Pokémon
- Perrserker is the closest thing to a Nordic Pokémon with his Viking helmet. I love Iceland and my DNA traces back predominantly to the Nordics so I feel a kinship to Perrserker. I’m collecting every Perrserker card there is and will have them all shortly. Perrserker evolves from Meowth and I have picked up a couple of those but am not collecting them.
- Alakazam is technically psychic but I also think he is sort of magical and when I used to play Dungeons & Dragons I always played a Wizard — so I’m also collecting this one. There are a ton of Alakazam cards! I may grab a Kadabra or Abra as part of the evolutions if they look cool.
- Lastly any graded Pokemon cards that I just think are really cool looking.
Pokémon Pocket Collection at 100 Days
In September I started playing with Pokémon Pocket as the First Anniversary celebration was coming up. Tyler had been collecting on Pocket since launch day. The anniversary celebration had a ton of promotions associated as well as the limited edition Deluxe Pack ex. I did some in-app purchasing to get Poke Gold and help catch up a bit, I’ve also subscribed to the Premium Pass. I’ve created a pretty complete collection in the first 100 days.
Tons of Pokémon cards in this kiosk at MSP Airport — and only 400% more expensive than it should be! 💸😬
Pokémon Card Shop Saturday
Tyler and I went on a drive around the cities yesterday to check out some Pokémon card shops in town. This was a similar trip to our Game Store Tour in February. This was focused solely on Pokémon!
Viral Card Games
Our first stop was Viral Card Games in Fridley. We both liked this shop a lot. It was likely the most organized and well structured card shop that we had been in. They had a several glass cases with graded and raw cards on display in a wide range of prices. They were super helpful pulling cards out to give them a closer look.
The big differentiator for Viral Card Games was their bulk management. Most card shops simply have dozens of boxes filled with thousands of cards grouped by their sets. The team at Viral has fully embraced the TCG Player system with two very large screen kiosks in the store so you can search their entire bulk collection with ease, add the cards you are looking for, and then they will bring those out for you. With a couple searches I was able to grab the first 3 of a 9 card illustration set that I’m looking for.
I also grabbed the final card for a 3-card illustration set.
This is also the only downside that Tyler and I had. The tradeoff of amazing bulk management is less fun flipping through binders and browsing different things. If Viral also had several binders to bridge the gap between the amazing bulk system they have and the singles under the counter it would be about perfect.
Ultimate Collectibles Warehouse Sale
Our second stop was a tip from my brother-in-law Max — Ultimate Collectibles was having their “Warehouse Sale” at the Hopkins VFW. We had no idea what to expect but were excited to head over and check it out. There was no real signage but the full parking lot on a Saturday afternoon was a sign we were in the right spot.
Ultimate has a lot of sports memorabilia and more than half of the sale was that, but if you watched the foot traffic the vast majority of that was there for the Pokémon sets they were selling. They had a huge collection on display and the prices were pretty good — above retail but not typical card shop pricing.
Ultimate is the more typical card shop experience with just piles of stuff and you need to dig around to find what you want. The warehouse sale was just piles of boxes on folding tables. They also had a good selection of singles on display but the focus for this event was moving large boxes.
It was awesome to check out and Tyler and I got our first Ultra-Premium Collection box ever here — snagging one of the last three left before they all were taken.
MN Poke Pulls
After a quick coffee stop in Hopkins, we made our way to MN Poke Pulls in Plymouth timed just after their pretty late 2:00 PM opening time. We had planned to start here until we realized they weren’t even open until much later. That is a pretty late starting time, especially given that they don’t host tournaments, but I suspect it is because of the origin of the store around Whatnot.
So a quick Whatnot detour if you, like me, have no idea what this is. The owner of this store started on Whatnot by streaming Pokémon boxes that viewers auction for in real-time. Once the auction is won, the box is immediately opened and they go through all the packs. The purchaser of the box then gets the cards that are valuable sent to them.
To me this seems strange as I would want to open the box and packs together at home. Tyler and I have fun doing that. But if you are a big collector and you have opened 10,000 packs already it is different. Here you get to outsource the opening part as well as the raw management of all the bulk that you get. You just get the stuff that you really want. Meanwhile the Whatnot viewers all get to share in the fun of opening and the “hits” when opening the packs.
With that backdrop this store had huge volume of packs as that is what they need to run the Whatnot events. They had a few cases with singles and graded cards, but not a ton. They didn’t have prices on anything which Tyler and I both dislike. They also have a giant messy pile of bulk cards for $0.10 each if you want to do that.
Overall a fun place to stop but it is like a warehouse inside and you wouldn’t spend a ton of time hanging out and browsing.
Lost Zone Cards
Our last stop was Lost Zone Cards in Bloomington. This ended up being the least Pokémon focused shop of the day, and unfortunately was even more so when we arrived and heard their Pokémon stuff was gone that day for a show in Wisconsin. The photo below you can see the left-most case is empty.
Overall this seemed like a great place for a variety of card games and they had a big area for tournaments — but was the least exciting of the day for Pokémon collectors.
We have a lot of fun exploring these places. On our list for shops to check out still are Krakenhits in Fridley and The Forge in Chaska.
Tyler and I opened our first Pokémon Ultra-Premium Collection tonight. No big pulls but some good fun.
“Oh, I know I have that Pokémon card in here somewhere. Just let me look in this pile.” 😳😆 at MN Poke Pulls TCG.
At the Minnesota Card Show Pokémon event today with Tyler and saw the most expensive thing we’ve ever seen at a card show — $100,000 for the sealed Pokémon Base Set Shadowless Booster Box.
Got my first immersive card in Pokémon TCG Pocket tonight — Pikachu ex. The videos for these are pretty cool.
After following Tyler to Pokémon TCG Pocket I decided to also try one of his favorite games — Clash Royale. I’m a total newbie. If you play let’s connect!
Trying out Pokémon TCG Pocket
I saw that Pokémon TCG Pocket has a special event coming up and Tyler has been collecting on this app for a long-time so I decided to join in as well.
If you want to connect with me my friend code is 2059-0580-7070-6014.
An observation on TCG Pocket — if you owned Pokémon and had a huge market of collectible cards and believed there was a future for digital collectibles, like NFTs, this app is exactly what you would create. You have a brand new ecosystem of digital only cards to get people used to all the typical things you do with the current physical cards and create a whole additional digital ecosystem. It isn’t blockchain based today, but the consumer behavior is the thing to focus on now how it is done.
My Pokémon Collection
With some help from Tyler I got my Collectr profile accurate with my focused Pokémon collection. I have fun exploring Pokémon with Tyler and I have three things I collect:
I just have 31 cards so far but I like the collection and having specific goals like this makes it a lot more fun. If only Collectr published an RSS feed on these profiles.
