The Nameless One

Haven't I argued sufficiently and sincerely enough that I am a potential market for that card? I know you are doubling down with an example but, srsly, I'd buy that card. In an earlier post I mentioned how 5-8.5 gradings speak to me more than a 9 or 10, and given the subjectivity of pokemon, I dunno, I'd rather have a "diverse, subjective" market than one bent on rigid logic. This leads me to more interesting cards, we don't want homogenization of what we're sending in. There are cards in my set which PROOOOOBABLY aren't worth grading but, y'know, I like them, I want them graded, there are some cards which are so stupid and make me laugh so, again, what are we investing in? It's too difficult nailing down the problem of subjectivity. In time, I hope, people start to treat lower graded CGC slabs more kindly. It's amazing how tight the grading boundaries are in terms of finding your value, it's very difficult to gauge this stuff without professional equipment. I use a jewelers lens but I feel more like a dork than a professional in using it. Just sitting here looking at my Marnies super up close and personal, like, these graders use serious equipment, us plebs are literally through the looking glass when it comes to this stuff. My logic is, given that CGC is strict, people will start to round up their gradings to competing services, it's already happening with 9.5s (PSA 10???). Unfortunately, sharks like to grab those cheap CGC 9.5s... crack them... and grade them with PSA. Lol, CGC you gunna let them do you like that?

We've curved the chewing tabacco thing, however

I have some 23 year old pikachu gum haha but no, pokefans have terrible breath

I'm happy to oblige! I'll need a hand from some experienced forum hierophant on where exactly to hold such conversation. I'm happy to develop some comfy forum staple threads like "off-topic thread" where we can all hang out in and chat about whatever. In due time, though, I don't want to overwhelm the place, overall I can see myself posting here a bunch so having "sit around the campfire" threads like this is nice, so if you have any inquiries I'm happy to write in here and keep this whole stream of consciousness consistent. More of that post will make sense when I droll out my tarot reading, I'll post images of the cards and really go hard on this one, I can make it as something of a crash course of the process. I heartily recommend anyone who is curious to read The Book of Thoth and buy themselves a deck, but before that I would consider reading Alan Moore's comic series, Promethea. It's a potent exploration of magick, and the series which turned me onto Crowley's work. That's about the most cost effective school of magick I can think of.

I both agree and disagree. I agree that the consumer in question is selling the card too early, I disagree that the card has no value. Not looking at the price, I'd buy that card for... $30cdn on the spot, maybe pay the shipping because I'm feeling nice to the poor kid trying to hustle the big bad pokemon market... is that worth the grading and time? Probably not, people are going crazy right now doing whatever and I don't disagree that I've seen a lot of bad, weird, why would I grade this cards. If I had this card in nice condition, I would consider getting it graded Personally, I feel like that card could be $100-$200 in five years, "sequin holo rare promo"? Neat. One of my favorite starters, not just a pokemon but one of the pokemon you had to choose? Priceless. Would I plan on selling it? Probably not, I think it's a cool keepsake. Maybe in 10-20 years we get some serious Litten hype and that sequence of evolutions becomes the new Charizard. Who knows!

