped up on my suggested video’s one day. I dont remember who it was, but some dude opened up 3 base set packs. I WAS IMMEDIATELY HOOKED. I dont know why or how it was there as I never searched for anything pokemon on YouTube before.
So the very next day I went to my moms house, went into the attic and dug through my boxes of stuff and found my cruddy black binder full of like 200 cards. It was amazing! I’ve never enjoyed sitting in a blazing hot attic as much as I did that afternoon flipping through my cards after 14 years. Seeing all the holographics again was for real a magical feeling!
I’ve been religiously broke since…
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I got out of the hobby in middle/high school like most until junior year (2010) when HG/SS was released. There was a decent underground scene at my school to play the games again. That kept my interest going in Pokemon. I remember casually watching some guy on YouTube around the same time, who would flip base set booster boxes and had terrible nervous shakes on camera. I also unironically watched early unlisted leaf pack openings up until about the time evolutions came out.
By the time Pokemon GO hit and evolutions was on the scene I was snowballing the urge to open some booster packs again. One night my buddy who semi competitively played the tcg bought me a mewtwo mayhem theme deck and here we are three years later.
Watching Pawnstars which led me to buying Charizards off eBay and Mercari, then seeing smpratte on YouTube which led to here, which led to a snowball effect as well…lol
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One of my friends in my first year of college would always talk about Pokémon, and hearing him talk about it made me interested in Pokemon again. Shortly afterwards, I came across the @smpratte YouTube channel, and Scott’s advice/knowledge has inspired me to keep collecting!
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My first kid, my son aka Aidan. I was a hoodlum before he was born; I didn’t remember Pokémon even existed until he was born and I began buying him toys. One day I just started digging up my old stuff I had stored and I found a small stack of Pokémon cards. Of course I gave him all the cars and figures I had and kept the cards for myself. One of those cards was a dark Charizard in perfect condition. I thought to myself, “I wonder if that Charizard I always wanted is still $100” so I went on eBay. I found hundreds on their for less than $100, so I picked one up for $68. It was a PSA 8 unlimited base set Charizard. Once I received it in the mail the feeling of nostalgia and happiness took over and I’ve been collecting ever since. Now my kids have their own Pokémon card binders, plushies, games and even Pokémon clothes. Of course now I have a whole room filled with everything I’ve ever dreamed of as a kid.
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Listening to You & Me & Pokemon when I found my Totally Pokemon CD from 2001.
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