As supply for old wotc vintage cards gets smaller and smaller I was just wondering how long someone actively searched for a single card both graded and ungraded. As I’m fairly new to wotc collecting I don’t have any stories but I’d love to hear from anyone about what it was like and how long that search went on for. Also how did you cope with the fear of never owning that card you’ve been searching for all this time?
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I searched for a graded Skyridge Alakazam for a whole 5 min. I kept putting Alakasam and eBay didn’t autocorrect and I didn’t notice for like 5 min.
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Two-3 months for a mint 1st edition Umbreon 
paid off tho got a 9 or 10 candidate for $90 shipped
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I’ve searched for many cards for years…mostly the low pop guys like slowking etc.
My mentality switched at some point late last year and the last seven or so low pop cards I bought were all at record prices, many eclipsing the prior price paid by 2x and in one instance, 15x vs a few months ago. But for those cards my mentality switched from a mix of collector-investor to pure collector; I semi-expect to take a loss on those cards.
Still, I had broad goals and a disciplined approached probably still saved me some money on a net basis, as I used the excess money to buy up extra copies of cards which have also gone up a lot in value.
Fyi I took my time for close to 90% of my collection and it worked out fine. Set cards will always appear again at some point, especially if you’re plugged into both ebay and instagram (latter is not that bad if you know who are the trustworthy ones)
With regard to not being able to own a particular card in this lifetime, I’m fortunate enough to be in a position to not believe that.
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Wow! okay a follow up to you. If you had limited funds for a card you are chasing and it finally shows up on the market but it is way over what you had thought like the 2x or 3x the price that it was last sold for what would you have done in that situation?
Run the math. Take my entirely hypothetical example. Misty golduck just sold for 4.5k, pop ~50 I think and comes from a 6k box. If I happen to need a Skarmory, pop ~39 which comes from a 18k box, and at the ebay auction it just sold for 600+ (which I believe is much higher than the prior sale), it’s still sorta a safe bet at 700 or 1k, even tho it’s 2x or 3x last sold
If the card was mistys golduck I’ll likely hold off buying and focus on other goals, given opportunities like skarmory still exist. Maybe buy a Skarmory and wait for the day you get to swap it for a mistys golduck? Not inconceivable…trends and hype comes and goes
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I am still looking for a bunch of Japanese commons and uncommons from EX-DP era that won’t charge me $10+ a piece.
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I’d love to own a completed unlimited set of L1 in Japanese which will probably take a lifetime if it even exists.
Mjisaacs
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Looking for 5 years for this stupid card in PSA 10 and I can’t for the life of me find gem copies lol
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Holy! i just checked the pop report if you are looking for unlimited theres only 1 in the world?!
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I spent months looking for this card after seeing a random image on google about it.
This is a Russian EX FA. I did not even know they made cards in Russian and every collector I talked to had never heard about it. But guess who knew about Russian cards: @quuador
After getting in contact with his middleman I convinsed him to sell me this. I think I bought it around 40$. Still to this day the only Russian copy I have seen. I have a few other cool cards I bought from him aswell, Lugia EX, Eevee cards, Magmar cards, Unown cards
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@pokemonunboxing
Do you have the XY71 Hoopa Promo as well in Russian?
Mjisaacs
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Started collecting PSA 10 1st ed. Neo Genesis holo set in late 2014 and T17 is still only one missing from it. Current and future sales prices are definitely out of reach so I gotta keep hoping a chance to trade one eventually appears.
Yes sir! But im still missing Hoopa EX 36/98 
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Almost forgot playing Pika Boo with 1st edition Shining Charizard. One would pop up on eBay and disappear. Happened twice in seconds. Three to four months later I found a nice 7-8 candidate
Been looking for an unlimited Web Gengar in PSA 10 for a bit over a year now. I have the other unlimited Web Holos in PSA 10.
I finally picked up an unlimited Pichu from Japan’s Arceus set 3 months ago after knowing of the card’s existence since late 2010:
https://instagram.com/p/B8hueMRl2u4
Admittedly I hadn’t been actively looking for all that time, but it’s the first one I’d ever seen listed. Strangely enough, not long after I picked this one up a German seller on eBay listed another very poor condition copy up for sale. I get the feeling I won’t be owning a PSA 10 copy of this any time soon.
There are of course a lot of much rarer Pichu cards out there (like this Neo Genesis artwork English Sample card) which I’ll likely never get my hands on, but I figured this one was worth sharing as whilst certainly rarer than the 1st edition copy it pales in comparison to the rarity of some of the other unlimited Japanese Pichus.
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Not WOTC but, it took me almost a year to find a reverse holo legendary treasures charizard 9 to add to my Collection.
It’s just was one of those cards, nothing too special, just a pain to find at the right price point, or if it was even listed, being a pop 28.
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Where to even begin, haha. I collect Pikachu, Seviper, and the Moltres WotC #21 artwork in all languages and variations. The cards I’m still missing for those collections I’ve been searching for since I started collecting those, so 5+ years for Pikachus, 2.5+ years for Seviper and 2+ years for the WotC #21 artwork. When I joined the forum at the start of 2016 I had around 250 of the at that time 650+ known Pikachu cards; at the end of 2017 I had around 700 of the 825+ known Pikachu cards; and right now I own roughly 1200 unique Pikachu TCG cards, and missing around 55-60 to ‘complete’ it. For Seviper I still need just two cards: Japanese unlimited edition World Championship Pack and Spanish Hidden Fates - Shiny Vault. And for my Moltres WotC #21 collection I’m still looking for the Australian sealed version with Game Boy Color insert, as well as both a 1st and unlimited edition Japanese Pokémon Web booster pack.
I used to look on multiply different eBays (.com; .co.uk; com.au; .ca; .de; .fr; .it; .es) a few times each week, and on CardMarket once a week. These days it’s a bit less, like once every two weeks on eBay and once a month on CardMarket.
To give some examples of cards I recently acquired after searching for them for a long time: Italian Reverse Holo Mysterious Treasures Pikachu; Japanese unlimited edition World Champion Pack Battle Frontier (this one is currently at my middleman); Inverted WB stamp Pikachu; etc.
And to give two opposites that didn’t took long to find: when I decided to add all Jumbo Pikachu cards to my collection it only took three months to find all -at the time- sixteen of them (including waiting for them to arrive). It was the perfect moment to start collecting them apparently. 
Also, when I decided to collect the entire National Index including all forms and Shiny Pokémon, it only took three months (mostly waiting for cards to arrive) to fully complete it. And yeah, in those three months I’ve spend quite a bit of money considering the Shiny Pokémon of Triple-Star and Gold Star Secret Rares…
Greetz,
Quuador
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Blaine looks about as frustrated as you must feel.
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