The overwhelming subjectivity of the Pokemon market It's all by design what's all occurring. South Park warned you all! So, as a kid, these choices presented in the game's design are profound memories. Choosing Red over Blue or vice versa, choosing one of three starting pokemon, choosing the evolution stone for eevee, choosing the fossil pokemon, choosing which pokemon ends up in your masterball, the legendary birds, the elusive mew... how does nostalgia form? It's through our own decisions, this is the selection of pokemon which really just speaks... me, you know? Then you have the massive anime and the character relationships which form as a result. Hey, I grew up with Misty, I like redheads. It's a curse, I also happen to be one. So my attraction to water pokemon formulated as a result. Then we have the whole cubone sequence, wow, that was some dark stuff for a kids game, and you run into all of these ghost pokemon. I LOVE Gengar, and that's a pricy pokemon nowadays. Then there's Mew... what a legacy. We all though we could move that truck with "strength" near the SS Anne and that Mew would just pop out, haha, that's how deep that well goes, buncha kids fishing for rumors in Nintendo Power who knew very well what they were hyping up. Then they bust out Mew in the Pokemon Movie and that was SO HYPE, omg, I was a Mew freak. Overall, I like water and psychic pokemon, and I'm very blue and purple, what nice aesthetic. I would love me a wall of shiny blue, purple, pink... frankly, I'm surprised that charizard rose to the top of the list, blastoise kicks charizard's ... venesaur kicks blastoise's yet that's the least pricy main! Haha, but you can see how weird it is that these moments so thoroughly defined that market we see today. Know what set is going to spike in nostalgia? Black and White era, those games were AMAZING, best pokemon games hands down and I'll fight anyone, those games had a great story and the best combat in the series and the music makes your head explode. Those will be serious cash grab sets, and Sun & Moon is no slouch. I think Sword & Shield is the weakest offering yet, not a fan, so the very current sets don't hold as much interest. The fabled Marnie is a Sword and Shield character, no nostalgia for me, just a current hotness I'm happy to pawn off to some freak willing to pay 1000 for a waifu *shifty eyes* So, that's my logic behind Litten there, pokemon have a maturity rate now where we'll see waves of nostalgia adhering to different periods of poke-legacy. When the next generation turns 30 and I'm a crumbling 40 year old, who freggin knows, if 2021 can be this drastic in three months like... can this trend slow down? Will printing to capacity stabilize, or deflate, the market? I'm not so sure of that, pokemon has such a good foundation to it and people really want to attend competitive events again when we're all vaccinated. Those memories, that nostalgia will never fade from my mind, so that whole era will continue to grow in value as we get older. My pokemon interest ebbed and flowed through the ages, YuGiOh was the hotter ticket for a long time and I liked playing the game more. It felt more "mature" more "dark and twisted" which adhered to my edgy 14 year old mall goth phase which hasn't exactly died. Then I got a DS Lite and it was back to Pokemon, but only Diamond and Pearl, and Black and White. I respect both series and we're about to go on a Diamond and Pearl tear with the remakes coming out.

Priceless :). Kids are the best, I hopped over to our drug store and picked up a "Pokemon Battle Academy" for the school, comes with three constructed decks, a high quality playmat, all the things you need to get a classroom going. I hope some of my cards end up on people's refrigerators, that's way better than a trophy case

Bulk is interesting because, yeah, hard to gauge if your bulk is worth grading. I consider my bulk cards to be less valuable now while having potential for future growth. I want a lot of Dream League pikachus, they are gorgeous and pikachus tend to hold value as commons. Pikachu is one of those things where you grade every pika you can. From my Shiny Star V opening I have an absurd number of Amazing Rares which it seems like might be a thing the Pokemon Company will not continue to do, so those cards have a lot of potential down the line. I tend to pick card genres which traditionally fare well, I mean, look at this Dream League pikachu. Gorgeous card

I'm loling now because that's the exact kinda card I would scoop. I'm a fan of Litten who is my favorite starter pokemon since Squirtle, so that one has potential nostalgia value down the line on top of the potential of being a promo. I've ranted a lot about NA cards but I like their promo market and collect sets with good promos with plans on getting a few graded. I paid 90cdn for three tins, each with promos I consider to be well worth 90 each in the near future, plus I got 12 packs and pulled a couple nice cards. The tins are beautiful too, nice to have those as display pieces for my future nerd wall

