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2OEH8eoCRo0 10 minutes ago [-]
I had a big book of cards that I never sold but they somehow disappeared when I left for the service.
lloydatkinson 2 hours ago [-]
As a child I had considerably more than 42 Pokemon cards, from that time range, and all in excellent condition with several "shinies"... all of which went into the washing machine because I left them in my pocket. Depressing.
bluerooibos 48 minutes ago [-]
I had at least that many, first generation as well, including a bunch of Japanese shinies that my mum found in a shop somewhere and bought for me.
They all went into the loft at some point and later ended up in a bonfire along with my first edition Harry Potter book collection when my mum was doing a "clear out". Such is life.
1 hours ago [-]
michaelmcdonald 2 hours ago [-]
Just to clarify: it was 42 _sets_ of cards, not just 42 cards.
lloydatkinson 2 hours ago [-]
Good catch. I guess that shows I don't know anything about pokemon or how many make a set anymore.
rvz 2 hours ago [-]
Pokemon cards are today's latest ponzi scheme and have an infinite printing supply without any utility or valid use case whatsoever.
They are today's beanie babies and is a complete waste of money. Even stablecoins have a better use case than this over inflated garbage.
rationalist 1 hours ago [-]
It's kind of funny to see the Pokemon card vending machines at various grocery stores.
Today I went to a hardware store, and was humourously-surprised to find a Pokemon card vending machine there too.
torton 24 minutes ago [-]
It is gambling, with some valuable "pulls" and intermediate steps that grant a plausible non-gambling veneer (such as having to sell the card on eBay instead of just pocketing money, etc.)
I never see kids using the machine at my local grocery store. I see adults, the same ones that patronize the CA lottery machine located next to the Pokemon machine, loitering while waiting for the next set of packs to "unlock" (they are on a timed release to manage the stock).
It's a depressing sight.
toast0 1 hours ago [-]
> without any utility or valid use case whatsoever.
Pokemon battles have some amount of entertainment value.
I mean sure, it's glorified cock fighting for kids, but that doesn't diminish the utility of the game as entertainment. It just makes it squishier.
blharr 6 minutes ago [-]
Except very few of the cards that are so expensive are even used in the card game for real battles. And the shiny / fancy ones have plain counterparts that would do the same thing in a battle.
The value is purely artistic. Which is its own value, to be fair. But people aren't buying these expensive cards to use them in the game. They just want them for the art (or simply the rarity)
johnnyanmac 1 hours ago [-]
Infinite theoretical printing supply. In reality, that specific really cool Charizard from my childhood stopped being printed decades ago, and natural wear and tear reduces the supply compared to 1999 (or whenever it was printed). Nostalgia kicks in, demand skyrockets. I don't know why Pokemon specifically did this, but it's far from the first trading card series to have this effect.
As for utility: it's still entertainment. remember that this is a TCG, so there technically is still a formatted game to play with these cards. Even if most effects in older cards have been long irrelevant in competitive formats, other TCG's can have card prices surge due to new strategies being discovered.
They all went into the loft at some point and later ended up in a bonfire along with my first edition Harry Potter book collection when my mum was doing a "clear out". Such is life.
They are today's beanie babies and is a complete waste of money. Even stablecoins have a better use case than this over inflated garbage.
Today I went to a hardware store, and was humourously-surprised to find a Pokemon card vending machine there too.
I never see kids using the machine at my local grocery store. I see adults, the same ones that patronize the CA lottery machine located next to the Pokemon machine, loitering while waiting for the next set of packs to "unlock" (they are on a timed release to manage the stock).
It's a depressing sight.
Pokemon battles have some amount of entertainment value.
I mean sure, it's glorified cock fighting for kids, but that doesn't diminish the utility of the game as entertainment. It just makes it squishier.
The value is purely artistic. Which is its own value, to be fair. But people aren't buying these expensive cards to use them in the game. They just want them for the art (or simply the rarity)
As for utility: it's still entertainment. remember that this is a TCG, so there technically is still a formatted game to play with these cards. Even if most effects in older cards have been long irrelevant in competitive formats, other TCG's can have card prices surge due to new strategies being discovered.