Pokémon Trading Cards - Hyperfixation and Suffering from Success

    In the first grade I watched the girl who sat one desk ahead of me staple some Pokémon cards together to make a fan. She fanned herself with them then threw them in the recycling bin at the end of the day. 

     I pulled them out of the bin and removed the staples. I had never heard of Pokémon before, but I was enamored by the art.

    Our household wasn't very media-oriented. If Pokémon came up in the household it was from my father talking about how ridiculously stupid it was. But I was quietly hooked.

    In the second grade, should we finish a task early, we could go pick a book from the reading corner to read while the rest of the class finished. I found myself competing against another classmate to finish everything first in a race to be the one to lay claim to Deluxe Collector's Edition! The Official Pokémon Handbook by Maria S. Barbo. 

     

    Whether or not I was the one to get ahold of this book would make or break the entire day. It was imperative to finish first.

    If you're wondering why I remember such an obscure event in great detail it's because these events would eventually lead to forming the closest and longest lasting friendships of my life.

    This rivalry over getting to the reading corner first would eventually lead to a friendship when this kid asked if I had any Pokémon cards. I would show him my staple victims (that I had taken to keeping in a little pocket photo album) and admit I had no way to buy any for myself because my father found the whole thing to be quite idiotic.

    In what may have been the greatest act of generosity I've yet witnessed from a child he elected to give me a large portion of his own collection. He produced a large trading card binder (I couldn't believe it, there were binders actually made for this kind of thing) and allowed me to select some of my favorites.

    Now that I had the start of a real collection this would also go on to create two more lifelong friendships. On the playground me and my rival-turn-friend found that we had a common interest with the two kids from the allergy table. We weren't allowed to sit together at lunch, but we would spend all recess trading cards amongst ourselves.

    This became my ride or die friendship all through elementary and junior high. We would go on to attend different high schools and colleges, but to this day still go on yearly campouts together. This is my most anticipated event of each and every year.

    I would finally buy my first pack of cards in 2005 using birthday money on a Walmart run with my mother. I would end up pulling a Rocket's Moltres EX from the 2004 set, Team Rocket Returns.

   

    Over the next 20 years I would buy packs semi-regularly.

    Getting three lifelong friendships out of a hobby is already more than anyone could even hope for, but the payoff wouldn't end there.

    Pokémon cards would fund the purchase of my first used car, pay for the hospital bill at the birth of my first child, act as a huge percentage of the down payment on my home, and afford me a brand new second car.

    I am incredibly grateful to Pokémon, the girl who stapled some cards together, my second grade rival-turn-friend, and the friends that came from his generosity. In a way I suppose I also owe a thank you to the online content creators who made Pokémon blow up in the post-COVID landscape, as without them I wouldn't have had such a huge ROI on my silly childhood hobby.

   However, there is a bit of a downside to the last point. I didn't want to be done collecting.

   In 2026 I sold a card I initially bought for $61.71 for $17,000.00.

    I could never justify putting this kind of money into this hobby. It made me realize that I'm on the outside looking in. I hadn't bought any cards in a couple years. You can't get ahold of new cards because scalpers eat them all up. You can't get ahold of old cards unless you are willing to drop $17k.

     I felt like I'd been pushed out of my nearly-lifelong hobby. I had 1000% gotten far more out of this hobby than I ever deserved, but I also realized I was missing the simple joys of it. Opening packs with the gang. Trading amongst buddies. Buying graded slabs and only paying in the double digits. Filling the pages of a new binder. Hell, I even missed sorting through bulk.

    I realized I got a lot of joy out of just collecting. This was no longer the landscape of Pokémon. It was time to let go.

    This was not the end of collecting, though. A lethal combination of a chance encounter with an old forgotten box at my parents' house, a very oddly and aggressively targeted YouTube algorithm, and my own tendencies to hyperfixate would lead me to a new goal outside of Pokémon cards. One that we are yet to see the results of, but I could truly never hope for anything even close to what I got out of Pokémon.

    I will always be grateful for the blessings that came--both directly and indirectly--from my hyperfixation on Pokémon. Here's to blazing new trails in  hoarding  collecting.