I'm in a mode today, Sunday is a good day for content. Tarot and the hastening of karma I practice tarot, particularly Crowley's Thoth. I could write 50 pages on the spot about Thoth so how to TL;DR this? I guess the easy way to understand me is that I'm attracted to "chance". Chance, in tarot, is God itself. Shuffle the deck, cut it, flip a coin, roll some dice, the more chance involved the more potent the reading, the more divine. Every single draw is a miracle of chance, just like the chance of being born, and every unrevealed card is pregnant, giving birth to revelation upon reveal. The idea is that you can, via a complex system of art imprinted on cardboard meaning certain things which adhere to several complex, religious structures which formulate to reveal the concepts of Thelema and the law: do what thou wilt. Your mind is a portal to a complex multiverse, so what is holding one back from exploring it? And what in the gods' green earth has this to do with CGC? Tarot aims to unlock these pathways through divine chance. The law of attraction is tested in this instance, the intimacy of chance is intoxicating. People lust after chance. How exactly does one perform magic with such a concept? How does one "exploit" chance? Language. It's entirely subjective, the trick is making it sound objective. Business 101. Alan Moore: "The true working magicians are those in the advertisement industry" How, exactly, through the test of time and the evolving state of symbolism does a freaking shiny rainbow chonky pikachu send me on this journey? It's a MIRACLE. That card is a freaking miracle, pulling that card will send you so close to the divine that it will take a crane to get you off cloud 9. What a potent business model, like, there would be no joy in dropping 400 on a copy of that card, you NEED to open that for yourself, you need to chase that miracle. That trap cost me a cool chunk of change, my position is unfortunately not as stable as I would like. Fortunately, when I have no packs to crack, tarot provides my mind with the same satisfaction, for a much more "economic" price. We're going to have all of these Poke-addicts weening off packs and what do? Learn tarot haha So, hastening karma, what does that mean? How does that unlock pathways to the expanse of the brain? Tarot cards, and what they communicate, hasten the approach to your problems. It's like finding yourself speeding down a hill and seeing the headlights and doing everything in your power to react properly so you come out alive. So, in one quick moment which feels like an eternity, you meet your problem and I use language, to the best of my ability, to communicate a perspective on what this could mean to you and how to overcome this sensation drawn out by the cards. Shells get cracked open and the resulting chick opens their eyes and the entire universe is formed. It's amazing how long some entities spend in their respective eggs. So, I'm going to work on a reading for this particular situation...

Cheers, Bird, my #1 advice to myself and anyone is "focus on your breath". Calm is important, I try to compose my thoughts... piercingly, honest, but tempered. I'm not mad, honestly I'm thrilled that I found a cool space to drop my thoughts in. I like to spend time every morning after my coffee writing, if there is conversation potential... bonus! My poor rotten tomatoes friends and I are stuck conversing on Discord, we've been hopping off sinking ships for fifteen years. I'm going to laugh and say that's it's VERY good that this forum has a language censor, haha, I curse like a sailor. This has provided me with an opportunity to write in a boundary I'm unfamiliar with, I actually need to be calm and operate less emotion more logic (thanks Spock). The moderators on RT are all my friends so I could get away with *cough* a lot... but it was always for the good of the community. Some trolls are beyond moderation and require a certain tone... I'm well past my nine lives at this point, life can't seem to take me down. "The Nameless One" is the protagonist from a 90s PC RPG named Planescape: Torment. The idea is this character is immortal, every time he dies he wakes up with no memory and another tattoo. The trick, however, is the universe is well aware of you and what all transgressed via your past lives, so it's kinda like Christopher Nolan's Memento where you are working through people who know you more than you know yourself looking for the center of this story. I think that's a good analogy for how I treat the internet, it's a big role playing game. This is way better than a dialog tree, this is real dialog with real people. That's always been attractive to me, I love me a good forum

Thank you for less dramatically summarizing my feelings here, I need some sobriety sometimes. I do feel like my weeks (more like months) of researching the market and making properly evaluated decisions, on top of being so brave as to send my preciouses into alligator land, got squeezed. I have to say, I read the fine prints and whatnot, I did not expect this. I would have held my breath and taken a more considered approach if I knew the bottleneck was well in place, the announcement happened a week after my package was received and I'm going "uh oh". It's kinda like the whole thing with Pokemon amping up it's production line, that takes significant time and resources (around 14 months now before things equalize?), so when exactly will the process get paved? It sounds to me like they have a problem on their hands, a touch of too little, a dash of too late. Yeesh, a little risk control maybe? It's like the entire populace swarming on our bread store looking for the 200 buns we fired up in a day, so what do we do? Orders, you gotta order your buns over the phone and mitigate the demand. Your company can't handle it otherwise. This is where a potent argument against me is formed, did I call customer service and get to the bottom line of the situation? No. I didn't feel the need, everything seemed to be rather straightforward and I was comfortable with moving forward given the instructions and information provided. I did my research, watched several youtubers critique the service and reveal their grades, I dunno, I felt like I had a comprehensive approach. Maybe someone could have warned me, maybe suggestion to call in and figure out your deal would help. That's, honestly, maturely, what I should have done, but who knows, maybe that call would have resulted in "yes, everything is as advertised and you will be fine sending in your collectables". Shoulda woulda coulda. I grew up working in a law office so I know the 36 chambers of death waiting for me if I Karen too fiercely Being Patient Woof, ask me about being patient. In 2008 I was struck by a car while riding my bike down a rainy, dark hill from my friend's house and am permanently disabled from brain injury. Yeah yeah, Nameless, do the Bambi eye thing and tell the sob story. Naw, I'm just saying that I know what it is like to be patient. I also know what it's like being told to calm down. Typically, it's a losing strategy :p. If a company needs to tell people to have patience, to have faith, for us to calm down and take our time and let the process figure itself out... Yeah, that can be abrasive lmao. Keep speaking up! Put the feet to the fire where it counts, I've never expected less from what I do. Conversation is potent. Magic is very simple, we cast spells. Literally, the operation of affixing words to a readable surface, that's magic. Let's see what all changes as a result

Seafarin' an Fisticuffs So, our boat is sinking, we have far too many passengers and we are weighing the boat down, slowly it submerges into the bleak depths. I'm running around going "come on, we need hands! We can reinforce the boat!" where the captain is going around and just chucking people into the ocean in effort to marginalize the speed of descent. Yes, whenever this kind of thing happens we get an overwhelming sensation of "We could do this better". So, how do we keep this all from existing in a vacuum? Surely in space, no one can hear you scream, so let's bring it back down to earth. On one hand, the left hand of passivity, I'm just like whatever man, do what thou wilt, I don't care, spent my entire life under your boot what's another year... On the other, the right hand of aggression, I raise my sword and point it at the heads of the company gods and say "come onto me". I see what's all occurring with eyes wide open. I don't submit, I fight and fight and fight. I see the seams, the cracks, and I keep striking until we break through to new foundation. I'm not fighting because I feel a strength in front of me, just a flimsy, eroding wall Aikido is what I practice, martial arts-wise. When confronted with excessive force, I cradle that force and soothe it into a state of sleep. I have no right hand of aggression, both arms operate as a single wave. Right now, there is a bull charging at me and I have to steel myself for the impact, neutralize the force, and direct it away from my being. If the bull struggles... well, what inspired these calm waters you see before you? Sometimes you just have to put a quick, quiet end to the conflict. Shhhh, it's okay, CGC, c'mere. *crck*

Return Business Whew, pardon my carrying on but... sorry, when exactly do they process your package? That particular area doesn't have an "ETA", no legal small print whatsoever, a mystery box - nothing but "please have faith that we are doing our best in these trying times!". Realistically, looking at the board data, I'm going to be paying for "standard" and still receive the old "economy" service in terms of TAT. Yo, that's an extra $515 for your company to offer me nothing in the way of relief. People are going to pump and dump the grading industry, aren't they?* There is no significant return business after this, you will be left with an additional 80k sqft space and a bunch of employees wondering what the hell they are doing, this is all too little too late and the only people who are happy about it are the stock investors. All of that for ONE moment of grabbing the bull of capitalism and going for a ride. Your boss saw an opportunity and instead of doing the right thing they, *looks at the data*, handled this so incredibly poorly that, you know what, I simply don't believe in an influx of business. I actually don't think Pokemon is as crazy as youtubers are making it out to be, I think this hype is all artificial - everyone's doing the Nintendo thing and artificially manipulating demand for their service. Hype it up, lock em in, and then pad your earnings. Business Goblinism 101. I have 150 cards where I need some bulk service and I'm not grading anything until this all cools off in a year or two. Looking at how stupid things are, I guess the strategy is pay for one "Walk-Through" card and put it on top of the bulk so your order gets processed faster, but how stupid is it that CGC's system is so easily abused like that? I bet everyone is just sending in one Walk-Through, getting the quick service for processing their package, and further clogging up the system. The reality is I'd much prefer grading with Beckett, despite the TATs, because you get the sub-grades along with relative to PSA value. CGC needs to step back for a second and think "hmm, maybe we haven't earned this yet" and start worrying that when the dust settles, no one even thinks of CGC for a second. I'm worried that all of my CGC slabs by the end of this will be rendered into a costly joke, that's how bad this service is, it's a small investment nightmare through and through. What exactly is being done to ensure the customer willing to pay $2000 on your service comes back with yet another 2000+ transaction? Yo, I have business for you, I want to give you money, so, come on, I hate being slapped around like this. Where is the incentive? Where is the "5% off your next purchase", where is the "$50 grading credit"? There is literally nothing to make us feel good about doing any of this, I've just been dumped on this entire time *So, here people are spending thousands on grading junk slabs looking for a return in a hot market and basically running into a wall covered in poisonous dart frogs. In six months they get their ill considered grading options back and flounder about on Ebay trying to sell a badgermon for 20 bucks, and that's it, that's the stimulus money, that's the big shot they have at making a little more out of a LOT less. These are desperate times and we're being exploited. It makes me sick, the United States is a circus run by clowns and it's coming time to pay the piper

I'm used to being old guard so being here makes me all fresh and wide-eyed as opposed to droning about Batman movies for 30 threads *points fingers at head*. Film critique, yeesh. You could imagine all of the oldsters wondering what's going on with all of the comic movies

Absolutely, I gotta keep screaming "NO CRYSTAL BALL HAHA" in wake of offering something which might resemble financial advice. *shifty eyes* I'm not a financial advisor *shifty eyes*. Like, whew, I don't own a single thing which is worth what I'm paying for these grades, this is a big deal for me getting into any kind of business. RE: comic stuff, 100% for personal enjoyment, I wouldn't invest in Marvel cards thinking I can flip them (especially after catching wind of these loaded warehouses in this lovely forum). Pokemon... well, I'm not a financial advisor

So, in regards to me and grades and whatnot, I'm actually more attracted to a 5-8.5 than a 9-10. The 5-8.5 has more of a story to it, the corners, edges, surface, and centering all tell a story. How exactly did this card find itself in this case? It sparks my imagination beyond "oh, this card was pulled straight from a pack and put into a grading sleeve and sent off to CGC". So, please, keep valuing minty cards while I scoop up worn favorites, cards which have the joy of childhood embedded into them. Aside from a few cards in my current grading package, I'm donating all of my NA cards to a local school with instructions on how to build decks and whatnot. That's what keeps this hobby alive, all of those kids growing up and going woah, this is still awesome! I guess the attachment I feel to these current cards is the overwhelming circumstance involved, going from a small dogecoin investment to whatever is going on at the moment. 2021 is wild lmao, what a rollercoaster

I sincerely hope the likes of, say, JH Williams the 3rd gets hoisted to the levels of Picasso. Contemporary art eventually becomes classic art, and the meta of what exactly we consider "art" is mercurial. Back in the 90s, these cards were awesome stuff for kids, nowadays I'm looking at them and going, welp, should I frame these? I guess that comes with age, I guess that comes with the sensation of nostalgia. It's priceless. I admire grading work, that must be a coooool job. Preservation is important or we might not realize what we're treating as weekly rags. Yeesh, did I age 10 years writing this?

I dunno, we think this whole "Marvel Cinematic Universe" is pretty quote unquote lit. Once people really get into the comics they will find "Marvels" by Busiek and Ross, and that's a gateway drug for a great deal of, say, DC quality. I think comics are still young, this stuff is absolutely hype-worthy. Like, how old is "All-Star Superman"? Most of my favorite stories are still babies. If we truly do emerge as an economy driven by our subjective joys, comics are well within the realm. I started collecting with Marvel cards and comics, not Pokemon cards, I've got a stack of old Flair 94's which I admire daily. Just you wait and see, if the Pokemon bubble bursts in NA I'm guessing supers are next on the list for consumer-mania. I'm actually considering investing some of my pokemon money into Marvel cards, srsly these are gorgeous slabs of cardboard, amazing art.

Just turn us face-tatted hypebeasts onto Alex Ross and you're gold, *AIR HORNS* You would NOT believe the man's... REALISM! This art is, like, art, man. I'm going to drop a cold 2 milly on some signed 'Rosses and really deck out my exposed brick walls in my cool Toronto highrise ya, peace to my 3 million subscribers go buy everything now

I'm thinking of how one would implement measures to help people so they aren't clogging the system and overall act more considerately with what they are sending in, but that's hard to evaluate, and I fear that people and their resulting "junk slabs" will turn away from future service. I worry about people grading for the sake of grading because they think any graded card is free money and gogogo send everything in as fast as possible! There could be a lot of weird CGC bulk showing up on Ebay in a few months. You almost need a "pre-grading" service, someone to look at a card list and go "naw, that's a bad idea, save your money" but that's tough to manage during a feeding frenzy. There's no real way to objectively value this stuff beyond the quality so you can't just say "sorry but I won't grade your 300... badgers... that's holding up the company and the customers". So, is raising bulk the solution? Will that introduce more discerning customer behavior? Maybe eliminate "economy" altogether and have bulk's max value go up to 400 with a 25 card minimum? Economy is kind of a waste at this point, I feel a more balanced solution can be offered. Good idea!

That image is a good headcanon for how I imagine the more, er, seasoned comic posters wandering into the TCG forum looking. The lawn chairs are over there, yes we'll go to the store to pick you up a copy of the new amazing fantasy #15 settle down now

What a gorgeous picture, now that's a treasure! I need to clarify a few things in regards to Japanese boxes. Dream League is an outlier with the three guaranteed CHR (character rares) per box, otherwise sets will adhere to this guide: https://www.pokeguardian.com/guides/394057_japanese-sword-shield-pokemon-card-rarities-list NA boxes are frustrating, to me, for several reasons. A) 10 cards and a code card packs, that's a lot of bulk, I prefer the 30 pack 5 card thing Japan has going on, so nice to open and deal with, but that's just me B) Card quality... nuff said, this greedy goblin wants 9s and 10s out of their investments, and C) No fixed pull rate and higher price per box! I've heard stories of people opening cases upon cases of Vivid Voltage looking for Chonk Rainbow Pikachu, Japanese sets introduce much tighter odds and, from my experience, I've yielded big returns out of opening - getting two secret rare+ cards in a single box feels amazing, and having one guaranteed means you won't walk away with nothing (My Japanese opens are a comfy investment thus far, the market has me chomping at the bit to get at it more). However, you have to do research, many sets are duds and simply don't have much objective collector value - modern pokemon might take 10-20 years to become relevant on the market so sets which lean heavily modern don't fare as well currently, right now it's a bunch of squirrely 90s kids getting their fix. The three "current" sets, in that I can still find them, which I find valuable are Remix Bout, Dream League, and Tag Bolt (Tag Volt?) - Remix Bout and Tag Bolt have fantastic old school pokemon, Dream League could objectively be the best bang for buck set of all time and is goooorgeous, such pretty cards. I also like Miracle Twin but that's for Mewtwo and Mew purposes, your mileage may vary Then we have Shiny Star V, the current "High Class Pack". High class packs are ridiculously fun, those packs wallop you with hits (two regular rares, one v+ with chances at amazing rares, shiny vault rares, full arts, etc), but this is where I have to go, well, it miiiiiight be better to keep these sealed. I got tremendously lucky, and that luck is short term, those three Marnie cards are a loaded bet. My bottom end with those boxes could dwindle where keeping them sealed will see them shoot up from roughly 120 to 400 per box in a year or two. Tough gamble, be patient for guaranteed payoff or play the opening game which requires grading and whatnot. Well my mam never taught me no easy path so through the thick of it I go! My ultimate point is that Japanese seems to have a more fair system when it comes to collecting, the fixed odds are great, I feel thoroughly rewarded, and it's less bank breaking when I decide to go into a box. What are people spending $150 on Shining Fates Elite Trainer Boxes, that's like 10 packs, a bunch of bulk, and the cards in said pack are diminishing in value because the NA market bubble is already popping. Abandon ship!

I want to clarify that I highly respect anyone who finds themselves going to work in such a time and putting in their best efforts to get such work done. I don't want to sound unappreciative, it's less the employees and more the "head" which concerns me, I know this stuff trickles down to everyone involved and I don't want to end up shooting any messengers, we're all impacted by this. *breaths* more peace and love!

Yay, we've reached the group hug phase of forum intros! Cheers, we are all in this together, I hope this whole ship finds calm waters